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I find it hard to believe that no one in lower Manhattan had offered a more compelling offer over 8 years of time. Is your resume making it out there?
I dont live in Manhattan, and I do not have enough value for anyone to move me there or be compelled to even bother interviewing me as an out of state candidate, although, at one point in time I did submit a swath of resumes up there and got 0 responses, which wasnt surprising.
There are few real entry level jobs left in America in any field. I graduated college two years ago with a degree in graphic design. After going to 7+ plus interviews, I soon found out that employers were going with seasoned career veterans with years of work experience. I had a good internship under my belt prior to graduation. As a result of my tough job search, I got creative. I started putting up ad's on craigslist for cheap or even free web design/development services. In effect, I have had a handful of steady web design clients for the past year or so. The downfall is that I have been paid little to nothing for my countless hours of work. I had a job interview for a job in my field for the first time in a year last week. The job was at an IT talent placement agency where IT people are hooked up with multiple different companies in the area. They told me to wait a few weeks while they try to find a good fit for me. I really hope that this job opportunity works out. I have had my hopes crushed in every other job interview/opportunity in my field.
I am lucky that I have zero student loan debt because my childless aunt, who is a doctor, paid for my education in full. I am also lucky that I also am able to live with my mother, although finances are running low. But how is a fresh grad expected to survive these days? Not everyone can afford to work for free for a year or two simply to gain work experience. It also doesn't help that many recent college grads who do end up getting work in their field end up only making $10 an hour. And this is a common wage for majors all across the board. This is a nightmare when compounded with student loan debt and a rising cost of living. Also, you will be competing with dozens to hundreds, or maybe even thousands, of other people when trying to land any job let alone a college degree job these days.
I am not lazy. I applied to jobs everywhere. I am used to working crap low-status jobs my whole life and was not adverse to working those types of jobs. Even a job as a janitor requires at least one year previous work experience. Millions of college grads are being set up to fail these days.
First, hats off to your aunt for paying for your education. My mother also paid for my degree out of pocket (with some loans). Second, you are actually in a good field and I heard that Los Angeles is always looking for good graphic artists. I would suggest building a website and then looking for clients using SEO marketing techniques (classified ads, email marketing, cold-calling). I own an online writing business and it took me 4 years to learn SEO, however, if you read up on SEO e-books and take classes, you could learn a whole lot quicker. If you do enough of this all at once (cold calling at least 200 clients per day), someone will bite back...even if it is one person who agrees to work with you....it is still worth it. Yes, it can be tedious and exhausting, but in 2012, that is the nature of the beast. Make sure you stand FIRM on your prices and rates. If you give someone an inch, they will take 2 miles.
It's not a businesses job to provide anyone with training or experience. As long as they can hire lines of unemployed experienced people, they will. As long as a business pays their taxes, they don't owe anybody anything. It's the colleges, vocation school's, and K-12 school's job to to provide skills and knowledge that will help folks get entry level jobs in their chosen fields. Try blaming them instead.
For what an average college charges per semester, I think students and parents are getting ripped off. I don't know many people going to votech route anymore... Americans on average do look down on much of that work, but I think that is starting to change a bit. K-12 has been in decay for decades. Kids used to come out with a good handle on mathematics, and now many think math is hard and don't bother to learn or get better. It's pretty sad when K-12 grads aren't even qualified for basic entry level jobs.
I agree with you about the school system sucking (k-12). These new kids (generation X) can't even read now-in-days. I don't believe people should waste their time going in debt just to attend a 4 year university....and your not even sure your going to get a job out of it. I STILL see people returning to school, even though they have a degree in a "good field", hoping that will beef up their resume and land a job. smh...just wasting MORE money and going deeper into debt.
This is where our economy is headed in about 5-10 years:
1) Generation X will be unqualified (thanks to the U.S. for failing the education system) for jobs that are NEEDED: brain surgeons, physicians, dentists, heart specialists, etc. These jobs will be outsourced to people overseas who have work visa's and/or permits. That is actually already happening.
2) "Regular" blue-collar jobs will be outsourced or replaced with technology/machines or given to immigrants who are willing to work for $4/hr.
What happens to us Native-born Americans who actually have a skilled trade or degree? We are getting pushed further and further down the totem-pole.
Now as far as employers not being responsible for training their employees or providing education; while this statement is true, it still would be BENEFICIAL for them to train their staff (whether they have experience or not). These employers are hiring in people with Doctorate and Master's degrees to do remedial jobs such as being an administrative assistant or grocery bagging. How long do you think that person with the PH.D is going to stay working with that employer? As soon as they find something better, they are out of there. So now, the employer has to go through the process of looking for another candidate to fill the job...that's just more work on their part. I would think it would be more beneficial for them to choose a candidate who isn't over-qualified and provide training so they can have a good running team. I guess not?
You're talking more about Generation Y. The older members of Generation X are approaching 50 [some maybe actually already be in their 50s depending on how you measure it. A lot of them are well established now depending on how their careers went during the 90s-00s.
I wish the employers I were looking at would be interested in hiring me with my Master's degree....have an interview next week and I'm probably going to have to go through the whole thing again to try and explain that my graduate degree doesn't mean I'm going to quit at the first opportunity. About the only place I've seen where my degree is seen as an asset is with federal jobs.
The school system is a mixed bag. We have some good schools some bad it has always been that way. We try to educate everyone the handicapped kid the poor kid the gang kid. Thus everyone gets a shot at an education in the US. Thus it drives our numbers down makes things look worse then they are. Japan doctors their numbers to make them look better. In fact most of the nations ranked above us do this. Case and point India only 12% of the population goes to high school. The other 88% get little or no education. They are outsourcing high end white collar work IT engineering R&D why? Lower wages engineer in India 15 to 25k US engineer 80k to 100k. The US has qualified workers. However business no longer wants to pay US wages so we are being replaced. Sometimes by visa workers sometimes they just send our whole job overseas. They use technology to get rid of our jobs or do more with less. Interns part time temps were on a race to the bottom in term of wages. So we can make every kid a master in rocket sciences it will not matter much. The goal of global business is to drive wages down. And they will find someone to do your job most likely for 20 cents on the dollar.
What I dislike about the American job market these days is that there's not much diversity, there seem to be a handful of skillsets and paths that are marketable, and everyone else has to hope they can find some kind of "survival job." It seems like in the past there was more room for different types of people with various skills. Or maybe I'm just romanticizing "good old days" that never were.
No I think your right their was much more diversity in jobs and skillsets. You had alot more options and paths. People could have a whole rang of skills and make a living wage. You now have a handful of marketable skillsets. Everybody else is getting survival jobs with not much pay. Not everybody is going to be a doctor or the next Bill Gates. You can not put 15 million unemployed and 15 to 25 million underemployed in a handful of marketable skillsets. Their is not enough room for all of them.
We are in the middle of what will be a long term change. Less and less pay and benefits more education for the the jobs out there. It will be a major paradigm shift for everyone. At the end of this road most jobs will not pay a living wage. The reason the government keeps adding unemployment and food stamps is simple. They know the jobs are not there and are not coming back. They just do not want social unrest. If they would have run with 26 weeks for everyone in the end of 2007. Lots of people would have lost hope. People without hope can be dangerous. So give them a little check feed them. But make sure they stay busy apply for jobs go to school retrain for jobs that are not there but keep them busy.
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