Episode 190

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Published on:

30th Mar 2026

Why Half of New Grads Are Underemployed After Following All the Rules

The traditional American playbook is breaking. Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave Conley explain how school, credentials, and work no longer deliver as half of new grads end up underemployed, AI reprices desk jobs, and first-year pay lands closer to $35,000. Guest Spencer Conley got the deal he was promised through non-conventional choices. He attended a small liberal arts college on a strong financial deal and graduated nearly debt free. He shares early work in a presidential campaign and DOD consulting, contrasting contractor responsibility with government protections. Most of his peers carry heavy student debt limiting their options. This episode sets up how AI is changing hiring and job value.

Timestamps:

  • (00:00) Half of new grads are underemployed with AI repricing desk jobs and starting pay near $35k – Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave Conley say the school-credentials-work playbook is broken
  • (01:27) Spencer Conley took an unconventional path at a small liberal arts college with a strong financial deal and graduated nearly debt-free – he still got the outcomes the old system promised
  • (04:36) Early presidential campaign work and DOD consulting showed contractor responsibility beats government employee protections – Spencer contrasts the two paths
  • (07:48) Consulting in AI, sustainability, and economic development – Spencer explains his current role as a manager
  • (09:43) Skills matter more than degrees in today's market – the shift happening now
  • (11:40) Student debt limits life options for most peers – the college debt trap in action

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Transcript
Jerremy:

Every generation in America inherited the exact same playbook.

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Go to school, get the credentials, do

the work, and the system will hold up.

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Its end of the deal.

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Millennials may be the last generation.

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That playbook actually caught.

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Now half of new grads are underemployed.

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AI is repricing desk jobs

faster than anyone predicted.

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And the trades everyone's selling.

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AI is repricing desk jobs

faster than anyone predicted.

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First year pay starts closer to

35,000 rather than six figures,

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and there's a lot of people who

cannot afford their cost of living.

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My name is Jerremy Alexander Newsom.

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Alex: My cohost is Dave Conley, and

this is Solving America's Problems.

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We have a super cool guest today related.

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Spencer Conley is a manager

and a consulting firm.

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Running leading work with artificial

intelligence, sustainability,

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and economic development.

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He did everything.

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The old system asked, guy, got the degree,

did the campaign trail, did the corporate

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climb the ladder, and it delivered?

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He recently married.

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He's in his middle of the career and

sitting inside one of the world's

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biggest consulting firms watching the

rules change right now in real time.

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So I'm really excited to just

dive into how you are seeing the

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landscape change in the workforce.

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Spencer, my guy.

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Thanks for being here,

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Jerremy: dude.

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great to be here.

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Thank you for having me.

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Yeah, man, it's gonna be so cool.

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So dude, you did everything right that

the, old American Playbook said to do.

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Grew up in a good school district,

got the four year degree, worked your

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way into professional class employment

by the conventional scorecard.

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It worked.

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Great.

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So the question I guess would be, did you

get the deal that you were promised or do

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you feel like you got something different?

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Yeah.

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You know, I think that's a,

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that's a really interesting

and really good question.

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I think I did get the deal that

I was promised, but I think

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I went through it in a very.

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Non-conventional way that helped

me kind of get to where I am now.

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whereas I'm seeing

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of my peers kind of follow the

same formulaic approach and

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maybe not get to the same place.

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so I'd say overall, yes,

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but there's some minute differences

that I think I took in my

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personal and professional life.

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and even

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the college I chose that, that really

helped kinda lay that foundation.

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Well, I mean, right outta college.

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Oh, go ahead Dave.

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yeah.

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So like, what, what do you think

those were like, or what, what,

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what do you think sets you apart?

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Like, I think some people could look at

this and be like, Hey, it was just luck.

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And I, you know, like, I saw you coming

through this and it wasn't that like,

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there was a lot of work and there was a

lot of diligence and like, do you think

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your path was more driven or, you know,

could somebody repeat what you did or,

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Dave: or are your friends

getting a raw deal?

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Like what's, what's your vibe on that?

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Spencer Conley: Yeah.

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Another good question.

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Honestly, I think,

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I think it was a couple of key

decisions starting with like,

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honestly, the college I went to.

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I was, you know, grew up in

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Northern Virginia, the Fairfax

area, everybody was going to

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these large state schools.

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There's a big push to go

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to U-V-A-J-M-U, Virginia Tech

because they're great institutions

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and they're publicly available

right to, to the students

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in Virginia.

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I,

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I was fully going to fall into the

trap of like, let's go to a large

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school, have no idea what I want to do.

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of get caught in those generalist

credits and like probably bounce

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around for five or six years

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' at a large institution.

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But instead, I went to a really

small liberal arts school where I

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got a really good financial deal

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sports, that allowed me to get

through college pretty much debt

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free, with, with a more focused degree

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really I don't use right now,

but did help me think critically

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and connected me with a really

good professional network.

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Jerremy: I like it.

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Yeah.

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Well,

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I

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mean, maybe a little bit of a

deeper potential question as well.

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right?

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outta college, right?

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If I remember this correctly, you worked.

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A presidential campaign,

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and then you had a professional

role as a government contractor.

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Now here's what's crazy.

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So you did some of the pentagon's

analytical work without

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actually being in the Pentagon.

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However, you didn't have any

civil service protections, no

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federal pension, no institutional

commitment running in your direction,

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and now you are in one of the

big four, which is awesome,

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but still that external brain

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still

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one layer removed.

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When did you realize or feel, or maybe

even notice that having the career

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and

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being inside the system

were two different things?

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Spencer Conley: Having the career

versus being inside the system.

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You know, I think, honestly I got

connected with, you know, the, the

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presidential campaign was kind of a fluke.

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I actually applied to an internship,

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thought that internship was in DC

and turns out it was in New York.

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So, kind of had to go

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Jerremy: Whoops.

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Spencer Conley: Yeah.

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it was a, it was a big whoops moment.

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I, I actually.

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Like was couch surfing on Craigslist,

which is, you know, a story in itself.

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But, really I jumped in to, it was

DOD consulting and honestly, the

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re the way I got in there was truly

just growing up in the DC area.

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I had some connections through

friends that were working in.

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That world and got connected with a small,

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a small business actually that

was doing consulting work for

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the Marine Corps at the time.

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They're like, Hey, you

should talk to these people.

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Interviewed and eventually got the job

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it, it, was really cool insight into

how government works into how private

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industry works with government.

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But truly at the end of the day,

one of the reasons I left that role

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and pivoted into, you know,

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big Four consulting was, I

mean, government employees were

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falling asleep at their desks.

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It was, I was

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years old and

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we were waking up, you know,

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Joe Schmo for a meeting that

he was actively presenting on.

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And I was like, this, this can't be

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life.

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Even though the impact that we were

driving on Paper wa was real, right?

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It didn't, it didn't really

feel real at the time.

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Dave: So, what I'm hearing

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is the folks that were in the

system, at least in your experience,

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I, I had a slightly different

government experience, but.

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Like, even though you were outside

the system and didn't have all

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those benefits, you didn't have

like the government pension, you

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didn't have the, the, you know, the

stuff that, you, the protections.

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I mean, you are a contractor, Right.

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And you were, you were driving

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really big things that it sounds like

the government employees were just

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like, you know, asleep at the wheel.

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So you had all the responsibilities,

none of the protections and.

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So how did that work for you?

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I mean, did you, that even occur

to you at the beginning or was, I

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mean, are you looking back on this

now being like, oh, that is a scam.

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Like, like how,

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how do you, how do you feel about that,

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Spencer Conley: It's, it's actually,

I've thought about this a lot.

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I, I,

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me didn't, didn't even

think about it, did not care

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about the pension or things

like that because, you know,

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my understanding at the time was

like, yeah, you can become a federal

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employee or government employee

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work for 20 or 30 years.

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You know, you'll get paid,

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you know, at the end

of your 20 year career.

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What I would get paid five years from

now is, you know, 22-year-old me.

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only benefit you have is job

stability, which I think is going

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away in the federal space to a degree.

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and

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you have job stability in a pension.

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But at the end of the day,

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if you're, you know,

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making two to three x what

your clients are making

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after 30 years in their career,

but being 10 years in your career,

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the pension really isn't a,

isn't a factor in, you know,

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22-year-old me's brain, right?

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Jerremy: Yep.

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Yeah.

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Thinking that far ahead

sometimes too, right?

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I mean,

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a lot of people love the pension.

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Love the 4 0 1 Ks.

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How'd you decide on

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consulting?

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Meaning like, how'd you choose that as a

word or a phrase, or like a career path?

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What stood out to you about it?

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Spencer Conley: Yeah, so I mean,

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again, I kind of fell into it,

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it stood out to me because

I came out of college again.

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A generalist.

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I, I got a political science degree,

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tried politics, but it was,

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it really wasn't for me

at the end of the day.

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But the, the draw to consulting, the more

I did the research and talked to folks

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in consulting was, you know, you're,

you're solving different problems

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every day from a different angle

depending on who you're working with.

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So it's not like, you know,

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working in as a GS employee and

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Working in a finance shop for a large

agency, you're gonna be doing that

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type of work for the rest of your life

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if you stick in that.

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But consulting

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has afforded me

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the opportunity to work on

so many different problems,

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expertise in so many different fields

that I would never have had exposure to.

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And I used it as really like

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Admittedly a high paying way

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to experience almost every industry,

which, which I've been able to do and

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was actually the reason I moved from

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a

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smaller kind of mom and shop consulting

group to, to a larger big four firm

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because you can kind of create

your own destiny and try,

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every different industry,

which, which I've done.

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Jerremy: Yeah,

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which I love.

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there's a lot of,

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I

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mean, when we say like

a generalist degree,

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I like to remind people there's

that very popular phrase, a jack

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of all trades, master of none.

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But

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oftentimes better than a master of one.

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Dave: Mm.

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Jerremy: Like that's the end.

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Yeah, that's the end of that phrase.

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So sometimes having all the skills,

doing all the things, knowing all the

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people, having all the connections

and experiencing something,

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you really develop an underlying

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confidence

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or courage to

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go try other things, which

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is very interesting because.

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At

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least I've heard this

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statistic thrown around pretty

often that 85% of employers

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now say they prioritize

skills over degrees.

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I

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think it was a Harvard study

who looked at actual hiring data

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and found fewer than one in 700 hires

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were actually affected by companies

dropping degree requirements.

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And when a hiring manager is

looking at a stack of resumes,

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you know what?

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Actually happens to the one without

a bachelor's degree kind of thing.

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Right.

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So

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do you, do you happen to notice or

feel or even see that that might

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be shifting at all in the, in the

landscape of hiring or consulting firms?

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Spencer Conley: Oh, I mean, absolutely.

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not in the sense of consulting firms.

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I mean, we, we operate.

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A lot of consulting firms operate

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with specific requirements,

especially when selling to,

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to clients.

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Right.

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And a lot of clients, I still think,

you know, in the federal space,

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state and local space or commercial

space, are still operating with,

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you know, they need to grade

resumes on paper and we hire to

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put our best foot forward.

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And oftentimes that includes

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a degree,

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a higher degree than just a, you

know, a general bachelor's degree.

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Or in very specific cases, if

it's like, you know, say we're

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working on space in satellites, you know,

if for some reason a person has gone in,

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a

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degree but has 20, 30 years of industry

experience, that is a case where we would

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kind of shift to, to

hiring that individual.

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I would say

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generally though, with some of

my peers and some of my friends,

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they don't have degrees

and they're getting,

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you know, very specific skills.

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They're learning,

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AI skills or, or music in ai, for example.

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And they're getting degrees out

in high powered, high paying sales

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positions for tech companies.

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where

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previously

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weren't at all,

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you know, they were working in service

industries or things like that.

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Dave: Wow, So,

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Talk about that, just digging

into that a little bit more.

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So like

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there's kind of a structural failure

of getting $180,000 degree and

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being up to your eyeballs and debt.

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You know, like what,

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when you're in this like skip

college, learn a trade crowd,

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what's, what's absolutely right

about that and what's the.

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You know, like I went to a, you

know, an I went to Oberlin and you

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know, like it worked out for me.

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Like, what, what, what do people

need to know about that balance?

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Now

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I

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Spencer Conley: So,

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you know, I was just just

talking to my wife about this.

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'cause we, we talk about this often.

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It's,

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I would say for the, the generalist that

isn't very clear going into college or,

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uh.

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doesn't have a clear passion.

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I think this is really hard for

an 18-year-old to think through,

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but if you're going in and you're

just gonna take some general courses,

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a lot of my friends, I would say

the vast majority of my friends,

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and were, you know, 31, 32,

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go in with an idea of what they

wanted to do or a specific passion.

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They went to a large school set.

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They got buried in gen ed courses.

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They flipped around to different

degrees and ended up spending

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five or six years in an institution

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getting up to their eyeballs in debt

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and not using their degree.

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Right.

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I think Oberlin was helpful.

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It was a liberal arts universe or

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liberal arts college,

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but it did think you, it, it taught

you how to think critically about

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problems regardless of the subject.

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You know, in any course that I took,

whether it was a throwaway physics class.

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music course or one of my core political

science classes, it really gave me that

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skill, which I've been able to use to

become kind of a jack of all trades

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in consulting, which is very helpful.

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But we have family members that

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went to, went to college,

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on scholarships,

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even sports scholarships,

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and just did not,

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didn't fit into the rigor of school, and

then ended up going to a machining trade

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school or to different trade schools,

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and that really worked for them.

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And now they're, they're.

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More career directed and making more

money than most of my peers that went to,

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you know,

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institutions.

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Jerremy: Yeah.

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Well, I mean, how many of your

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circle of peers would you say, 'cause

I heard you mention earlier that you

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were able to get outta college without

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debt.

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What's a percentage of your

peers that you say are still

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years and years later in college debt.

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Spencer Conley: 90%,

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Jerremy: Wow.

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Spencer Conley: And some in

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Dave: Wow.

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Spencer Conley: some in crippling, like

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figure debt still.

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Jerremy: dude.

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Spencer Conley: Yeah.

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It's, it's brutal.

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You know, and you know, a lot of them,

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even a couple from Oberlin, they,

they're like forced to go back to

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the areas where they grew up, right?

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Because they have to live at home

for a while and then that's where

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their job and career kind of expands.

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But they're usually in small,

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small, rural communities, so

they, they can't get out of them.

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They're almost like trapped

in these, these areas, right?

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Because of that debt.

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Dave: Yeah.

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sorry.

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I'm sweating a little bit on that one.

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You know, it's like, holy crap.

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I mean, that's, that also comes up.

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And like in the research

on this, which is like it,

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first step seems to be the

most critical one, right?

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if you, if you don't get off

the mark, like right away,

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no no matter what, if you're not off

that mark, then it cascades not just, you

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know, today and tomorrow and this decade,

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but then, you know, like you end up

making weirder choices as you go along.

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Like you delay having kids,

you delay getting married, you,

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you know, like, like it, it

really leads to a different.

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Outcome in life.

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And I, and one of the, one of

the themes of this series is,

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know, like we were sold a bit of a,

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a, a dream of like, if you just

do this, you're gonna be fine.

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You know, like, and I think you

are among that last generation.

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I was a part of that,

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you know, and I, I don't know if that,

do you think that that was ever actually

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true or do you think that that was just

something that society just sold us?

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Spencer Conley: I, you know, I don't know.

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I think, I think it might've been

true to a degree, I mean, back

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when houses were 70 5K, right?

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but also it was easier to start a

business and, and grow a business

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without having to expand to

like, you know, a global market.

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You could do it regionally.

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Like, I mean,

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my grandfather on my mom's side started

a small business without a degree.

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but, you know, through his military

service and it, it cascaded into something

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really successful and, and great.

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Now, I, it just doesn't,

it just doesn't happen.

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You know, it, it's, it's really hard

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to come up with like a business idea.

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If you don't go to college, that

can cascade if you don't target

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like a really global audience

or at least national audience.

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And

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in college, it's like if you go to

college, unless you get a full scholarship

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or, something similar to that,

you're, you're gonna be struggling

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with, with a lot of debt.

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And

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with of my friends

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that are in that kind of debt, I,

I would say they haven't delayed

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marriage necessarily, but all

of those other big milestones.

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They have to put on hold or

really, really think about

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when they're gonna do that because they

have to manage, you know, basically

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a mortgage through student loans.

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Dave: Oof

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Jerremy: Yeah.

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Dave: that.

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that.

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is tough.

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Jerremy: Well, it's, it's really,

really easy for me to get stuck in this.

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Like, Hey, let's talk about student debt

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and is it worth it?

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College, you know, we've, we've

had that conversation before, but

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to just slightly pivot so that

I don't fall dramatically into

416

:

my.

417

:

Heroic rabbit hole of college.

418

:

Alex: Spencer beat the debt trap his

peers couldn't — but now the companies

419

:

HIRING him run a different kind of math.

420

:

When AI walks in the door, the VALUE pitch

never mentions which JOBS just walked out.

421

:

That conversation is next.

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About the Podcast

Solving America's Problems
Solving America’s Problems isn’t just a podcast—it’s a journey. Co-host Jerremy Newsome, a successful entrepreneur and educator, is pursuing his lifelong dream of running for president. Along the way, he and co-host Dave Conley bring together experts, advocates, and everyday Americans to explore the real, actionable solutions our country needs.

With dynamic formats—one-on-one interviews, panel discussions, and more—we cut through the noise of divisive rhetoric to uncover practical ideas that unite instead of divide. If you’re ready to think differently, act boldly, and join a movement for meaningful change, subscribe now.