ABSTRACT
As of January 2021, 44.7 million people in the United States owed a total of $1.71 trillion in federal student loan debt. Educational debt, once thought to be “good debt,” has increasingly become a source of racial and economic stratification in both higher education and the labor market. In this essay, we discuss links between student loan debt and work. Indebtedness ultimately determines the extent to which people can choose and benefit from their work as well as transmit the benefits of decent work to future generations. Limiting job options, working more than one job as well as more hours than one would like, inability to save money, and delaying life milestones are ways that indebtedness leads to indecent work and intergenerational economic instability. These disparities are most pronounced among Black, Indigenous, and Latina/o/x graduates, who are less likely than their White peers to have been afforded the privilege of intergenerational wealth and encounter other job market barriers, such as employment discrimination. In this essay, we present a brief history of student loan debt trends and policy, implications of student loan indebtedness for work, and recommendations for creating more just policies and structures for student loan debt and work.
