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It's easier to shift the blame on the individual than it is to admit the whole system is broken and the middle class is a thing of the past, sold out in order to further enrich the upper echelon of society.
Notice how the goalposts are always moving?
"Just graduate high school, get a manufacturing job and start a family."
"Manufacturing is leaving the country, go to college, get any degree -- education is the most important thing"
"You can't find a job because you didn't get the right degree. Get a STEM degree"
"You got a degree in chemistry? No wonder you can't find a job! You need a chemical or petroleum engineering degree!"
"You're not putting that chemical engineering degree to use because you didn't go to the right school/get good enough grades/have enough internship experience. You should have been interning in middle school."
"A bachelors degree is the new high school diploma. Go get spend more time and money on another degree in a super niche field that may or may not exist when you graduate."
or
"Why go to college? Just move to North Dakota/learn how to code/learn welding" or some other form of trade worship
Actually I think it's easier to shift blame on the "system" rather than the individual because it allows people to avoid personal responsibility for their failures and instead blame some nebulous "system". Your rhetoric may have some truth to it but generally life is what you make of it.
Of course the goalposts are always moving. It's called change. It's been happening since the beginning of time. Not all change is good but without change there's no advancement. Would you rather have manufacturing stay in the US, and have consumers pay two month's salary for a refrigerator? It's each individual's responsibility to adjust with the changing environment. Believe it or not there are plenty of different ways to be successful in life. Life has never been easy, but you usually get what you put into it.
Here is an interesting site. It gives you incomes for all jobs and professions. The higher the salary, the more specific education and experience needed. It shows you what each job should have for median pay.
The problem so many young people have today in getting started in the work world, is they want mid career salaries, or median salary for all professions, and they were educated for a job that pays half of what they want to earn.
Customer service does require a certain personality. I didn't think I had it in me since early in my career I gave up working with people to be a computer programmer. At the time I was young and had little patience with anyone, then I stopped working for years to raise my kids and became somewhat isolated with just a couple friends for a social outlet. My kids grew up joking saying "mom hates people" which wasn't totally off base considering some of the people I knew. When I started my current job I wasn't sure how much interaction I was going to have with people but it ended up being quite a lot and my willingness to go the extra mile with a smile made people give me even more public responsibilities. Now I'm not always in the mood but I'm brilliant at chit chat and can fake it if I have to, but I can do my job duties in my sleep so I'm looking for mental stimulation and use whoever I come into contact with to get it from. And I've made it my job to make them happy. Apparently that's the secret to being good with people! LOL!
I don't know, but given my struggles, I would say she has undiagnosed ASD. I WANT to be a people person, and I actually like working with people, but, at least this was the case a few years ago, my working memory wouldn't keep up with the multi-tasking demands placed on it as a server at a restaurant. The cook made fun of me, subjected me to strong public humiliation, and accused me of being on drugs. It was really frustrating. When I got to college, I majored in math, because I intended to go into a STEM field. Well, I sucked at higher-level math and after failing too many courses, I needed to change my major or quit college. I changed to English, because it was easy. I double-majored in Education and could only find sub work after I graduated, but at least I didn't have to drop out of college. I mean, if you can't, literally are unable to, work menial jobs, you still have to do something.
I understand the lack of sympathy, but but irks me that back in the 70s and 80s, the rhetoric coming from teachers, guidance councelors, and parents was, "Just get a 4-year degree. All employers want to see is that you have the intelligence and drive to complete a degree." And for the job market in the mid-20th century, that was true.
So, a lot of Gen Xers and early Millennials went to college and studied something they were genuinely interested in only to find upon graduation that the middle class economy had contracted and moved to a specific skill-based job market. Even the market for professional degrees like education and law have been largely gutted.
If I were to give a young person advice today, I would say, go to trade school unless you want to study medicine or IT. Universities should really become techinical schools for training medical professionals and IT. Then maybe have separate business schools for those who want to become middle managers.
I don't agree with this, because there are opportunities elsewhere, and even the "worthless" degress teach life experience, which, for some of us, is very important. I learned so much when I pursued my English degree; it's probably one of the things that lead to my diagnosis. I learned that I didn't perceive things the way most people did, and that really helped. Had I been forced to crunch numbers and not examine my life and the lives of others, I would probably have carried the same frustration and had the same unanswered questions.
I agree with that. I also think something is wrong in our society today when people refer to 25 year olds as "kids". They aren't.
Have you read the research? Boomers are living to be older, and scientists have determined that the brain continues developing until about age 25, meaning technically twenty-five-year-olds are still adolescents! Using that definition, yes, they are still "kids." Plus, the people classifying them are possibly in their seventies, and eighties. If you were that old, a twenty-five-year-old would be like a kid, right?
But not because I think going to college or majoring in English is a waste of time.
However, it is a waste of time to spend 4 years and tens of thousands of dollars on a degree when you have no idea what you want to do and more importantly HAVE NO IDEA WHO YOU ARE.
Most 22 year olds have no idea what they truly value in life because their life has yet to start. The idea of going to college for four years before figuring that out is beyond idiotic, yet that's the norm in society.
As for OP's situation, I see Help Wanted signs up every single day and every day I pass by they are still up. The reason people cannot find job is because they think those jobs are beneath them. I know people who have fair to poor grasp of the English language and they are able to get jobs. So ... somebody who can write an eloquent blog should have no trouble finding a job.
No, that's not always the case. There are rare learning disabilities that target someone's ability to do what most of us would consider "common" work. For instance, a lot of the "lower-level" jobs require a certain kind of personality--"bubbly," "outgoing," "friendly"--combined with above-average multi-tasking skills. Well, put someone with ASD, ADHD, SPD, or anything like that into that situation, and they will fail miserably. These people HAVE to go to college to make themselves marketable enough to find a job that fits their skill set--minimal contact with people, structured environment, low multi-tasking, flexible employers, etc. It's much more difficult to find a job when you have to look for these elements, as most people are just looking for cheap, friendly, and competent labor. The only way to "win" if you find yourself in this situation is to make yourself so valuable to your employer that they're willing to overlook your faults and train you for what you know; that requires degrees, training, volunteer work, anything to make yourself look awesome to a potential boss. It also helps to go into fields that require an advanced degree so that the hiring pool is smaller.
FYI, a lot of millennials were diagnosed with mild autism, so that might actually be a reason some of us appear "unmotivated" and "lazy." Perhaps there's a higher proportion of us who know we lack "people skills" and know that we need to get into more specialized fields if we want employers to take us seriously? In generations past, people with these disabilities would have never had the opportunities we have.
Financial skills AND social skills should be part of the regular K-12 curriculum. I think they did all of us "generation tech" kids a disservice by just expecting us to "teach ourselves" the hidden curriculum that no one teaches, better known as "common sense" to the older generations. Look, "common sense" just isn't common, and it doesn't make us stupid. We've adjusted to a vastly different world and absorbed the skills we thought were required to function within its confines. Eventually, you start to filter out "background noise," and I don't think I should have to apologize or explain myself if our brains just did the logical thing and reached conclusions that are opposed to an arcane way of thinking we were never taught. That's kind of like training us in English and then telling us, knowing we have no prior language training, that "by the way, all of the jobs are in Chinese..." We were taught to function as digitally literate individuals in a quickly changing society, but too many of us weren't taught basic interviewing and interpersonal skills.
A lot of people treat long term employment as if there were some sort of "trick" to getting there. There is no trick. Ask yourself what do other people need that someone would be willing to pay to obtain. Then ask yourself how unique would someone need to be to be that supplier (unique is good). Now ask yourself if you can train yourself/be educated to be one of the few who can do that special thing. Set that as your goal--the training. While you are training keep your eyes open to recognize whether the situation still holds, that you are becoming one of those unique few (and the area is not saturated with too many specialists). Let people know what you are doing, find a mentor, you will be in demand.
For example, people need nurses, you can do well in the training, you are a studier, you are accepting of people of different cultures, economics, age, etc. Go for it.
For example you hate studying but you never met a piece of wood you couldn't manipulate. You can't sit still but you can become an apprentice carpenter as long as you keep moving and can observe others. Most people are not good carpenters. Become one.
For example you have three kids and can't afford childcare. Unlike many people you know, you have great attention for detail and understand chemical cleaning solutions and what they can and can't do. Lots of people love a clean house but have no time to keep theirs up. You are free 9 to 1pm, are trustworthy, knowledgeable, and not easily distracted. Start a cleaning business.
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Using that definition, yes, they are still "kids." Plus, the people classifying them are possibly in their seventies, and eighties. If you were that old, a twenty-five-year-old would be like a kid, right? 
