Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Youth Unemployment Bomb

businessweek.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 163 posts

Re: The Youth Unemployment Bomb

#51

Post by ylem »

rst wrote: post #49

One key bit: "more education is not always better. What matters is matching the skills of the workforce to the skills that employers demand. In Iran, where the percentage of people aged 15 and over with postsecondary degrees has soared from 2.5 percent to 10.5 percent over the past 20 years, the education system has become 'a giant diploma mill,' says Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, an economist at Virginia Tech." The same i…

This would seem to be especially true of "for profit" colleges. There was a pretty depressing tv special (frontline?) on it...They sell hopes and dreams.

Re: The Youth Unemployment Bomb

#52

Post by pzxc »

vaksel wrote: post #22
roel_v wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

have you had that work for you or for anyone yo know? or are you just throwing it out there as a way to do something. it's easy to say go walk from business to business shaking hands asking if their company is hiring, and yes for a few people that might actually work...but for the vast majority it'll be an exercise in futility.

It certainly will be an exercise in futility if that's what you think it is before you even start.

Re: The Youth Unemployment Bomb

#53

Post by kjhgfdfgh »

_delirium wrote: post #13
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…

There is a famous film set in my home (small mining) town about dissafected youth in the 60s. At one point the teacher says that if the kid doesn't start working hard he will end up just working down the mine. In the 80s the mines closed, unemployment is 30% and a good job now is illegal minicabbing.

Re: The Youth Unemployment Bomb

#54

Post by scotty79 »

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 more wealth.

You can't keep prices of meals to be higher than recent technological wonder. Someone at some point will call bullshit on that. "My sandwich is not worth same amount of wealth as 4GB flash thumb drive. They just want me to pay this much for sandwich to keep me working because I need sandwich. I'll just pass on working, buy cheapest food and see how this works out. They don't seem to want me in their companies anyway."

This unemployed generation can be the first one to take advantage of wealth humans get from technology en masse without need to cunningly trick everyone else out of their share. They'll get their share just by being more or less human dead weight that rich won't be able to shake off because they can't kill them or even let them die because there's for the first time too many of them.

Re: The Youth Unemployment Bomb

#55

Post by kjhgfdfgh »

kjhgfdfgh wrote: post #18
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.

Suppose you have a 'democratic' country where the same party has been in power since independance.

The party leaders have got rich by telling everyone else the country is booming - when it was all a property scam. Now they have 30% youth unemployment and are cutting school and college funding to pay for it.

They were quiet happy to support terrorists in another country for their own political gains - they might want to start worrying about where the next car bomb will be placed.

And this is isn't in the middle east ......

Re: The Youth Unemployment Bomb

#56

Post by [deleted] »

pzxc wrote: post #52
vaksel wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

have you had that work for you or for anyone yo know? or are you just throwing it out there as a way to do something. it's easy to say go walk from business to business shaking hands asking if their company is hiring, and yes for a few people that might actually work...but for the vast majority it'll be an exercise in futility.

It certainly will be an exercise in futility if that's what you think it is before you even start.

[deleted]

Re: The Youth Unemployment Bomb

#57

Post by ylem »

I think one thing that we have in the US is that unemployment centers were set up in a different age and are designed to serve unskilled labor--but there are not so many unskilled jobs. Some of the training programs that are paid for are short "certificate" programs of dubious worth.

But, here's a question: currently sites like ODesk provide contract labor. Some of the jobs are for people to do research (for example, I wanted a listing of high schools/contact information for a side project I'm working on). I've only done a couple of postings, but I got very few American applicants. Is it just not well publicized? The rates are low, so it's not a good long term solution, but in some cases for "simple" research jobs, the rates could be $10/hr, which compared to some service jobs is competitive (since many service jobs here also don't provide health care)--especially in some lower cost of living states.

Re: The Youth Unemployment Bomb

#58

Post by iamdave »

I grew up with an ex-drill sergeant for a father. My dad was a skilled carpenter, a certified electrician and welder (TIG, MIG and Stick), and has fixed every single car I've owned and totalled.

Passed down to myself and my brothers, we're both skilled in welding, my brother now has his own electrician shop. I work in IT. If suddenly my IT job goes away, I have a trade to fall on.

Skilled trades and physical labor it seems to be lost arts on my generation (I'm 25) and that depresses me.

Re: The Youth Unemployment Bomb

#59

Post by netmau5 »

They mention the product lifecycle being short as a primary reason for not wanting to bring on new employees. If it takes someone 12 months to get up to speed in an 18 month product lifecycle, it is too costly.

I've got to wonder what kind of industry takes 12 months to get up to speed unless you've got workers coming in with absolutely no training and education. For most programmers I know, the worst case ramp up time is around 3 months. That is often with a project that will never be profitable, much less make it for 18 months.

There are other fiscally attractive reasons to hire young so I'd think if training was the only problem, we could solve that problem. The problem I see with regards to education in most companies is that there is simply no one on staff who can do the training effectively or is given the time to do so. Perhaps this will open the door for the return of a mini trade school in the form of an app.

Re: The Youth Unemployment Bomb

#60

Post by pragmatic »

The simple answer is: These kids are training for the wrong jobs. College (in many areas) is a waste. Trade schools (vo-tech) offer a (almost 100%) guarantee of employment.

A trade is a gateway to self employment (once you have your hours in for licensing).

My brother has his master electrician's license in two states. He has more work than he knows what to do with.

I have two friends who recently went back to school (one finishing undergrad business/marketing the other MBA). Their job outlook is _poor_. The market is flooded with people that have _soft_ skills.

Our company is still hiring network technicians. Again a two year degree with _hard_ skill requirements. (Cisco certs, etc).

Tech school is way cheaper than college and your job prospects are good.

Post reply on HN