How Are the Kids? Unemployed, Underwater, and Sinking

http://baselinescenario.com/2010/11/20/how-are-the-kids-unemployed-underwater-and-sinking/

by tswicegood • 16 years ago

46 46 16 years ago

jhrobert• 16 years ago

in our increasingly technological society, jobs require better logic skills, that's a big change for humanity, social skills used to matter more.

nickpinkston• 16 years ago

Definitely correct that the great-recession is structural unemployment - not just lack of demand.

The industrial revolution spawned public schools for giving all of society the ability to take part - now we need another similar revolution.

However, whereas before it was the capitalist class doing this to get more workers for their factories, it's now those very people trying to restrict education into the same old mold.

We need a model that suits the emerging model: global, info rich, distributed, open-source, democratized, etc.

This means we need: basic programming (using FOSS) for everyone, teach stats before, teach FabLab tech, teach media literacy and research at a young age, show them the vast amount of resources at their disposal.

Our kids really will be our future...

enjo• 16 years ago

Or better, we need a generation of kids that are interested in science and math and actually go into professions that make things.

I haven't seen any specific numbers that break this down by degree. Given what I've seen in computer science, I'd bet that engineers and other "hard" degrees are doing just fine.

potatolicious• 16 years ago

Generally yes, but not always.

The blind belief that getting a "hard" degree is a guaranteed path to gainful employment is fraught with much of the same false logic as people getting "soft" degrees. I saw much of this during my time in college.

The majority of the class did the work they were assigned and that was that. There was very little effort put towards professional development, networking with industry people, or building a solid portfolio of past work that is key to succeeding in any enterprise.

When I left school, the people who were passionate about the subject - people who pursued applications of their craft above and beyond the paltry requirements of getting the degree, they were the ones who found jobs easily. Of my peers from university, many are still underemployed today, or are employed with poor prospects of either vertical or horizontal movement.

This goes beyond "hard" degrees. I'm heavily into photography besides being a coder, and the number of people who go to art school for a photography degree, clearly have not shot enough pictures, or put together a substantial portfolio, but expecting to find employment or contracts is pretty absurd.

I see the same problem in CS and engineering - people who are under the incredibly false presumption that just by finishing the degree that they are employable. They're only more employable right now because of the gigantic shortage of qualified coders, but this situation won't last forever.

roel_v3• 16 years ago

"This means we need: basic programming (using FOSS) for everyone, teach stats before, teach FabLab tech, teach media literacy and research at a young age, show them the vast amount of resources at their disposal."

And then what? Let's say 5% of people now are in tech (just a guess, maybe a bit too much). Let's say we're short on people in tech by 100% (we're not, but let's say so). That would mean the tech sector could employ 10% of the population. What's the rest going to do? What good will it do when the janitors and assembly line workers have memorized a hello world in Python?

jimbokun• 16 years ago

"In order to combat such structural problems, the need for investment in education and jobs is clear."

Um, didn't they say just before this that 50% of Bachelor's graduates cannot find jobs requiring that degree? So how is funding even more Bachelor's degrees going to help in the current environment?

sanswork• 16 years ago

There is more to education than Bachelor degrees. Investment in the trades and advertising them as legitimate and respectful career paths is one path that could use more funding. Too many people push for a BA due to external pressures saying you need a university degree to be considered a success today.

meric• 16 years ago

I should be careful when I say this (but I'm not so take it with a grain of salt and don't be offended.) The crash in the housing market is definitely a good thing for young people. Here in Australia the prices of houses are getting so expensive I don't think I'll ever buy one at this price, ever; It'd just mean mortgaging myself to the hilt just to make some baby boomer rich enough to retire comfortably. A housing market with house prices kept high artificially is called robbing the next generation.

joshes• 16 years ago

A similarly potentially offensive remark that I feel is possibly in the minds of many Generation Y-er's right now:

The over-indulgent, hypocritical, self-entitled remnants of the Baby Boomers have done a great deal to derail the future success of this generation. Of course each individual must be valued in and of his/herself, but the generation as a whole has been siphoning economic resources to extend an entitled life well into their elderly years. They came to an understanding at an early age that they will always be wealthy and affluent and when that starts to slip away they, as a generation, decide that they are going to get what they want, everyone else be damned.

This mindset is currently ravaging the potential of the youth.

There, I got that off of my chest (fingers).

kmfrk• 16 years ago

Exactly. We are our parents' children.

dasil0032• 16 years ago

Well I live in America, and at 32 I suppose I'm more gen x than gen y, and to me the offensive thing is how much the government has bent over and used my tax dollars to prop up the housing market, even though the whole thing was based on people buying houses with loans they couldn't afford. The constant specter of "falling home values" makes me sick, since it essentially means that I can't afford to buy a home so that people who already did buy homes they couldn't afford get to keep them.

This type of mentality is why the US will lose to China. The government and Wall Street only care about how the numbers look on paper. As markets evolve and become more and more sophisticated, there is an increasing disconnect with what these numbers actually mean for public prosperity.

roel_v3• 16 years ago

"This type of mentality is why the US will lose to China. The government and Wall Street only care about how the numbers look on paper."

I was with you on the first paragraph, but this I have to LOL at. Have a look into China's property market if you have a spare hour somewhere. It's in a lot worse shape than the US one is, except that the bubble hasn't burst yet. House prices have gone up 100's of % (yes, that's two 0's, and it's not a typo) over the last few years basically because Chinese have little to no other options available to them to store value/wealth in. There are whole cities that lay empty and whose owners only bought the real estate for 'investment' purposes, forced government lending is being misappropriated for unproductive real estate development, insolvent loans are kept on their feet by the government by rolling them over. Taxi drivers and maids own two or three apartments - and all over the place, in tier one Beijing and Shanghai but also tier two like Kunming, I mean this is not just some localized big city phenomenon (Kunming is still huge by my standards, but well ;) )

The bursting of the Chinese bubble is going to hit China like a sledge hammer, and I'm curious to see what their response is going to be. One way or the other, it's going to affect the West in a major way, so I'm really hoping for a soft landing, but we'll just have to wait and see.

robryan• 16 years ago

I see it as an opportunity, a generation ago here in Australia it seemed the standard thing to do was to save up, go buy a house somewhere and settle down there for a long period of time. Given how much harder that is to do now it encourages you to see more of the world, live in different places get a better experience.

One of the problems in Australia is that a high immigration level keeps the market "bubble" going, makes the rental market hell to though :/

jakarta2• 16 years ago

Some of these unemployed liberal arts majors can be really frustrating to me. A few months back, I was talking to an old roommate of mine, who graduated 1.5 years ago with a BA in PHL and a foreign language (3.9 GPA), who has not had any luck finding a job.

So now he basically sits around surfing the internet all day and looking at foreign films.

3 months ago, I told him I would help him by getting him the right materials he would need so that he could pick up some design skills, since he seemed really interested in graphic design. Initially, he seemed interested, but then he refused because he didn't like the idea of using pirated materials such as a copy of Photoshop or Lynda tutorials. At the same time though, he refused to pay for anything that would actually teach him what he needed to know.

I just don't understand how someone can drift sideways like that for so long. The guy is not picking up any new skills or making any real progression in his life. The other day he complained because he thinks all the clerical jobs he is applying for are automatically going to women. It's like he makes up excuses to cover up for his own laziness.

ronnier• 16 years ago

>I just don't understand how someone can drift sideways like that for so long.

Because someone else is taking care of him (parents, the government, etc...)

Alex39172• 16 years ago

Not necessarily. For example 60% of Americans have at least one chronic illness, and those often necessitate taking large amounts of time doing relatively little. Furthermore the average chronic illness takes 7 years to diagnose, closer to 10 if you don't count the blatantly easy to spot ones, so most of these people are getting either no treatment or else the wrong treatment.

jon_hendry5• 16 years ago

It's not clear that a self-trained design novice would have much more luck finding work, unless he turns out to have a natural genius at it.

He'd be competing for work against experienced designers, and against newly-graduated design students.

sudont• 16 years ago

I've seen novices do amazing design work. (Usually they go on to a portfolio school after working for a few year or building a studio, though.)

Practice and good taste is pretty much the only things in design. Low-end design is pretty much just keeping up with the lowest common denominator in design style, anybody moderately trained--or self trained--can do it.

jakarta2• 16 years ago

It depends I think. At the very least, it would give him the ability to add a new skill to his resume which would be pretty useful. In some of these low level assistant jobs, they list photoshop knowledge as something that would be beneficial. A lot of entry level marketing jobs also list it, without requiring a formal marketing degree.

At the same time though, for instance, he told me that he is very interested in trying to find some foreign policy-related job where he could leverage his language skills. So I asked him why not start a blog where he offered commentary on events occurring in that region -- but again here, he expressed a lack of any real motivation in actually getting the blog up and running and doing posts on it.

It's just very difficult for me to empathize with someone like that.

Tamerlin• 16 years ago

He'd have a lot more luck with a portfolio than without. You don't really have any sort of a shot at getting hired for most creative jobs without a portfolio.

patrickgzill• 16 years ago

Student loans are not able to be discharged in bankruptcy, is that right? Assuming so, what will be the likely result if the current situation keeps up for say 5 years - no job means no payments on the student loans, and at even a low rate of interest, not making payments on the loan for 5 years will greatly increase the amount due.

Some amount of defaults/resetting will be likely - the question is, who will take the haircut when the loans are not repaid?

jon_hendry5• 16 years ago

The government, because't the loans are likely underwritten by the government.

pzxc• 16 years ago

You mean the citizens, because the government doesn't have any money of its own.

alexwestholm• 16 years ago

Is it really that astonishing, given that kids are all but pushed through 'til they get "their" BA? Degrees are used as a quick proxy for minimum competency, right? Well, if our highschools act as little more than babysitting systems that push kids through no matter what (qualification to say this: I date a public highschool teacher in Maryland, which is supposedly the best public school system in the country. Consequently, I see it first-hand.), HS diplomas will be rendered irrelevant.

This, in turn, means that college degrees become the base level qualification required for a showing of minimum competency. Compare the ability of a recent college graduate to secure employment with that of a high school graduate in the 1970s, and I'd bet they're not far off...

jon_hendry5• 16 years ago

The 1970s high school grad likely had it better, as there were more decent-paying factory jobs then.

elptacek• 16 years ago

"Even with good credentials, it is difficult for young people to find work and keep themselves afloat."

I would like to see this statement better qualified. Of the dozens of people I've worked with over the years, I can think of exactly three who had good credentials out of college. Of those three, I know for a fact that at least one had good credentials going in.

Conversely, some industries are still healthy and hiring. But it seems that training and qualification often lag demand. I remember trying to peddle my (albeit infant) UNIX skills in 1993 (also an economic recession). It took me a while to get myself into the a geographic location with sufficient demand for my skills. After which, I had zero trouble paying the monthly on my loans. Fast forward to 2003, and the systems administrations market is glutted with a bunch of fresh, young faces who've installed Ubuntu a few times and are willing to work 80+ hours a week for 30K a year. That was my clue that it was time to move on. One of them, anyway.

Kinda comes across as "F--- you, Jack, I got mine," I guess. But I don't like this sort of doom and gloom pity party.

knieveltech• 16 years ago

You might come across as indifferent to others but I choose to interpret your post as an straightforward reminder that for most of us resume pips don't mean shit. A degree's nice, internships are cute, but with or without them you've got to hustle to make it.

Ten years ago I was intermittently working in the trades between bouts of pizza delivery and crashing unemployed on a friend's couch. I get paid mostly to write open source plugins for web CMS's these days. Occasionally I consult if the project's interesting. I've got a decent house and an incredible wife. My change of fortune is utterly unremarkable. No luck involved, just 10 years of hustling, looking for the next angle, working on my skills and networking.

arghnoname• 16 years ago

I agree with the sentiment that doing well today requires a level of vigilance and a careful eye on the employment market. The specific job function you mention is an example where the bulk of the employment market was created, promising, and then turned into a low-paying glut in a 10-20 year time frame.

But hey, if you pay attention you can see these things coming, so it's okay right?

Maybe, but it is worth remembering that the old unionized economy provided people with greater career stability. I wouldn't personally want to do the same thing for my whole career, but having been in the workforce I've seen lots of relatively capable web dev's and the like who are going to be up shit creek the next time a shift comes.

It is sad to say, but constant effort toward re-invention and education is a rarity in our society. I think as a society we need to figure out how much of this is reasonable to expect from the average person and accordingly make sure that kids learn of this expectation from a young age. I think it is fairly obvious that having to learn a whole new field every year is too much, but where is the line?

cjy• 16 years ago

Problem: No one is hiring people with degrees Proposed Solution: Spend more money on education so that more people have degrees.

How does this make any sense? Shifting supply to the right will only reduce the equilibrium wage.

jon_hendry5• 16 years ago

Alternately, the solution might be to spend money on education so that the same people have more degrees.

Of course, when they get their second, or third, and still can't find work...

richcollins• 16 years ago

Author's problem description: Students went too far into debt getting an education that didn't lead to jobs

Author's solution: Invest more in the same education system

jwhitlark• 16 years ago

If you aren't, (or worse, can't even imagine), doing something without being paid, people won't want to pay you to do it unless it's a real shitty job. People call this "passion"; I call it being what you say you are. Otherwise, you're just phoning it in.

yason• 16 years ago

And who says there actually is genuine need for such masses of employees? Many say that there ought to be, or that they wish there were, but that isn't the same.

nestlequ1k• 16 years ago

The authors are so brainwashed by the system, they don't even know that the policies they advocate for are the ones bringing the economy down. They recommend more government investment in education, and a massive push for government funded "Green Jobs". This seems ludicrous as government jobs tend not to go to young people.

How about using scaling government back a bit to encourage a better business climate? Look at the policy differences between Texas and California. It's no surprise where the jobs migrate to.

Government needs to step back temporarily and let business flourish. A lower corporate income tax and tax breaks for early stage startup investments seem like it would go way farther than a huge push to add more government employees.

Hoff• 16 years ago

When government is in ascendence, the results are unstable.

When commercial interests are in ascendence, the results are equally unstable.

Neither lower taxes nor more regulations are a solution.

Nor higher taxes, nor less regulations.

And for those that hadn't noticed, government did step back from its designated regulatory roles, and we then saw the largest economic crash in a half century, we saw lies and fraud, profits from the increasing privatization of two wars, and (what should be distressing to any capitalist) socialized losses.

Reprehensible numbers of (legal) techniques for bypassing taxes, including the so-called "Double Irish" of recent reports.

And what has been one of the largest transfers of wealth seen in the US. (Which seems good if you're among the rich, until you realize you might not have an economy nor enough potential customers.)

The numbers of corporate leaches is as troubling as the numbers of folks claimed to be government leaches; commercial organizations that are increasingly extractive, rather than productive.

As a startup, I want a level business playing field. As part of that, I want cogent and adaptive regulation. And I don't choose to operate a business in those regions that are increasingly or entirely commercially-focused; that have ineffective or failing governments.

As with all things, balance. Less government is as bad as more government. But that's just not a good sound bite.

anamax2• 16 years ago

> And for those that hadn't noticed, government did step back from its designated regulatory roles,

In what universe is pushing mortgages "stepping back from regulation"?

Regulation is systemic risk.

phamilton• 16 years ago

Not to boast, but merely to inform.

Technical degrees (like engineering) don't have problems like this. I'm a Junior with ample internship offers for next summer, and my friends who are seniors all have job offers coming in. Last I checked our school was ranked in the 80s nationally, so it's not like we are MIT or Stanford.

How Are the Kids? Unemployed, Underwater, and Sinking

Related Stories