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It’s a Tough Job Market for the Young Without College Degrees

nytimes.com

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Re: It’s a Tough Job Market for the Young Without College Degrees

#31

Post by bpchaps »

In interviews, the second most common question I get asked is, "Why don't you have a degree?" followed by "Are you planning on going back?". More than often, the questions have a strong No True Scotsman feeling to them. My experience is solid and my personal projects are fun and reflect passion. Yet, not having a degree is a detriment to me somehow still. Why? I can't think of a single good reason why so many employers would think that way.

Hell, friends and family still try to get me to go back to school, too. I've yet to find a good way to explain why school isn't useful and an enormous waste of time for me. It's always, always followed up with the argument that I have less job opportunities, which is fine. I wouldn't want to work at a company that would limit me like that, anyway.

If it happens to me with a good background and strong skills set, then it happens to others, but worse - especially if you're just starting out.

Re: It’s a Tough Job Market for the Young Without College Degrees

#32

Post by Retric »

Alupis wrote: post #16
ahoy wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a goofy thing to think. Effective minimum wage(that is, min. wage adjusted for inflation) has been slowly declining for decades. Minimum wage isn't getting higher, it's getting slowly lower.

> Effective minimum wage(that is, min. wage adjusted for inflation) has been slowly declining for decades. Minimum wage isn't getting higher, it's getting slowly lower. This is simply not true. Minimum wage was introduced in 1938, and was for a whopping $0.25 per hour. This is about $4.22 per hour in 2016 dollars. Federal minimum wage is currently at $7.25. Some states have even higher minimum wages, with California…

In 1969 the minimum wage was 1.4$/hour which works out to $10.34 in 2012 dollars. You can go back to 1956 and see eq $8.29 or forward to 1972 @ eq $9.10 vs now at less than 7.25$ in 2012 dollars. More recently it peaked in 2009 and has fallen every year after that currently it's down 15%.

PS: In fact you need to go back to 1949 to find a worse year than 2006.

Re: It’s a Tough Job Market for the Young Without College Degrees

#33

Post by deciplex »

Alupis wrote: post #10
deciplex wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right. Minimum wage is a hack from a previous era. We should do away with it and replace it with basic income.

> We should do away with it and replace it with basic income So instead of encouraging (or mandating?) young folks get trained or educated (or both!), we simply give them money for existing? I don't see how that solves the bigger issue. We, as a society, are very good at band-aid solutions (like minimum wage from the get-go). We're not good at solving the real hard problems. The real hard problem here is folks are ge…

> So instead of encouraging (or mandating?) young folks get trained or educated (or both!), we simply give them money for existing? I don't see how that solves the bigger issue.

It solves the issue with minimum wage pointed out by jayess, at least. Employers would be able to hire people for whatever wage they like, even pennies a day if they wanted to (or financials forced them to). Meanwhile, the people working for very low wages or unable to find work at all, would be guaranteed enough to live on regardless.

That seems to be a goal of economic policy these days. I don't see anyone arguing that we must - by dint of constrained resources - simply have some people live below the subsistence level (which is another way of saying we must leave some people to die). If that is your position then please show us that we don't have the resources we need to keep our current population alive.

Because otherwise, one way or another, we ought to be providing people with food and housing - simply for existing. We've tried government housing and food stamps and soup kitchens: government housing is a disaster, food stamps seem nearly equivalent to giving people cash anyway, and soup kitchens probably can't scale. We've tried minimum wage and that did mostly work while the supply (and type) of labor matched the supply (and type) of jobs available, but it's not clear that will be the case going forward. And, even if it is the case going forward, basic income might still work better, anyway.

I'm all for educating people, or training them, etc. However it is a fact that some people will fall through the cracks, and it is a fact that not everyone can be trained or educated into a vocation that society actually needs people for. For these cases basic income seems like the most efficient means of keeping them alive, fed, and sheltered. I am open to other solutions.

Re: It’s a Tough Job Market for the Young Without College Degrees

#34

Post by ghaff »

rs999gti wrote: post #22
jupiter90000 wrote: post #5

Was it ever a good job market for the young without college degrees?

Yes there are plenty of jobs in the trades. From the BLS: http://www.explorethetrades.org/why-choose-the-trades/ Plenty of growth in HVAC, electrician, and plumbing fields. And even in a downturn these jobs are still needed and cannot be outsourced.

Anecdote: I've been trying to get a bathroom refurb done for about 6 months now and haven't been able to get a plumber. Certainly, there's a degree of boom or bust with the trades but in a growth area such as where I live, the market is tight.

Re: It’s a Tough Job Market for the Young Without College Degrees

#35

Post by HappyTypist »

bpchaps wrote: post #31

In interviews, the second most common question I get asked is, "Why don't you have a degree?" followed by "Are you planning on going back?". More than often, the questions have a strong No True Scotsman feeling to them. My experience is solid and my personal projects are fun and reflect passion. Yet, not having a degree is a detriment to me somehow still. Why? I can't think of a single good reason why so many employe…

That depends on where you apply. I have never been asked about my education and I only have around 5 years experience.

Re: It’s a Tough Job Market for the Young Without College Degrees

#36

Post by nxzero »

Measuring if someone is able to get a job based on if they have a degree is a meaningless, since generally speaking the fact the someone went to college means that they push harder on average to get stuff done than those that don't get a degree.

Only way to tell what the difference is if applicants and employers were not allowed to ask or require a degree, but instead were only able to test knowledge.

Re: It’s a Tough Job Market for the Young Without College Degrees

#38

Post by bpchaps »

HappyTypist wrote: post #35
bpchaps wrote: post #31

In interviews, the second most common question I get asked is, "Why don't you have a degree?" followed by "Are you planning on going back?". More than often, the questions have a strong No True Scotsman feeling to them. My experience is solid and my personal projects are fun and reflect passion. Yet, not having a degree is a detriment to me somehow still. Why? I can't think of a single good reason why so many employe…

That depends on where you apply. I have never been asked about my education and I only have around 5 years experience.

I apply at a lot of places and have a lot of interviews since I prefer to do contract work nowadays. For a while, a lot of that included practice interviews for places I wasn't really interested in, but wanted to get a better feel for the job market. Interest vs a lack of interest doesn't seem to change the education question sets.

But that's not really the point. The point is that surface level things trump all else. Companies in all flavors - big, small, startup, medium, etc - all do it.

Re: It’s a Tough Job Market for the Young Without College Degrees

#39

Post by mc32 »

0max wrote: post #29

What America needs are institutions similar to that of the apprenticeship programs of Western Europe. I came out of a one year job training program operating out of a non-profit with corporate partners (similar to the way it works in parts of the EU) that consists of college credit classes and industry experience. This lowers the barrier to entry for most young adults (like myself) to get into the job market and jump…

I agree. There were many kids in secondary school who would typically have the attitude of "when am I ever going to use this when I get a job" so they only half heartedly put any effort into school --more or less thinking they'd get jobs through friends, friends'' moms and dads, etc.

So, agreed, not everyone has the aptitude and need some vocational funnel. The problem with a place like the US (but not in Japan or China or to a lesser Germany) is that people will begin to ask why so many kids of this or that group are overrepresented in a vocational tract --given that disposition may be determined early on to be effective.

Still worth a try. And, to add, a system to help long-time workers transition into new jobs --through some kind of (un)employment insurance or mechanism with the same effect.

Re: It’s a Tough Job Market for the Young Without College Degrees

#40

Post by Chronic51 »

tensafefrogs wrote: post #27
Alupis wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We should do away with it and replace it with basic income So instead of encouraging (or mandating?) young folks get trained or educated (or both!), we simply give them money for existing? I don't see how that solves the bigger issue. We, as a society, are very good at band-aid solutions (like minimum wage from the get-go). We're not good at solving the real hard problems. The real hard problem here is folks are ge…

> So instead of encouraging (or mandating?) young folks get trained or educated (or both!), we simply give them money for existing? I don't see how that solves the bigger issue. No, you give them money to pay rent and eat while they go to school if they want to, or learn whatever new skills they might be interested in instead of having to wait tables. Plenty of people would love to go to school but can't afford to on…

Why do they love to go to school? To learn? No - they can do that with the Internet today. They want a higher paying job, nothing else.
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