Comment by DavidPeiffer

There have been stories about people who graduated in 2008 who had an awful time finding a job despite getting "useful" degrees because the economy was in shambles. Their salaries _x_ years out of school were notably lower than similar groups a bit older or younger. Many of them took any job they could get.

Now think about someone who got a job in their degree field, but at a 30% reduced salary than typical (because that's the only way a company could justify hiring someone). If each successive company knows the current salary of their future employee and offers 15% more to be compelling, the employee is still far behind an employee following the same path starting 2 years earlier/later. Add in the opaque nature of salary bands that are basically never widely disclosed to employees and a really rough narrative is formed for a group of people.