The Luck Of the Job

The Accidental Equalizer

By Jessi Streib

Chicago, 256 pages, $27.50

"Jessi Streib's "The Accidental Equalizer: How Luck Determines Pay After College" examines an important segment of the labor market that gets relatively little attention: entry-level positions for midtier jobs. Most of these positions go to graduates of good -- but not elite -- colleges and universities and form the foundation of the lower- and upper-middle class.

 

Ms. Streib, who teaches sociology at Duke University, argues that, for those who graduate from midtier undergraduate business schools, college is a great equalizer; a first-generation college student typically earns as much as a multigenerational graduate. But, she says, the first job you get out of college and what you earn from it are pretty much crap shoots. She calls the system a luckocracy, which, like a meritocracy, describes how jobs, income and power are distributed. "In luckocracies," she writes, "strategy does not matter and neither do resources correlated with class. Those who win are those who guess well, not those who grew up with the most class privileges." The primary condition for a luckocracy is a lack of information: Graduates apply for jobs not knowing what they will be paid, what the job will entail or what employers are looking for.

 

Ms. Streib documents the very familiar realities of getting your first job. Employers aren't clear on the exact requirements, beyond a bare minimum. Job descriptions are not always explicit, and applicants don't know exactly what they are getting into. The author finds that many of the things we thought mattered don't matter at all. Instead, midtier employers focus on who can do the job, "not on who completed the most internships, where they developed their skills, or whether their leisure activities were expensive or free. Their bar for who was employable was also specific but sufficiently low that it did not require great resources to meet; they looked for skills like teamwork and a basic knowledge of Excel." Students simply must clear the bar of having studied the right things from a decent school and act like a normal person during the interview. Then it's on to the lottery.

 

Ms. Streib insists that the luckocracy doesn't necessarily describe most other segments of the labor market. But her description may be more typical than she realizes. Most people can recall a fair amount of serendipity that determined how they got their first job. Maybe your interviewer happened to come from the same fraternity, or also did a semester abroad, or was impressed that you'd put yourself through school by working at McDonald's.

 

Job postings often ask for things such as "good communication skills" but then don't explain what that means. And employers often value things that are hard to describe concretely, like "enthusiasm" and "initiative." This is because entry-level workers have different roles, depending on what team and tasks they are assigned to. Even within the same company, the same labels can mean different things to different people. The lack of clarity is often because some needs are unknowable until the person is hired and on the job.

 

Ms. Streib also finds that graduates often don't know what they are getting into. This, too, is not surprising. Who knows what the daily life of an HR manager entails until one has experienced it? Theoretically an internship would offer some insight, though Ms. Streib finds that former interns don't necessarily have an advantage going into a new position.

 

In many ways, Ms. Streib argues, the equalizing nature of the luckocracy, though imperfect, is better than the alternatives, which perpetuate class hierarchies. She suggests that the system could be further improved by altogether eliminating the college requirement, since a degree is needlessly expensive. Yet she also describes how important college is for first-generation students, offering many advantages that people otherwise get from having college-educated parents: It socializes young men and women into the corporate world; prepares them to behave and dress in a corporate setting; and instills an awareness of what sorts of jobs exist. Maybe that can be achieved in less than four years, but the fact that college serves this equalizing role suggests that it has some value.

 

The economics literature is divided on whether college actually teaches tangible skills or if it only has social value and enables graduates to better signal their desirable qualities. So the idea that a college education has some intrinsic value -- and there is evidence that is does -- can't be dismissed out of hand. Ms. Streib, for instance, limits her study to business-school graduates. But if college degrees offered little intrinsic value, it seems what you study wouldn't matter.

 

Ms. Streib also dismisses the idea that midrange corporate jobs add value to the economy. She argues that promotions and advancement are also part of the luckocracy because what it takes to get ahead is not always explicit. A year into those first jobs, "hiring and promotion criteria were again class neutral, based more on low levels of competency than classed signals, strategies, or dispositions." I am skeptical. Getting that first job may involve an element of luck, but climbing the corporate ladder takes skill, both professional and political. The fact that the wage trajectory of college graduates is much steeper than it is for those with a high-school degree suggests some skills development and sorting by talent.

 

"The Accidental Equalizer" makes an important argument in the conversation about the role of college in the economy. Far too much energy and ink are spent on who gets the most elite jobs, who goes to the most elite schools and how terribly unfair the whole process is. Little of that conversation describes the reality for most Americans. The role of the good-but-not-elite college affects far more people and gives us much more insight into the state of economic mobility than Ivy League statistics.

 

And for those graduates who've been close to getting a job but didn't, for reasons they still don't understand, the existence of the luckocracy should offer some solace. Success in life and in your career has a big element of luck and timing.

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Ms. Schrager is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the author of "An Economist Walks Into a Brothel and Other Unexpected Places to Understand Risk."" [1]

1. The Luck Of the Job. Schrager, Allison.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 29 Nov 2023: A.15.