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Explore how people in the U.S. aged 18 to 34 have changed over four decades

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Re: Explore how people in the U.S. aged 18 to 34 have changed over four decades

#41

Post by cryoshon »

Relative to the year 2000 is the part that scares me the most. It seems that largely things have changed for the worse over the last decade.

For Massachusetts:

Lower employment by an entire %4. Lower wages by 4k/year (%10 less!!!), adjusted for inflation. More people living with parents, fewer people living alone (read: piled into group houses with their former college roommates/friends). More people in poverty. More people never married (can't afford a real wedding, or ring). More people with higher education, likely not being put to use. Student loan debt and credit card debt aren't even listed on here as statistics.

The bleakest part is that the damage has mostly already been done to this cohort of people who I am a part of. The low wages now cripple wage growth in the future, which is bound to be bearish for people who aren't already rich. The race to the bottom is a real thing.

Thankfully, many people are starting to refer to our period of time as "late capitalism" for increasingly obvious reasons. Things will have to bottom out and improve at some point.

Re: Explore how people in the U.S. aged 18 to 34 have changed over four decades

#42

Post by tormeh »

disputin wrote: post #36
kaoD wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a cliché. EDIT (to elaborate): IMHO economy (like most things) is all about trade-offs. I know the states and bureaucracy are cumbersome, but they offload risk from individuals into society (which isn't always a bad thing). I respect your views on deregulation (and share them to some extent), but your phrase is really a cliché and does not address my comment (since deregulation is orthogonal to labor competition…

A cliché? Or general agreement? I thought people generally agreed that Spain has issues in that regard. "I know the states and bureaucracy..." I wasn't referring to states in general, you were talking about Spain, I was responding about Spain. I'm not a ranting libertarian, I'm aware of a state's role in society. Knee jerk pouncing on a cliché that wasn't here. we've been told over and over again that we have to stay…

The problem in Spain is that the government and its regulations are so bad, that the only way Spain can become competitive is if the government gets its act together. Until then (i.e. always) lower wages and longer hours will have to do.

Re: Explore how people in the U.S. aged 18 to 34 have changed over four decades

#43

Post by logicallee »

This is nice but I'm surprised at the bracket 18-34? (at least separating 18-24 and 25-34 would have been better.) The listed bracket 18-34 covers young adulthood where most eventual high earners would be earning near 0 in college, to late twenties with some people pursuing masters but most joining workforce, to mid-thirties with some people fully educated and having 10-12 years of experience in their field. (e.g. a programmer graduating at 24 and earning $90K ($120K bay area) by 34 is not in any way unusual, but here gets averaged with others, maybe including his future peer, who are just starting college and are showing very low earnings for a few years.)

Likewise, "living with a parent (18-34)"... "Bachelor's degree (18-34)"... Quite the bracket!

Re: Explore how people in the U.S. aged 18 to 34 have changed over four decades

#44

Post by kaoD »

disputin wrote: post #36
kaoD wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a cliché. EDIT (to elaborate): IMHO economy (like most things) is all about trade-offs. I know the states and bureaucracy are cumbersome, but they offload risk from individuals into society (which isn't always a bad thing). I respect your views on deregulation (and share them to some extent), but your phrase is really a cliché and does not address my comment (since deregulation is orthogonal to labor competition…

A cliché? Or general agreement? I thought people generally agreed that Spain has issues in that regard. "I know the states and bureaucracy..." I wasn't referring to states in general, you were talking about Spain, I was responding about Spain. I'm not a ranting libertarian, I'm aware of a state's role in society. Knee jerk pouncing on a cliché that wasn't here. we've been told over and over again that we have to stay…

I wouldn't say bureaucracy or the State is the problem in Spain, but the political caste (in both our traditional left and right-wing parties), rampant corruption and a general lack of faith in democracy (or, more specifically, in the currently available democratic instruments).

As far as I can tell we're not facing this problem alone, but we're pretty young as a democratic society and most of our politicians inherited their position or remained on it under an amnesty after Franco's dictatorship (hence the usage of "caste").

I think (though it's hard to analyze when you're involved in the situation) we're in the middle of a social and generational change. We've got daily news of corruption cases amongst the mainstream parties and people are really fed up. "Podemos" (literally "We can", a left-wing grassroots party) rose as an alternative to that political caste, and most surveys situate them as a heavy contender (if not winner) for the upcoming elections.

Not long ago you'd hear lots of people claim they were not interested in politics, so they were pretty much puppets in the hands of our politician's interests. Nowadays, thanks to the 15M movement and Podemos, there are political debates on Saturday night prime time. Politics are in vogue.

Perhaps that's the government competition you were talking about?

We'll see what happens.

Re: Explore how people in the U.S. aged 18 to 34 have changed over four decades

#45

Post by pcthrowaway »

hnriot wrote: post #10

I was surprised at the number who had a degree was less than the national average for California. I guess there's a lot of immigrant workers who don't achieve higher education levels which skews the perception living and working in the valley. States like Virginia and Kansas beat the national average, yet not california, that's really sad.

52% of San Franciscans aged 25+ have Bachelors degrees or higher, which is much better than the state average of 30.5%

Re: Explore how people in the U.S. aged 18 to 34 have changed over four decades

#47

Post by colmvp »

kilroy123 wrote: post #32

As a millennial these trends are frighting to see. It's frustrating when I chat with friends who are a few years older than me about this (mid 30s), and they blame all of this on millennials just being lazy. Or stupid, for picking bad degrees. I think the issues are larger and more systemic than that.

What we're experiencing in Canada is pretty similar to the U.S.

Perhaps your friends should listen to this specific podcast regarding 'lazy millenials': http://canadalandshow.com/podcast/geritocracy

Re: Explore how people in the U.S. aged 18 to 34 have changed over four decades

#48

Post by existencebox »

cryoshon wrote: post #41

Relative to the year 2000 is the part that scares me the most. It seems that largely things have changed for the worse over the last decade. For Massachusetts: Lower employment by an entire %4. Lower wages by 4k/year (%10 less!!!), adjusted for inflation. More people living with parents, fewer people living alone (read: piled into group houses with their former college roommates/friends). More people in poverty. More…

While I agree with your takeaway, I think you have to be careful which of those points you bucket under the same influence.

Take Marriage, for instance. There's a lot that suggests that the newer generations simply put less stead in traditional institutions; not as a sign of wealth. Anecdotally, I was "half engaged" ('we're going to get married eventually, right?' 'yup.') but sans the ring/formality part for nearly a decade before we started settling things down. It just doesn't have the same meaning to us as to my parents, and although I can say my financial future seems a lot less stable than my parents's at my age, despite a _better_ employment position, that's not why I've avoided the ring song and dance.

That turned into a bit of a ramble, but you get my gist, I hope. I think we'd agree that having a broader sampling of metrics (including more hand wavy sociological ones) that might try and explain not only the statistics but whether we should be trying to correlate them at all would be valuable.

Re: Explore how people in the U.S. aged 18 to 34 have changed over four decades

#49

Post by wavefunction »

kaoD wrote: post #18
tsunamifury wrote: post #5

These numbers are really grim, and considering the job market only gets more cruel a few years after the top end of this age bracket, it makes it hard for young people to have a lot of hope for the future. Granted, maybe some of them are reflective of age-agnostic trends but still! Start in higher debt then make less than ever! As a young person looking at these numbers I realize I am squandering my blessings as a hi…

Welcome to "staying competitive". Here at Spain (and generally Southern Europe) we've been told over and over again that we have to stay competitive, which is just an euphemism for working more and earning less (i.e. becoming Europe's China). In a globalized market with a (still) steadily growing population, competition is growing and therefore salaries are shrinking. It's happening in all industries (e.g. tech firms…

The wealthy in the United States have been extracting wealth from the middle-class and capturing more of the annually generated income for some time. This isn't about being competitive, it's about robber-barons actually robbing others through political capture.

Re: Explore how people in the U.S. aged 18 to 34 have changed over four decades

#50

Post by ProAm »

cryoshon wrote: post #41

Relative to the year 2000 is the part that scares me the most. It seems that largely things have changed for the worse over the last decade. For Massachusetts: Lower employment by an entire %4. Lower wages by 4k/year (%10 less!!!), adjusted for inflation. More people living with parents, fewer people living alone (read: piled into group houses with their former college roommates/friends). More people in poverty. More…

> More people never married (can't afford a real wedding, or ring).

You cannot leap to the conclusion that people are not getting married because they cannot afford it. I seriously doubt that is correlated (of course I have no proof either).

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