I don't understand the 17 to 24 age range for the college degree statistic. Isn't the percentage for anyone under 21 practically zero? Seems like that would be skewing the statistic pretty dramatically.
It’s a Tough Job Market for the Young Without College Degrees
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Re: It’s a Tough Job Market for the Young Without College Degrees
#12Was it ever a good job market for the young without college degrees?
Yes. 20 years ago if you had a car & could show up for work on time, and had a decent work ethic you were more or less guaranteed a job of some kind that could be converted into a career. The trades, manufacturing, agriculture, and even programming jobs were available without a degree provided you could prove your competence in an interview.
Re: It’s a Tough Job Market for the Young Without College Degrees
#13Earlier 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…
> 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.
Or there are aren't enough jobs? What are you going to do? Will good jobs into existence? That's not going to happen.
> however we do know (and mostly agree) that a shrinking workforce will not be able to sustain a BI.
Completely wrong. We already harvest enough food to feed everyone. We're well on our way to 100% clean, renewable energy. We're already well on our way to self-driving electric cars. The rest? We're on our way to automating that as well (doctors and lawyers first, the most expensive skillsets, and then quickly down from there).
Basic Income is easy when automation and clean energy are doing the heavy lifting. I don't need to take from you to give to someone else because what you offer (your labor) would no longer have value.
Re: It’s a Tough Job Market for the Young Without College Degrees
#14It's a tough job market for the young with college degrees, too. So it's really just a tough job market for the young.
The job market isn't all sunshine and roses for the 40 and up crowd either. Mostly the market just sucks.
Re: It’s a Tough Job Market for the Young Without College Degrees
#15> Among 17- to 24-year-olds, just over 10 percent have completed college or achieved an advanced degree.
This seems like a weird statistic to highlight. Even if everyone were going to and completing college, wouldn't you expect that most of this group (eg those under about 22) to have not yet completed their degree?
Re: It’s a Tough Job Market for the Young Without College Degrees
#16The higher the minimum wage gets, the harder it'll be for those with little or no skills to get a job.
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 coming in at $10.00 (soon to coast up to $15.00 per hour in the next few years).
So no, the purchasing power of minimum wage is not getting lower, quite the opposite.
Re: It’s a Tough Job Market for the Young Without College Degrees
#17Was it ever a good job market for the young without college degrees?
When you could walk off the street(with no Highschool diploma) into a Manufacturing job with good pay, benefits, etc.
And if they mistreated you, you could leave and go to another Factory in-town that did treat you well. So they tried to retain employees by treating them well.
Versus today, where if you can manage to find a Manufacturing job you're under the thumb of the bosses. Because they know you have a mortgage, a family, and other expenses and that you _need_ the job. And they know you can't just walk down the street to another factory because it's not there anymore.
The thing thrown around is that a College Degree is the equivalent of an Highschool Degree 20-30 years ago when finding a job.
Re: It’s a Tough Job Market for the Young Without College Degrees
#18For another perspective, Mike Rowe (of "Dirty Jobs" fame) has a foundation to promote blue collar jobs. They even provide scholarships for training in a trade: http://profoundlydisconnected.com/
It seems like a great idea to me.
Re: It’s a Tough Job Market for the Young Without College Degrees
#19The higher the minimum wage gets, the harder it'll be for those with little or no skills to get a job.
Data from countries with a high minimum wage show that it's not difficult for people with little or no skills to get a job. Not only that, but they also have a living wage.
Re: It’s a Tough Job Market for the Young Without College Degrees
#20Earlier 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…
There simply aren't enough jobs to go around and automation is wiping out entire career tracks faster than they could possibly be replaced. Example: in the area I grew up in if you weren't headed off to college and didn't want to join the military you always had the option of working on a pulp wood crew. The work was back-breaking, the pay wasn't great, but you could get by and turnover was so high that if you stuck it out for a few years you'd end up running your own crew. Fast forward a couple decades and the work of 60 men with chainsaws, trucks, and manning equipment at the lumber yard has been replaced by three or four heavy equipment operators, a truck driver, and a couple of engineers at the sawmill that monitor the line for faults. That's work that isn't coming back and nothing new has popped up to replace it.