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The official jobless rate is very low with help wanted signs everywhere. There are lots of jobs but few career type positions for college graduates out there it seems. If the nearly 1000 people on my Facebook friend collection, most in their late 20s, only a handful are working in a job that requires a college degree even though the vast majority of my friends have a BA, BS or MBA.
Most of my friends, family, neighbors and friendly acquaintances are working but underemployed. Lots of my female friends are working in clerical jobs and most of my college educated male friends are working in retail or restaurants. They all applied for jobs connected with their majors but got nowhere.
So next time you read the jobless rate is low, think about the countless people who are working but are highly educated but making only $10 an hour.
Pushing everyone into college just creates credential inflation and lowers wages. A lot of people fail to choose a major that leads directly into a profession like engineering, nursing, computer science, dentistry, etc. Before you take out loans to study gender studies, or communications, you have to ask yourself what high paying professions you will earn with those majors. If you can't figure that out, then you should choose another option.
Too many people buy into the story that any college degree is worth it.
It's not.
In fact it can be a detriment. I think the worst case is a person loaded down with college debt who never graduated.
In many cases employers use a degree as a filter to determine cognitive ability. For example, Wall Street Bankers hire engineers who made it through MIT. These guys may never do engineering but they don't have to. Their degree just demonstrates that they are smart enough to learn anything.
For most people, getting your BA in communications from State U and graduating with a "C" average is useless. That person likely will end up as a bartender.
Underemployment is often discussed in this forum. It is a reflection, to a great extent, of the fact that we have long passed an inflection point: Globalization and automation are now devaluing the value of work faster than they are creating the new jobs necessary to forestall that devaluing. The Millennials, collectively, will have far fewer opportunities to go beyond basic survival than the prior generations had.
What's worse, we have raised a generation too heavily loaded with self-centered children. Consequently, there are far too many people who think their of own good fortune as something that they worked for and earned instead of recognizing the reality -- that much of their own good fortune is attributable to what they were blessed with due to the circumstances of their birth, their race, their gender, their parents' socio-economic status, and sheer luck. These people seem mentally incapable of, as OP said, "think[ing] about the countless people". They seemingly couldn't care less about others. As a result, we end up with a set of self-motivated naysayers who obstruct efforts to rectify the inequity reflected in underemployment, and more generally act priggish in the face of consideration of the actual causes for these societal ills.
Operationally, for those facing the challenge that underemployment represents, how best to approach it?
I haven't see anyone present a reasonable answer. When claimed "answers" have been given, they have typically reflected little more than the aforementioned priggishness. However, there are steps folks can take to improve their chances.
As some have alluded to, above, the first step is to detach yourself from expectations that traditional paths to comfort, i.e., costly higher education, are invariably going to show ROI long-term. That will be true for some, and perhaps even on average, but a much higher percentage than before will find that old maxim disproved.
While it is not a proven approach, and surely won't be a viable, or even remotely palatable, option for everyone, many of those facing this reality are looking to minimalism as part of the answer. They adopt an attitude of detachment from the need for material possessions, large living spaces, and conformance with traditional requirements of society that have, built within them, costs for things which detachment frees them of the need. Inherent in that change in mind-set is a recalibration of what is important in life, and an aim to accomplish each of those characteristics in the most efficient manner possible. That may involve investing what little they have in what some might consider a luxury, but something that these minimalists use to satisfy myriad needs that the rest of us satisfy other ways. Meanwhile, it reflexively involves doing without much of what the rest of us consider essential.
For those who insist on pursuing the "American dream" that their parents pursued, it is essential to recognize that that choice is a choice to take on a much greater risk than that with which their parents were confronted.
More young people should have chosen trades. Unfortunately, many trades today pay less than they should due to illegal immigration, greed, and a host of other factors. In short, it's not a perfect world, but it never was. All we can do is march forward like last previous generations and fight the good fight.
So while politicians crow about the record low U3 unemployment rate, saying "let me keep enriching myself and my cronies at your expense" - the reality is that the job market is horrible.
If I'm being totally honest with myself, 90% of my peers (I'm 34 btw) who hold bachelors in whatever field of study besides medicine and engineering who are making at least $50,000/yr. ended up in their respected position by connections more so than pure luck.
High schools push college which is a bad idea unless you're going into a field you know is in high demand. This is where parents should be researching and suggesting fields for their children... a graphic arts degree isn't going to cut it. That or go into a trade like electrician, plumber, welder, etc.
The real trick since the globalists are devaluing all living wage work including the trades as another person had mentioned, is to live cheap and stay out of significant debt. Buy a house that is 3X your household income and not 5X, buy used cars under $20K in price and don't spend $50K on a new vehicle that will depreciate $10K when you drive it off the lot, use cricket wireless and used phones instead of an unlimited postpaid plan with the latest $1000 phone, don't go out to eat all the time, etc. Middle class people should not be chasing upper class people for a real estate purchase.. if you have to move to find affordable housing, do what you gotta do.
The top 5% have become so ungodly wealthy that the bottom 80-85% shouldn't even try to live in an area where they all congregate, say NYC and LA and even places like Denver have priced out the middle class. Why am I out in eastern South Dakota? Because I make $23/hour and pay no state income tax, that's why. Flyover country is where you'll find the highest standard of living for the wages, particularly the midwest.... South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio...
Last edited by sholomar; 06-17-2018 at 03:28 PM..
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