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The Youth Unemployment Bomb

businessweek.com

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Re: The Youth Unemployment Bomb

#121

Post by stcredzero »

Encosia wrote: post #76
pzxc wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never understood how being "overqualified" is a problem. No one says you have to list your degree or make mention of it. Just pretend you don't have one? What am I missing here? Are people too egotistical to accept a job at McDonald's when they have a degree? It has always been my opinion that any job is better than no job. If you need money, take what work you can. There's nothing that says you can't keep looki…

Being overqualified refers to employers turning applicants down, not job seekers considering themselves too good for the job. It doesn't make sense for an employer to spend the time/money to get you trained and productive if it's obvious that you're going to leave as soon as possible.

Pizza delivery guys with PhD's used to be common in Bloomington, Indiana in the US. I'm not sure if that's still true, but if I were an employer there, I'd try to find out if I already knew their thesis adviser in order to get some clue about how long they'd be sticking around and if they were about to get a grant that would let them stop working.

Re: The Youth Unemployment Bomb

#122

Post by stcredzero »

rdouble wrote: post #108
stevejohnson wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No other comment I have ever read on HN has made me as angry as this one. My last emotional response comment wasn't such a good idea, so I'll leave you to your bigotry.

Therapy can assist with relationship problems as well as anger management issues.

I'm about to avail myself of some cognitive behavioral therapy.

Re: The Youth Unemployment Bomb

#123

Post by Unseelie »

presidentender wrote: post #110
ylem wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a sister who is unemployed in California (Pasadena), so I will make a few anecdotal observations. She was an honors student in college and taught special ed for some years before moving on to manage some group homes for the mentally impaired. She then went into home health care and became unemployed when a job offer fell through. During this time (over 1 year), she has applied for many jobs (including an inter…

Alright, she was an honors student - what skills did she learn?

Presumably skills for nursing the mentally infirm, as the account of her employment after her education indicated. The statement that she was a honors student has nothing to do with her education, but is an expression that she's devoted to her tasks.

Re: The Youth Unemployment Bomb

#124

Post by Unseelie »

pmb wrote: post #106
rst wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about putting back together giant structures that are falling apart? Our infrastructure is rotting away --- that Minneapolis bridge collapse in 2007 was a bit of a wake-up call. There's no shortage of stuff in the United States that needs to get fixed.

You mean some sort of administration that would give people money to work on projects? Like a Work Projects Administration? Sorry, Roosevelt did that, but nowadays I am pretty sure it would be called socialism.

So...when the government pays people to do things, that's socialism?

I seriously doubt that's how a governmental program training and employing the youth to repair the infrastructure would be viewed, and especially not as proposed to the more socialistic policy of welfare.

Re: The Youth Unemployment Bomb

#126

Post by Tichy »

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…

If he truly said that, I am even less inclined than before to see the merit of his theories. Not that I know them in detail, but this makes me not want to know them.

If people are still able and looking for jobs, their time is better spent looking for jobs than doing pointless tasks. This can be a real problem - writing applications (if that is your approach) takes a lot of time, and if you do 14 hours of taxi driving per day, there is less time for finding that job that would suit you better.

Then there are the people on welfare who are really sick or disabled - why should they have to build giant structures, and how?

Lastly there might be people exploiting the system, but I suspect they are not that many. At least were I live, being on welfare is actually work, anyway, because you have to wade through tons of bureaucracy to get it and stay on it.

Re: The Youth Unemployment Bomb

#127

Post by Unseelie »

patio11 wrote: post #34
vaksel wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

easier said than done you have to think outside the programmer mindset where there are lots of opportunities to meet people. For other careers, the only way to meet people in your industry is through a job or a conference.

I keep forgetting that the thriving tech scene in rural Japan skews my perspective so much. Seriously, though: if this is true, shouldn't programmers be basically incapable of dating (skew in industry, barriers to meeting outside)? It can't be harder to meet people than to date people. They go to places and do things. Well known places, most of which are in the phone book, many of which are open to the public, etc. I…

To date people, unless you have the misfortune of being gay (only in the sense that it limits your pool), you've massive numbers of singles wandering around...not nearly so common are the people who are connections, and certianly not at the bottom.

Re: The Youth Unemployment Bomb

#128

Post by lukeschlather »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #87
scotty79 wrote: post #54

Our wealth has grown exponentially in recent decades but poor people still work 9 to 5 or more. Wealth is manufactured by machines not people. Some generation has to close the gap between how wealthy society is and how much average member of society has to work for same basic needs. You can't make basic necessities cost always nearly same amount of work because that work thanks to technology is producing more and mor…

Our wealth has grown exponentially in recent decades but poor people still work 9 to 5 or more. This is a myth. The poor work very little - their full time labor force participation rate is only 10% or so (this includes both the employed and unemployed). 80% of the poor don't work at all. http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswp2007.pdf (Before you criticize this statistic as being too simple, go see this thread where I answer m…

You were called out for it in the previous thread, and yet you're still including children in your full-time labor force participation rate.

And as near as I can tell you've conjured your "80% of the poor don't work at all." figure out of thin air. You don't adequately address the objections in the linked thread, and you're making the same oversimplifications.

Re: The Youth Unemployment Bomb

#129

Post by Tichy »

scotty79 wrote: post #54

Our wealth has grown exponentially in recent decades but poor people still work 9 to 5 or more. Wealth is manufactured by machines not people. Some generation has to close the gap between how wealthy society is and how much average member of society has to work for same basic needs. You can't make basic necessities cost always nearly same amount of work because that work thanks to technology is producing more and mor…

I expect in the future a lot of people will be employed in computer games. It would not be so different from working for Disney World.

Not sure how many support people Blizzard has, but it is a shame that doing real business is usually outlawed in most MMORPGs.

Re: The Youth Unemployment Bomb

#130

Post by klenwell »

vaksel wrote: post #104
bartonfink wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know of one person who got a job that way. He was pretty damned good, and had the benefit that he was 18 at the time and didn't know that going door to door "never works."

was it for a real job or for a minimum wage type job(McDonalds etc)

It was the DARPA research lab next to the McDonald's.
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