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

The higher the minimum wage gets, the harder it'll be for those with little or no skills to get a job.

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

Curiously, the breakdown of degrees by demographic doesn't include employment. The article seems to make the case that people should seek institutional education. Broadly, that makes sense, there are pretty traditional(ancient) precedents for apprenticeships and there are newer alternatives in the education system. Vocational schools were mentioned, and are also a good way to learn a skill.

The weird thing about the article, or at least, with a title like It's a Tough Job Market for the Young Without Degrees is it seems to imply that the job market is tough for people without degrees, but is otherwise healthy. That doesn't seem correct, and there does not seem to be any information in the article indicating that Vynny Brown's (interviewed in the article) 20 year old peers are faring much better than he is. So, the article isn't incorrect in some points it makes like retraining the workforce is important, university education isn't the only type of education, ect, however it doesn't really explain the meta-problem.

The job market is tough because there is increased outsourcing in physical/human-centric work and simultaneously(even in manufacturing) improved technology, step-changes in process engineering and the electronic automation of simple tasks have removed a lot of jobs from the economy and for some that do exists, significantly limited the perceived value society has for them, limiting earning potetnial.

Strong case could be made for 1946.

> 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 getting neither a good education, nor are being trained for highly skilled jobs. Folks want to have a cake, and eat it too.

This dwells into the highly debated economics of a BI economy, however we do know (and mostly agree) that a shrinking workforce will not be able to sustain a BI. Rather, we need that workforce to evolve into higher level jobs, but this requires even more education and/or highly skilled job training.