Millennial Men Leave Perplexing Hole in Hot U.S. Job Market • Hacker News Board

Re: Millennial Men Leave Perplexing Hole in Hot U.S. Job Market

#51

Post by lawn » Wed, Nov 07, 2018, 7:22 PM UTC

ben_jones wrote: post #49

ravenstine wrote: post #34

> Men -- long America’s economically privileged gender It depends on how you look at it. Don't get me wrong, men have had lots of privileges, but they have long been expected to work. Those social expectations are rapidly disappearing, and somewhat shifting to women, and we're seeing rates of depression and suicide rise for women in roughly the same time frame. Calling it privileged is a very one-sided way of looking…

I'm looking at a $400 bill after insurance for a 15 minute doctor's visit. Nothing fancy he took my blood pressure and listened to my lungs and sent me on my way. I'm fortunate that I can easily pay this, but what if I was living paycheck to paycheck? It would crush me. When wealth is so fleeting as to be taken away by such a minuscule stroke of bad luck, why would people bother chasing it? I'm literally going to hav…

There surely is a middle ground here between living paycheck to paycheck and not making work the most important thing in your life.

Re: Millennial Men Leave Perplexing Hole in Hot U.S. Job Market

#52

Post by seiferteric » Wed, Nov 07, 2018, 7:23 PM UTC

supertrope wrote: post #17

icedchai wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe men are smartening up. They don't want to be saddled with a divorce, alimony, child support, or several hundred thousand in college tuition costs down the road.

Both genders. Raising kids is expensive. Student loans are retarding marriages and house purchases.

Good point. I wonder how many people out there look at a $12/hour job and realize they can't afford to live off that after loan payments. Maybe they are holding out for something better, or perhaps are exasperated and given up?

Re: Millennial Men Leave Perplexing Hole in Hot U.S. Job Market

#53

Post by Buldak » Wed, Nov 07, 2018, 7:24 PM UTC

jimbokun wrote: post #47

athenot wrote: post #5

> Weary of long days earning minimum wage, he quit his job in a pizzeria in June. He wants new employment but won’t take a gig he’ll hate. So for now, the Pittsburgh native and father to young children is living with his mother and training to become an emergency medical technician, hoping to get on the ladder toward a better life. Perplexing? The opening of this article gives a pretty straightforward answer: people…

But why are women in the same age range employed at a higher rate than before the recession, but not the men?

The article does mention, "They hemorrhaged high-paying jobs after technology and globalization hit manufacturing and mining." Many jobs staffed predominantly by men (as opposed to jobs like nursing, say, staffed predominantly by women) never recovered after the recession.

Re: Millennial Men Leave Perplexing Hole in Hot U.S. Job Market

#54

Post by MIKarlsen » Wed, Nov 07, 2018, 7:25 PM UTC

k__ wrote: post #33

MIKarlsen wrote: post #19

"If you get to the point where you’re turning 30, you’ve never held a real job and you don’t have a college education, then it is very hard to recover at that point." I've raised this point to a fair few of my friends and colleagues recently. I think it is becoming increasingly hard to contribute to society, because everything is so gosh-darn technical. Companies _scream_ for developers - but not junior developers, o…

On the other hand, how many people can you train to become programmers?

Are you asking if it would be feasible for companies to take in well-educated people, and teaching them the programming/dev-craft?

I don't know. But right now, companies are trying to solve the problem in other ways, which is ultimately not addressing their core need.

I just feel like some sort of educational system (bootcamp'ish) would be able to make a good business case for most companies.

Re: Millennial Men Leave Perplexing Hole in Hot U.S. Job Market

#55

Post by jfk13 » Wed, Nov 07, 2018, 7:26 PM UTC

eloff wrote: post #39

sol_remmy wrote: post #3

I know a bunch of beautiful, accomplished women with great jobs who can't find good men to start a family with. Young mens' failure-to-launch is becoming a big problem....

I'm going to talk about some gender differences that are true in general, and I could back up with citations if I had the time. But remember everybody is their own special case - things that are true in general for a population don't necessarily describe individuals of that population. 1) Women tend to marry up. An accomplished woman with a great job wants a man with a better job. That shrinks the pool a lot for her!…

While I recognise a lot of truth in this, I don't think there's ever been a time when I'd have wanted to date or marry a woman 20 years my junior. I have some lovely friends in that range, but they're socio-culturally so different from me (as a reasonably successful, well-off middle-aged man) that it's hard to see them as partner material.

Re: Millennial Men Leave Perplexing Hole in Hot U.S. Job Market

#56

Post by throw_millenial » Wed, Nov 07, 2018, 7:26 PM UTC

People love to talk about privilege, but being a male millenial in 2018 is anything but that. The media says you're a sexual predator. They say you're toxically masculine. That is, the very hormones imbued within you are to blame for a host of problems. If you're white they say you are constantly oppressing people of color. If you're in tech, then you're worst kind of man possible - a tech bro.

Couple the prevailing sentiment with a change in the type of available jobs. Physically demanding work is less common now, and manufacturing, long a mainstay of male occupation, was moved overseas. Office work is more about people relationships, which generally favors women. Our education system is similarly biased against men these days.

I'm at the old end of the millenial generation, but if I was 25, I don't think I'd be too motivated either. I'm not surprised when these young men favor sitting in a basement playing video games over getting a job. Or watching porn instead of going after a girlfriend. The culture has shifted. For some people it's a huge win and there are a wealth of new opportunities - but it is a zero sum game, and now we're seeing the losers.

Re: Millennial Men Leave Perplexing Hole in Hot U.S. Job Market

#57

Post by dpeck » Wed, Nov 07, 2018, 7:26 PM UTC

RankingMember wrote: post #43

dpeck wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same definition as it's always had. Either bring in money, do a good job caring for the home & family, or some combination those two. No one wants a partner, regardless of gender, that doesn't contribute.

By this definition, the example millennial male who is studying to become an EMT is on track to contribute but doesn't qualify as a "good man". Seems a little short-sighted.

if he's not contributing to family life while he's studying then you're right, he's not. He may be aspiring to be a "good partner", but if he's _only_ working on bettering himself that is exactly what most people do not want in a partner.

Re: Millennial Men Leave Perplexing Hole in Hot U.S. Job Market

#58

Post by dleslie » Wed, Nov 07, 2018, 7:26 PM UTC

supertrope wrote: post #44

dleslie wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The angle here is that minimum wage does not offer sufficient flexibility and access to satisfactory growth opportunities. That's a _feature_ for employers, who do not desire turn-over and training costs, and an _anti-feature_ for employees, who desire a better life.

I don’t think employers cackle at the thought of employees being wage slaves. They are unwilling or think its impossible to offer a living wage so high turnover (e.g. 140% per annum) is just a cost they accept.

They aren't cackling like saturday morning cartoon villains; they're applying a rational choice to minimize operation costs.

This is less true the closer their personal connection to their employees is, I suspect; but many minimum wage employers have a bureaucratic buffer/barrier between the minimum wage employees and those making the decisions about operational costs.

Re: Millennial Men Leave Perplexing Hole in Hot U.S. Job Market

#59

Post by thrownthrow » Wed, Nov 07, 2018, 7:27 PM UTC

MIKarlsen wrote: post #19

"If you get to the point where you’re turning 30, you’ve never held a real job and you don’t have a college education, then it is very hard to recover at that point." I've raised this point to a fair few of my friends and colleagues recently. I think it is becoming increasingly hard to contribute to society, because everything is so gosh-darn technical. Companies _scream_ for developers - but not junior developers, o…

They stop screaming at 10+ years.

Re: Millennial Men Leave Perplexing Hole in Hot U.S. Job Market

#60

Post by ams6110 » Wed, Nov 07, 2018, 7:27 PM UTC

panarky wrote: post #42

It's not perplexing at all. People forget that the market for labor is just like other markets. If you're selling a thing and the market price is lower than the thing is worth, then you don't sell it. If the minimum wage kept up with the increase in worker productivity over the last 50 years, today's minimum wage would be about $19.50. So workers who refuse to take dead-end jobs are simply rational economic actors re…

> If employers have job openings they can't fill, while workers are idle because they won't work so cheap, then shouldn't the market-clearing wage increase? If not, what's preventing it?

Other workers will work cheap. See, it doesn't matter what you think your time is worth. The supply of people willing to work is what determines what it is worth.

Minimum wage jobs can literally be done by almost anyone who is not mentally or physically handicapped. You can "refuse to sell" your labor at that price, but when you have nothing in the way of skills or experience to offer, you really are just choosing to be unemployed.