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The Youth Unemployment Bomb

businessweek.com

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Re: The Youth Unemployment Bomb

#11

Post by _delirium »

bioh42_2 wrote: post #10
_delirium wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Relatedly: some days I wonder if the single most effective form of unemployment relief would be teaching people that sending out resumes is for suckers.) The welfare-reform efforts of the past 15-20 years in most western countries have tended to do exactly the opposite, oddly enough. Out of a worry that people were just receiving benefits without really looking for work, you must now demonstrate that you're actively…

John Maynard Keynes did suggest welfare should be employing people to do things, even pointless things like building giant structures and them demolishing them again. It seems silly, but if we truly recognize that long term unemployment has a horrible way of killing one's ability hold a job, then Keynes idea is rather practical. The government not as welfare but simply as employers of last resort. Much like the Fed i…

Hmm interesting; I vaguely remember that, but had forgotten about the concept and term. Looks like it's still a fairly active idea being debated by economists, though not so much by politicians: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22employer+of+last+reso...

Re: The Youth Unemployment Bomb

#12

Post by wisty »

I've spoken to a few Chinese about this, where manual workers get more than uni grads (though not as much as successful business owners). Chinese really value education (in the high culture sense), and education (in the sense of meaningless test scores), money, and status. Until a few years ago, degrees were a ticket to riches. Now, they just mean you are overqualified for higher-paying jobs. Their feelings about it tend to be extremely complicated.

Re: The Youth Unemployment Bomb

#13

Post by _delirium »

Tycho wrote: post #5

Luckily the soil is fertile: All over the world, the hittistes and shabab atileen, NEETs and freeters and boomerang kids are hungry for a chance to thrive. Hmm, but how hungry? Compared to say people who came of age in the 40s or 50s? I'm not sure hungry is the right word. Restless maybe. Peckish.

The Americans at least that I know who came of age in the 50s as anything close to middle-class weren't very hungry at all. They lived in a world of corporate jobs for life, defined-benefit pensions, comprehensive employer-provided health-care with no deductibles/copays/exclusions, low unemployment, etc. Even blue-collar workers had quite strong unions, high pay, and great pensions/healthcare in the 50s.

Granted, if you meant coming of age in 1947 in Poland, that'd be another matter.

Re: The Youth Unemployment Bomb

#14

Post by marquis »

bioh42_2 wrote: post #10
_delirium wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Relatedly: some days I wonder if the single most effective form of unemployment relief would be teaching people that sending out resumes is for suckers.) The welfare-reform efforts of the past 15-20 years in most western countries have tended to do exactly the opposite, oddly enough. Out of a worry that people were just receiving benefits without really looking for work, you must now demonstrate that you're actively…

John Maynard Keynes did suggest welfare should be employing people to do things, even pointless things like building giant structures and them demolishing them again. It seems silly, but if we truly recognize that long term unemployment has a horrible way of killing one's ability hold a job, then Keynes idea is rather practical. The government not as welfare but simply as employers of last resort. Much like the Fed i…

You would think that all a government has to do is supply assistance to trades people to hire/train apprentices. I had a cousin go into the Navy just to learn a trade which upset me, as in previous decades he could have learnt the same trade by entering an apprenticeship. I belive some countries like Austria still support these programs, I have friends whose teenage boys left school early but were able to enter a subsidised apprenticeship rather than drop out and become unemployable.

Re: The Youth Unemployment Bomb

#15

Post by kiba »

It's time for youth to blaze new path to employment.

19 years old like me are trying to build a living on the internet by writing, programming, and selling ads. It's a lot of hard work to find clients and more scary when you're trying to deliver the work.

Re: The Youth Unemployment Bomb

#16

Post by patio11 »

vaksel wrote: post #8
patio11 wrote: post #2

I'm most worried not for the numbers as for the corrosive effect long periods of unemployment have on employability. You lose the simple habits which are required for lots of gainful employment, such as "getting up before 9 AM consistently" and "working mostly non-stop for 8 hours a day". I see this in a lot of these articles where folks will, e.g., claim they applied for 15 jobs in 3 weeks. At some point the new nor…

there aren't that many new jobs added to all the jobs sites every day, so if you limit yourself just to sending resumes within the closest 100 miles, 15 minutes a day can be as much as you can actually spend. and yes sending resumes isn't as productive as having connections, but a lot of people just don't have that many connections that they can tap to get them a job

So make connections. People with day jobs manage to do this, too: imagine how easy it is with lots of free time.

Re: The Youth Unemployment Bomb

#17

Post by roel_v »

vaksel wrote: post #8
patio11 wrote: post #2

I'm most worried not for the numbers as for the corrosive effect long periods of unemployment have on employability. You lose the simple habits which are required for lots of gainful employment, such as "getting up before 9 AM consistently" and "working mostly non-stop for 8 hours a day". I see this in a lot of these articles where folks will, e.g., claim they applied for 15 jobs in 3 weeks. At some point the new nor…

there aren't that many new jobs added to all the jobs sites every day, so if you limit yourself just to sending resumes within the closest 100 miles, 15 minutes a day can be as much as you can actually spend. and yes sending resumes isn't as productive as having connections, but a lot of people just don't have that many connections that they can tap to get them a job

Re: #1, great! That means you have 7 hours and 45 minutes left each day to browse the Yellow Pages for companies that employ people in your line of work, look up their websites for job ads, find out who their HR managers are and call them to see if there are non-advertised job openings, participate in online forums where there are people who work in companies you want to work and who could be looking for people, etc. etc. The whole point is that just sending out some resumes each day is the wrong approach to finding a job.

Re: The Youth Unemployment Bomb

#18

Post by kjhgfdfgh »

bambax wrote: post #9

> But the failure to launch has serious consequences for society—as Egypt's Mubarak and Tunisia's overthrown President, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, discovered. Mmm, what? Don't make it sound like overturning dictators is a bad thing, dude. Maybe it's much better for "society" to have unemployed young people with not only the courage to fight for freedom but also nothing better to do with their time, than to have people…

The trouble is that they might get confused between overthrowing our stalwart allies in the war against terrorism like Mubarek and start thinking that there is no real difference between a dictator for life and a government that relects the same group of millionaire business leaders every year or one where the same bunch of toffs from the same few fancy schools get to be in charge.

Re: The Youth Unemployment Bomb

#19

Post by Alex3917 »

bioh42_2 wrote: post #10
_delirium wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Relatedly: some days I wonder if the single most effective form of unemployment relief would be teaching people that sending out resumes is for suckers.) The welfare-reform efforts of the past 15-20 years in most western countries have tended to do exactly the opposite, oddly enough. Out of a worry that people were just receiving benefits without really looking for work, you must now demonstrate that you're actively…

John Maynard Keynes did suggest welfare should be employing people to do things, even pointless things like building giant structures and them demolishing them again. It seems silly, but if we truly recognize that long term unemployment has a horrible way of killing one's ability hold a job, then Keynes idea is rather practical. The government not as welfare but simply as employers of last resort. Much like the Fed i…

"John Maynard Keynes did suggest welfare should be employing people to do things, even pointless things like building giant structures and them demolishing them again."

In his lifetime though we already did this. If you were too poor to get by then you could go live at the town farm where you would receive public assistance in exchange for working.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poorhouse

Re: The Youth Unemployment Bomb

#20

Post by bsaunder »

kiba wrote: post #15

It's time for youth to blaze new path to employment. 19 years old like me are trying to build a living on the internet by writing, programming, and selling ads. It's a lot of hard work to find clients and more scary when you're trying to deliver the work.

Buy an Arduino and start building robots. IMHO, there's a long, rewarding career there.
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