The world needs at least 600M new jobs in the next decade for young people • Hacker News Board

Re: The world needs at least 600M new jobs in the next decade for young people

#91

Post by theworstshill » Tue, Oct 13, 2015, 6:38 PM UTC

As difficult as it would be to find money for it - I would propose a one time entrepreneurship grant to all college graduates equal to an average yearly salary in the profession (this is an approximation and experts should figure out what variables should adjust for best amount). That would allow several things to happen: 1. New graduates with a strong drive for entrepreneurship can start working on their ideas right away and do not have to spent several years working for corporations, picking up anti-patterns. 2. New graduates who are unable to find professional work can have a cushion while they search, and can potentially become lesser partners to people in the first category.

Jobs and careers are created by businesses, so the more small-medium size businesses there are, places that are still flexible in their mindset - the more work there will be.

Re: The world needs at least 600M new jobs in the next decade for young people

#92

Post by cryoshon » Tue, Oct 13, 2015, 6:38 PM UTC

6stringmerc wrote: post #46

fecak wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recruiter and resume-writer-on-the-side here, and it's become so easy to apply for jobs that most people put zero effort into anything but pressing send and shotgunning a resume to hundreds of companies. If there was even a small cost (time or money) to applying, you can be sure that resumes and cover letters would be much more common and of higher quality. I'm not suggesting that we charge applicants, but years ago…

Flip side: After spending a lot of time in the process, realizing that prospective employers give an extremely low effort to respond to candidates - no matter how much effort put into a cover letter, resume grooming, or discussion of why the role might be a fit - it's disheartening. Auto-declines are the norm. Posting jobs for legal reasons when there's already an internal candidate in mind is also undisclosed. Betwe…

The dreaded internal candidate situation is a waste of everyone's time. They already know who is going to be hired, yet collectively everyone has to come together to interview you anyway.

Then there's the rejection, if they even send one.

Re: The world needs at least 600M new jobs in the next decade for young people

#93

Post by ghaff » Tue, Oct 13, 2015, 6:38 PM UTC

tracker1 wrote: post #86

Kalium wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Job seekers are much better served spending an hour sending 10 focused applications than spending that same hour to send 100 sanitized applications. This is the theory, yes. In practice, that 10x level of effort is not matched by a 10x increase in the number of interested responses or a 10x increase in response rate. Diminishing returns sets in quickly. You wind up with more interested responses by shutgunning your…

That's part of the problem... you need a good resume to start with... many don't even take the time to work on that.

Yep. Even though it's true that people will mostly end up just skimming the resume, errors or just general slapdash are huge red flags. I'm not even a particular believer in customizing resumes (unless you're looking at genuinely different types of jobs) so it's really worth the time to get it just right.

Re: The world needs at least 600M new jobs in the next decade for young people

#94

Post by lujim » Tue, Oct 13, 2015, 6:38 PM UTC

astrodust wrote: post #49

thieving_magpie wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so easy! Why has no one thought of this? All we need to do is convince every government in the world to undertake dramatic changes to their economic and labor structure.

We lived for at least fifty thousand years without any money at all, for around three thousand with some form of money, and the last two hundred years with the idea of hourly wages and bills and rent. It's entirely possible we'll find a better way to do this. Maybe we'll have to "undertake dramatic changes" to avoid an even bigger disaster.

Life before money was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short". In fact I wouldn't choose to live anytime before the last 100 or 200 years. 1950 or later would have been my preference had I been given a choice. For how much we all like to armchair quarterback our current system (yes.. capitalism), it's easy to forget how bad 99.9 percent of the human experience on this planet would have sucked comparatively. That's not to say let's quit trying to fix things, but take a deep breath and look around. Things are pretty good. There is an unbelievably high probability that you and all your children live to old age. You won't have to be too cold, too warm, or too hungry during your stay. Not bad.

Re: The world needs at least 600M new jobs in the next decade for young people

#95

Post by tribune » Tue, Oct 13, 2015, 6:39 PM UTC

maresca wrote: post #3

Student loan debt surpassed credit card and auto loan debt in the US last year. Many college grads graduate with large sums of debt and can't find relevant jobs. Since student loan debt isn't forgivable, it'll be interesting to see the effect of this over the next decade. I have a hunch that the next big market crash will be caused by student loan debt.

Not to discount the severity of the student loan problem, but the market is really not large enough to cause the next big crash. For some perspective, pre-crisis mortgage debt was almost two-thirds of GDP whereas student loans are still a much smaller portion. Mortgages on hugely inflated home prices also sucked up a huge portion of incomes in 2007. Add in the systemic infection of credit default swaps and junk mortgage-backed securities on Wall Street and you had the Crash. Hopefully we'll wisen up well before student loans get to that point.

Re: The world needs at least 600M new jobs in the next decade for young people

#96

Post by nilkn » Tue, Oct 13, 2015, 6:39 PM UTC

morgante wrote: post #79

> people 15 to 29 years old are at least twice as likely as adults to be unemployed. Today I learned that 28-year-olds aren't adults.

I'm curious if that sentence is itself an explanation for the perception that a 28 year old might not be an adult.

In other words, at least in American culture, adulthood is strongly tied with stable employment. If the 15 - 29 age bracket in general does not enjoy stable employment, that could itself be responsible for creating the perception that members of this bracket are not adults.

Re: The world needs at least 600M new jobs in the next decade for young people

#97

Post by icelancer » Tue, Oct 13, 2015, 6:39 PM UTC

downandout wrote: post #82

Most of the comments here focus on how people aren't trying hard enough to get jobs. This article indicates that the jobs don't exist and that the problem is likely to get far worse. You can try as hard as you want to get a job - if no one is hiring, you aren't going to get one. The reality is that as time goes on, the world's needs can and will be met by fewer and fewer people. This should be a good thing, but it wo…

> Most of the comments here focus on how people aren't trying hard enough to get jobs. This article indicates that the jobs don't exist and that the problem is likely to get far worse.

The reality is that BOTH are true.

There is no law stating that each generation of humans should have it easier and with more resources available to them. My generation is facing this crisis, and the default response is to complain. Which is fine for a few minutes or days, it's good to vent. But at the end of the day, that won't change anything. It's time to get to work, even if "work" is 20-30% (random number) tougher than what our parents dealt with. Assigning blame doesn't solve anything.

That being said, I definitely agree some sort of Basic Income strategy will be necessary going forward. Perhaps soon.

Re: The world needs at least 600M new jobs in the next decade for young people

#98

Post by fluxquanta » Tue, Oct 13, 2015, 6:39 PM UTC

morgante wrote: post #84

lisper wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I can't think of a way that the bubble could actually pop. Or what it would look like if it did. It would look like a social movement. It would look like tens of millions of young people realizing that they have fallen under the yoke of life-long indentured servitude to the older generation, and either 1) getting organized enough to get the law changed or, 2) saying "fuck it, I've got nothing left to lose" and…

> It would look like tens of millions of young people realizing that they have fallen under the yoke of life-long indentured servitude to the older generation Nobody forced them to take out loans. There are lots of options which don't involve crushing debt.

When I was graduating high school student loan debt was something I was encouraged to take on, despite my on uneasiness about doing so. My teachers, my family, everyone whose opinion I was supposed to respect told me that student loan debt was normal and even valuable (to build credit).

So while no, I wasn't FORCED to take out loans, the most trustworthy people in my life taught me that loans were okay, and never presented me with another option. Luckily this paradigm is showing signs of a shift, but for a lot people it's still considered "normal".

Re: The world needs at least 600M new jobs in the next decade for young people

#99

Post by Nicholas_C » Tue, Oct 13, 2015, 6:39 PM UTC

morgante wrote: post #84

lisper wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I can't think of a way that the bubble could actually pop. Or what it would look like if it did. It would look like a social movement. It would look like tens of millions of young people realizing that they have fallen under the yoke of life-long indentured servitude to the older generation, and either 1) getting organized enough to get the law changed or, 2) saying "fuck it, I've got nothing left to lose" and…

> It would look like tens of millions of young people realizing that they have fallen under the yoke of life-long indentured servitude to the older generation Nobody forced them to take out loans. There are lots of options which don't involve crushing debt.

>Nobody forced them to take out loans.

No, but many people feel misled about the post-graduation prospects or are unhappy with their life options and feel trapped in a career they hate and can't take a break from or change due to debt.

Re: The world needs at least 600M new jobs in the next decade for young people

#100

Post by henrikschroder » Tue, Oct 13, 2015, 6:40 PM UTC

thieving_magpie wrote: post #24

NoGravitas wrote: post #6

> The world needs at least 600 million new jobs in the next decade for young people Or, perhaps, the world needs to stop coupling basic human needs for subsistence and dignity to wage labour, and find some better way of doing things.

It's so easy! Why has no one thought of this? All we need to do is convince every government in the world to undertake dramatic changes to their economic and labor structure.

It's not easy, it's very, very hard, but every journey has a beginning.

Some places have already started experimenting with basic income. Other places are experimenting with reducing the 8-hour work week. Those responses are much better than the knee-jerk response of this article, i.e. that we need jobs jobs jobs, and that we will always need jobs jobs jobs.