A downside of starting a business

Here are three of the week's top pieces of financial insight, gathered from around the web: 

College costs hit long-term wealth

Tuition costs have changed the calculus around obtaining a higher degree, said Paul Tough in The New York Times Magazine. Economists have long referred to “the gap that exists between the incomes of college graduates and high school graduates” as the “college wage premium,” which has hovered near 65% in recent years. The premium, though, “doesn’t take into account how much grads owe — or how much they spent on college.” New research has looked instead at the “net wealth of a typical college graduate.” College grads born in the 1960s had two to three times the wealth of non-grads — and among Black grads, the advantage was especially notable. “But younger white college graduates — those born in the 1980s — had only a bit more wealth than white high school graduates born in the same decade,” and for Black graduates the advantage had shrunk to almost nothing. The culprit: “The rising expense of college” and student debt.

A downside of starting a business

Entrepreneurship can be a surprising red flag on your résumé, said Jacob Waddingham and Miles Zachary in Fortune. A survey of 700 hiring managers “found that former business owners were actually less likely to get interviews compared with applicants with only traditional experience.” This was true regardless of whether they had sold or closed their business. Why the hesitation among employers about bringing on a former business owner? “We found that recruiters worried that entrepreneurs would jump ship to start their own companies as soon as they could.” Hiring professionals also raised concerns about “ex-entrepreneurs who refuse to take directions,” or who might struggle translating their nontraditional experience into traditional work.

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Health insurance premiums rise

Next year could see the biggest jump in health insurance costs in more than a decade, said Anna Wilde Mathews in The Wall Street Journal. Mercer and Willis Towers Watson, two large benefits consulting firms, project that “costs for employer coverage are expected to surge around 6.5% for 2024,” the biggest bump since 2012. The boost “could add significantly to the price tag for employer plans that already average more than $14,600 a year per employee.” The reasons for the increase include “hospitals’ higher labor costs and heavy demand for new and expensive diabetes and obesity drugs.”

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