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The Youth Unemployment Bomb
71–80 of 163 posts
Re: The Youth Unemployment Bomb
#72Our 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."
Our poor people, at least in the US, are a lot more wealthy than they were several decades ago. Actually if you dig into the economics of deciding how much to work and for what, how preferences vary depending on how much of a resource you have and how cheap a lot of things are compared to decades ago, this is neither surprising nor terrible, nor really even preventable without actually going down to these people and dictating their economic preferences and proper lifestyle to them, which I at least find a repugnant idea.
If you want to live a simple life with nothing from beyond 1950, no modern medicine, no modern tech gadgets, nothing beyond 1950, you can do it substantially cheaper. But it's just so easy to work a few more hours and get the modern stuff that it's the rare person who will choose to do this.
If there's anything to be horrified by, it would be the cheapening of debt that has made it too easy to get buried under it vs. decades past.
Re: The Youth Unemployment Bomb
#73The 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…
I started on a networking specialist degree (2 year community college) before the economy tanked, and finished just after. I went in figuring I'd be dead before a technology would exist to automate it.
I'm sure I'm right, but I didn't think about how a recession would impact it.
On the plus side, there were endless streams of entry level positions I was well-qualified for before things went south, and I'll probably be able to find a job related to my degree when the economy starts improving.
Re: The Youth Unemployment Bomb
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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.
Wait, didn't we already drop hundreds of billions fixing that? Or was that money just wasted?
http://www.recovery.gov/Transparency/RecipientReportedData/P...
Re: The Youth Unemployment Bomb
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
I spent a year after college looking for jobs to apply to. I found three I was remotely qualified for (those I applied to). If I applied for even a small portion of the jobs that pop up on local job boards, it would consume every hour of the day. In a normal economy you'd see entry level jobs there. But every job wants years of experience and specialized certifications. I don't even have the means to get the certific…
One piece of advice: don't let the job ad make you think you're unqualified and stop you from applying. Employers often a) don't know what they want/need b) throw everything they can think of in that ad. It may be a challenge to get past the naive recruiter without all of the skills mentioned on your resume, but it can be worth it because the interview will bear out whether you'll actually be useful to the hiring man…
I find it very hard to understand how an employer could not know what they want or need in a new employee. I understand that it happens, but I have no idea how someone decides "hey, we need a new person" and has no idea what they would like that person to do. Hiring is a hard enough problem without handicapping yourself out of the gate by not having and expressing a clear idea of what you're looking for.
How hard can it be to say "we're looking for someone who knows enough Java to follow our codebase without needing their hand held. We are also dabbling in Python so that will be a plus if you know it."? Why can't a req for an experienced engineer read "We need someone reliable and knowledgeable enough that they can do all the handholding our other developers need."? There must be some part of this that I'm missing, because actually writing a req seems too damned simple to be this FUBAR'ed.
Re: The Youth Unemployment Bomb
#76Earlier 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…
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.
Re: The Youth Unemployment Bomb
#77Earlier 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…
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…
Has she tried working with her college's career services? Most of the major colleges that I know of have a separate set of people (from their undergrad folks) that are dedicated to helping alums get re-employed.
Re: The Youth Unemployment Bomb
#78Earlier 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.
Wait, didn't we already drop hundreds of billions fixing that? Or was that money just wasted? http://www.recovery.gov/Transparency/RecipientReportedData/P...
Not all of it, and what did wasn't enough to fix much of what's broken.
Re: The Youth Unemployment Bomb
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
One piece of advice: don't let the job ad make you think you're unqualified and stop you from applying. Employers often a) don't know what they want/need b) throw everything they can think of in that ad. It may be a challenge to get past the naive recruiter without all of the skills mentioned on your resume, but it can be worth it because the interview will bear out whether you'll actually be useful to the hiring man…
I find it very hard to understand how an employer could not know what they want or need in a new employee. I understand that it happens, but I have no idea how someone decides "hey, we need a new person" and has no idea what they would like that person to do. Hiring is a hard enough problem without handicapping yourself out of the gate by not having and expressing a clear idea of what you're looking for. How hard can…
I've heard people claim that employers will put out jobs with ridiculous requirements to fill some "we tried" quota for a regulation with a name that escapes me.
Re: The Youth Unemployment Bomb
#80In Mexico they are called nini's (_ni_ estudian, _ni_ trabajan). They often find "better" opportunities joining organized crime/drug cartels. This, in my opinion, is one the main challenges that need to be resolve in order to end violence in Mexico.