Washingtonians who are putting very expensive college degrees to good use waiting tables, cleaning apartments or generally drifting through your Wednesday: you are far from alone! Mike Riggs points us to an interesting report in The Chronicle of Higher Education about figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics which prove that graduating from college only to suffer through the daily routine of a go-nowhere job is hardly a unique scenario. The numbers show that 17 million Americans are working jobs which “require less than the skill levels associated with a bachelor’s degree,” including 317,759 waiters and waitresses, 63,704 “amusement and recreation attendants” and 37,156 hotel desk clerks. (What, no mention of “professional blogger” on that list?)

Aside from being good for a quick chuckle, this is further proof that you can be smart enough to graduate from any college in the world — but it depends on how you use that knowledge and how many jobs are available at any given moment in time that will really land you somewhere other than busing tables the corner bistro. Not that there’s anything wrong with that — plenty of people are more than happy to sit in a convenience store all day and argue about the mass civilian casualties in the attack on the Death Star.