A Lament for the Class of 2010

[citizen snips]

A few weeks ago I ran into one of my son's oldest friends. He had attended an Ivy League school, studying drama and music, and was now back living at home. He is a smart, talented, enterprising young man and I have always liked him, in part because he engages with adults in a way many young men do not. (For example, he actually makes eye contact.) I asked him if he had found a job yet and he replied, a bit sheepishly, "Not exactly." He then explained that he was working as an intern at a street fair on the Lower East Side of New York City. An Ivy League education runs around $200,000, not counting meals and transportation. The internship paid about $250 a week. But presumably, it could lead to bigger things, like a full-time job at a street fair in New York. Even so, it did sound like my son's friend was ever so slightly underemployed.

Over the next few weeks, hundreds of thousands of Millennials will graduate from institutions of higher learning. They will celebrate for several days, perhaps several weeks. Then they will enter a labor force that neither wants nor needs them. They will enter an economy where roughly 17% of people aged 20 through 24 do not have a job, and where two million college graduates are unemployed. They will enter a world where they will compete tooth and nail for jobs as waitresses, pizza delivery men, file clerks, bouncers, trainee busboys, assistant baristas, interns at bodegas.

They will console themselves with the thought that all this is but a speed bump on the road to success, that their inability to find work in a field that is even vaguely related to the discipline they trained in is only a fleeting setback. They may even spell this out in detail on their Facebook pages, perhaps accompanying it with a pithy quote like "When you're going through Hell, keep on going." They will do this right after they have finished deleting the summer-year-abroad photo where they're shaking hands with Hugo Chavez. In asserting that the sun will soon break through the clouds, they will be echoing what college grads told themselves last year, and the year before. This is only a temporary reversal. Surely, IBM or the State Department or Morgan Stanley will eventually respond to that glittering resume. After all, every company worth its salt needs a few Gender Studies majors! The sun'll come out tomorrow. Tomorrow. Tomorrow.

'It's only a day away.

More sophisticated young people may already suspect otherwise. With the obvious exception of youngsters born during the Great Depression, no generation in American history faces more daunting obstacles. Economists theorize that this may be that very rarest of things—a generation that does not do as well financially as the generation that spawned it. Even the pasty-faced Pilgrim toddlers gamboling around Plymouth Rock in 1620 had better prospects than this one; at least the Massachusetts economy was still expanding back in the 17th century. And kids entering the work force after the Alamo or the Donner Pass Incident or the Crash of 1873 weren't saddled with the kind of debts kids tote around now. Back then, ordinary people didn't go to college. And back in those days, you could always pack up and move west, to California, let's say, where the streets were paved with gold. Now the streets aren't paved, period.

more...
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704250104575238692439240552.html?mod=WSJ_PersonalFinance_CareerJournal

[WCGreen]

1. People who spend $200k for an education in Drama and Music can

pretty much expect to be working way into their 40's to pay off their education.

It's was the same when I graduated college in 1984 and it would still be the same in 1994 or 2004...

[ProgressiveProfessor]

2. All of the students that I have been following have jobs in their fields

Then again, I am on the techie side of things.

[tcaudilllg]

3. WSJ is fear mongering.

Economy is already on the mend and they know it. They are just trying to create fear.

He needs to get up off the couch and get looking for work.

[Fruittree]

5. False. I also believe the economy is on the mend but

it isn't true that there are good jobs out there waiting for all college grads. We know several smart, talented kids who have nothing but coming back home waiting for them and it isn't for lack of looking. There just isn't a lot particularly for graduates in the humanities.

[Prometheus Bound]

4. Amen!

[starroute]

6. There are a bunch of cheap shots in this piece

Yeah, it admits that job prospects really suck for the latest batch of graduates. But it also works in remarks about gender studies and Hugo Chavez to imply subliminally that it's their own fault for pursuing trendy, left-ish interests instead of being practical and aiming at a slot with the military-industrial complex. Or whatever.

But college is not supposed to be a zero-tolerance mine field where you have to make the exactly right decision at every turn or wind up screwed for life. You're supposed to be able to make mistakes, fool around, and still catch up in the long run. That's how it used to be and it's how it ought to be for the sake of both the kids and the society as a whole.

What I've been picking up is that there are two sorts of employment paths for recent graduates, neither very promising in the long run. If they got general sorts of degrees, they're out there competing against not only either other but also unemployed 35 year olds with MBAs for the shrinking pool of entry level jobs. And if they got tech degrees, they're finding it easier to start off, but only for 10-15 years until their employer either outsources their department or simply dumps them in favor of a new graduate with up-to-the-minute skills and a lower salary.

Meanwhile, half the 20-somethings I know are working low-level jobs, while the other half are going back to get their master's, or at least take more courses, in the hopes that the jobs will be there afterward that aren't there now.

[bemildred]

7. So can we say that the "free market" is doing a shitty job of making jobs for these people?

Or is it all somebody else's fault?

[Doctor_J]

8. Soon will come the day tha DU is just another clearing house for RW BS

we've been getting daily doses of WSJ, as well as frequent snips from Reason Rag, Fox "News", NY Post, Washington Times (when his time comes, may Rev Moon burn in hell for eternity, in a seat right next to Rupert Murdoch). Hopefully we can get a specific forum for right-wing propaganda soon.