Working in public service

From Catherine Rampell:

More than two years later, our suspicions have been borne out: The number of recent college grads in public service jobs has skyrocketed in the last two years.
As I wrote in an article today, in 2009 16 percent more young college graduates worked for the federal government than in the previous year and 11 percent more for nonprofit groups, according to an analysis by The New York Times of data from the American Community Survey of the Census Bureau. A smaller Labor Department survey showed that the share of educated young people in these jobs continued to rise last year.

It goes on to give some possible explanations for the increase, most of which I would attribute to that these were the only places hiring, and the federal government has had a lot of Baby Boomers retiring recently.  Regardless, it is a good thing for the nation that some of the best and the brightest young people aren't being hired by Wall Street to find more clever and dangerous ways to chisel the rest of us out of larger percentages of our money.