Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 491 posts

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

#331

Post by matwood »

relevanttoad wrote: post #64
Retra wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the problems with the this process is that the information that would drive behavior-driven feedback is not usually correlated with the behaviors you use to interact with the environment. You apply for a bunch of jobs, maybe you'll hear nothing back, or when you do, it feels random and disjointed. I have a nice job, but I can't tell you that it's a result of hard work more than it is luck. I can tell you that…

>> You apply for a bunch of jobs, maybe you'll hear nothing back, or when you do, it feels random and disjointed. Then apply for places where you actually see yourself wanting to work; even if it's McDonalds, people need to eat, a career in the food service industry might be rewarding if that's what you find you like doing. Or join the military, every country needs a strong military. Or join a non-profit, build a res…

> Or join the military, every country needs a strong military.

It's funny how looked down upon this is. If I said, hey come work for me for 4 years. During that time you will get paid, get lodging and likely do some traveling. Oh, and you'll learn some skills. If you want to go to college up front and be an MD for example, I'll go ahead and pay for that and you can work for me for 6 years after gaining valuable experience. If you don't go to college up front, then when you leave my job (you don't have to) I'll give you money for college.

Now, inevitably someone will say they don't want to be sent to a war zone. The % of the military that actually end up in a war zone is very small.

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

#332

Post by sprucely »

Meanwhile the more menial / labor-intensive jobs are being replaced by automation. I read somewhere that automation was supposed to be the great liberator, enabling an ever-increasing amount of leisure time. But at some point attitudes started shifting so that people must justify their existence by continuously working hard; and if things don't happen to work out for them, well they just weren't motivated enough. This attitude is apparent in our [US] welfare system which has a huge administrative overhead in place to prevent freeloading.

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

#333

Post by zygomega »

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…

A major fault line in the current economic system is the concept of 'right to work'. The current structure presumes that the right to receive a proportion of economic goods of a society should be strongly associated with employment. But with most jobs are already meaningless from the viewpoint of economic productivity, the 'right to work' ethic concentrates power in the hands of the managerial classes in charge of job placement, who are very good at inventing new ways to pretend that this is all economically beneficial.

The truly horrendous problem with all of this is that our standard of living is statistically quite high so the system is sustainable for a long while, until it eventually collapses under it's own weight of pointlessness.

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

#334

Post by verbin217 »

nostrademons wrote: post #263
roymurdock wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking for myself (as a 22 year-old recent graduate) - I was brought up to respect my elders and to consider society as a mostly-altruistic, benevolent mass of humanity with a conscience bent more towards justice and meritocracy than corruption and inequality. I believed that the older generation who shape and structure society through government, industry, and academia were doing their absolute best to set future…

You don't see the people who are doing much better than their parents. The more self-aware of them know that there is nothing good that comes out of drawing attention to their good fortune. The less self-aware just assume that's how it is for everybody and don't think it's remarkable.

> The more self-aware of them know that there is nothing good that comes out of drawing attention to their good fortune.

I'm part of this trend and I hate it. I have to be careful who I tell anything to. Many people dislike me for it. The world is so weird. I spend so much time pursuing utility via automation. It's so sad to see it mostly alienate people. Just as all of this stuff is becoming so easy and accessible. It has definitely crushed many childhood ideals. At a young age I observed a world in which people had to work too hard and couldn't focus on making good choices. I wanted them to have more time. Not less. It seems as if more and more people are entering a doom loop. Less aware. Less optimal. More time working. Less time learning. Less aware...

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

#335

Post by s73v3r »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #134
ap22213 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back around 2000, when I saw education costs rising (and was a big believer in market forces), I figured more educators would enter the market, and things would stabilize. It's been 15 years, and I haven't seen any new colleges or universities formed. What happened?

Udemy etc and the tutorial market are booming. Universities in countries with inflated fees and tuition loans are about to fall off a cliff. I'll be surprised if they're still around a generation from now. The Ivy League will survive because of social and political momentum. But colleges outside the prestige circuit are going to have real problems getting students for high-cost low-return education.

"Udemy etc and the tutorial market are booming."

Are they? Are significant amounts of people actually foregoing college to learn from them instead? And, more importantly, are they getting hired in good jobs in the field they're studying in?

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

#336

Post by Camillo »

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…

> The reality is that as time goes on, the world's needs can and will be met by fewer and fewer people.

This is true, but I don't think it accounts for most of the youth unemployment we have seen so far. The jobs did not go to robots in America, they went to workers in China.

To answer another common theme: we can complain about CEO pay, tax cuts, stagnant wages, etc., but the reason for the pure and simple lack of jobs is not any of those things, it's just that those jobs went elsewhere.

And of course that affects you even if you were not going to work in a factory, because now the guy who was going to do that is trying to get through college and get a white collar job, so he's competing with you.

In turn, that means that going to college is now the baseline. So, after getting more people to get into more debt to get more degrees, maybe you find that you still can't get a job.

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

#337

Post by s73v3r »

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.

Would be nice, but I'd like to come up with more realistic solutions to try first.

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

#338

Post by kazinator »

Swizec wrote: post #328
ChuckMcM wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that, in a nutshell, is the problem. We are the government, and if you choose not to help make it what you want, it gets made for you by people who don't appreciate your point of view. Look no further than the "hell no" Republican tea-party caucus in the US Congress for a really visible example of people making the government the way they want it made while we sit on the sidelines. You don't do it for the money,…

> You don't do it for the money That doesn't put food on the table or keep the lights on. Going into politics is very very high on the maslov hierarchy. But I'm sure my landlord will nod approvingly when I say "Oh, I'm not going to pay rent this month, I'm in politics you see. Changing the world. Don't got time for rent."

Also, the idealists who go into politics aren't necessary good for you and me. They tend to have one-track minds, focused on a small number of issues (sometimes just one).

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

#339

Post by msandford »

caskance wrote: post #250
msandford wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I'm not suggesting that the candidates are entirely innocent. But I think the companies share a bigger portion of the blame. If they didn't want to get a million responses they could do things to limit their responses to people who actually want the job like say not allowing people to apply online, or making people apply in person, or requiring a cover letter of a certain length, or whatever. But what has happen…

So are we back to blaming the internet and the modern interconnected society? I can accept that.

Yup, the future sucks and the past was better!

Seriously though, I don't blame the internet or modern interconnected society anywhere. I say that companies should shoulder a larger portion of the blame for creating perverse incentives. Other than that, I'm just trying to describe the world as I see it.

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

#340

Post by [deleted] »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #231
roymurdock wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm afraid I don't have the money to devote my life to politics and I'm much too idealistic to be a good politician. In any event, I've come to the conclusion that the best way to influence the system is to have a lot of money to throw around. Then you can hire a guy to go make speeches for you and spread your message, you can buy scientists to publish research that supports your agenda, you can buy lawyers to silenc…

And that, in a nutshell, is the problem. We are the government, and if you choose not to help make it what you want, it gets made for you by people who don't appreciate your point of view. Look no further than the "hell no" Republican tea-party caucus in the US Congress for a really visible example of people making the government the way they want it made while we sit on the sidelines. You don't do it for the money,…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN