Macbeth
Banned
+2,444|6414

Bright, eager—and unwanted. While unemployment is ravaging just about every part of the global workforce, the most enduring harm is being done to young people who can't grab onto the first rung of the career ladder.

Affected are a range of young people, from high school dropouts, to college grads, to newly minted lawyers and MBAs across the developed world from Britain to Japan. One indication: In the U.S., the unemployment rate for 16- to 24-year-olds has climbed to more than 18%, from 13% a year ago.

For people just starting their careers, the damage may be deep and long-lasting, potentially creating a kind of "lost generation." Studies suggest that an extended period of youthful joblessness can significantly depress lifetime income as people get stuck in jobs that are beneath their capabilities, or come to be seen by employers as damaged goods.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/co … 038302.htm
That'll teach young people to vote Democrat in the future. But seriously having a whole generation of young skilled people no doing anything with themselves is just terrible right? In any case, Phil is the most useless degree you can get in college.
Benzin
Member
+576|6827
High school dropouts can't find jobs? What a surprise. I would like to see what kinds of degrees aren't landing people jobs.

I can believe that people with business and tech degrees are having a hard time, but someone with an art degree doesnt really have much room to bitch.
mtb0minime
minimember
+2,418|7483

CapnNismo wrote:

High school dropouts can't find jobs? What a surprise. I would like to see what kinds of degrees aren't landing people jobs.

I can believe that people with business and tech degrees are having a hard time, but someone with an art degree doesnt really have much room to bitch.
^this.


Kids are off "finding themselves" with their crappy degrees, then whine that they can't get a good job.
I mean, good job for doing what you want, but what you want may not be what other people want to pay you for.


I'd like to see some statistics for the tech/science/engineering degrees. I'm no 4.0 student (actually, I don't think I even have a 3.0), but I don't think I'll have too hard a time finding a job come January.
Agent_Dung_Bomb
Member
+302|7564|Salt Lake City

Actually, graduates in most fields are finding it hard to get a job.  Those with very, very specific and specialized degrees are doing OK, but the market is tough for all college grads.  This is mostly due to the high number of layoffs that have occurred for people that not only have college degrees, but because they have experience to go along with it, making them more likely to be hired.

College students that had the best luck finding jobs are also those that held internships within their fields of study while attending school.
Jay
Bork! Bork! Bork!
+2,007|6186|London, England

mtb0minime wrote:

CapnNismo wrote:

High school dropouts can't find jobs? What a surprise. I would like to see what kinds of degrees aren't landing people jobs.

I can believe that people with business and tech degrees are having a hard time, but someone with an art degree doesnt really have much room to bitch.
^this.


Kids are off "finding themselves" with their crappy degrees, then whine that they can't get a good job.
I mean, good job for doing what you want, but what you want may not be what other people want to pay you for.


I'd like to see some statistics for the tech/science/engineering degrees. I'm no 4.0 student (actually, I don't think I even have a 3.0), but I don't think I'll have too hard a time finding a job come January.
But math is hard
"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough."
-Frederick Bastiat
DesertFox-
The very model of a modern major general
+796|7513|United States of America

Macbeth wrote:

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_42/b4151032038302.htm
That'll teach young people to vote Democrat in the future. But seriously having a whole generation of young skilled people no doing anything with themselves is just terrible right? In any case, Phil is the most useless degree you can get in college.
Are you suuuuuuuure you're not a Republican?

Honestly, it's not like Democrats and Republicans are that much different once in office, despite how the statement suggests the current economic conundrum is the result of a single party/administration.
Macbeth
Banned
+2,444|6414

DesertFox- wrote:

Macbeth wrote:

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_42/b4151032038302.htm
That'll teach young people to vote Democrat in the future. But seriously having a whole generation of young skilled people no doing anything with themselves is just terrible right? In any case, Phil is the most useless degree you can get in college.
Are you suuuuuuuure you're not a Republican?

Honestly, it's not like Democrats and Republicans are that much different once in office, despite how the statement suggests the current economic conundrum is the result of a single party/administration.
It was a joke. Hence the But seriously afterward.
Agent_Dung_Bomb
Member
+302|7564|Salt Lake City

Hey Macbeth, this should help you feel a little better.

Politico wrote:

Fresh from a humbling loss in last year’s presidential election, Sen. John McCain is working behind-the-scenes to reshape the Republican Party in his own center-right image.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1009/27832.html
S.Lythberg
Mastermind
+429|7275|Chicago, IL
Corporations are desperate for engineers, hard work pays off in the end, no shit all those philosophy majors find themselves unemployable.
Benzin
Member
+576|6827
There are jobs out there. I open the newspaper every day and see job ads, especially for technical jobs (at least here in Austria). People just need to get out there and do some ground pounding with their resumes.

Internships are also a great way to get a job. If you're a student and you're in your last year and don't have an internship, there better be a damned good reason.
FEOS
Bellicose Yankee Air Pirate
+1,182|7239|'Murka

How much of this is due to the "everyone gets a trophy" mentality that the generation under discussion grew up with? Are they now facing the harsh reality of life and not liking the fact that they have to compete? That not everyone gets a trophy in the real world?
“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
― Albert Einstein

Doing the popular thing is not always right. Doing the right thing is not always popular
Spark
liquid fluoride thorium reactor
+874|7503|Canberra, AUS

FEOS wrote:

How much of this is due to the "everyone gets a trophy" mentality that the generation under discussion grew up with? Are they now facing the harsh reality of life and not liking the fact that they have to compete? That not everyone gets a trophy in the real world?
I wouldn't say it's an "everyone gets a trophy" mentality. From my experience it's more a "who gives a fuck that shit will sort itself out" mentality. Not enough kids actually care about their education... until, of course, three weeks until finals.

Last edited by Spark (2009-10-13 04:28:48)

The paradox is only a conflict between reality and your feeling what reality ought to be.
~ Richard Feynman
FEOS
Bellicose Yankee Air Pirate
+1,182|7239|'Murka

Spark wrote:

FEOS wrote:

How much of this is due to the "everyone gets a trophy" mentality that the generation under discussion grew up with? Are they now facing the harsh reality of life and not liking the fact that they have to compete? That not everyone gets a trophy in the real world?
I wouldn't say it's an "everyone gets a trophy" mentality. From my experience it's more a "who gives a fuck that shit will sort itself out" mentality. Not enough kids actually care about their education... until, of course, three weeks until finals.
And why would anyone give a fuck if everyone gets a trophy in the end (everything sorts itself out)?
“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
― Albert Einstein

Doing the popular thing is not always right. Doing the right thing is not always popular
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,854|6934|eXtreme to the maX

Spark wrote:

"who gives a fuck that shit will sort itself out"
That is an oddly Australian attitude TBH, one I am working hard to get the hang of

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2009-10-13 05:19:17)

Everything is great
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+690|4548
The real lost generation was all of the Zoomers and Gen Alpha that were never born.
https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/6593ab1e4ad7e8ac71652264/67558d51e667f756e02276b3_AD_4nXdh99euWbd8yAEKhn17FQUp4nHJZln45YWbsnZA8RLY2TkETQl8vKQOC4Xq4f5T3uVxfjO9WNeYX2mo_jP5bRWlHTluFGYvqaUvUcgRebsVb9CnRlrQ5_thkgegnzPv5nWWwIW-.png
As someone that works with young people...it is wild toy think that there are conversations and teaching moments that were lost to oblivion because our government didn't do more to help the average American.

...

Taylor Swift's wedding shows how lost we are as a society.
https://imagez.tmz.com/image/3e/4by3/2026/06/29/3e7a56aeca6b419fa76cd466f690abf3_md.jpg
The "wedding of the century" was between two people in their late 30s. I totally support her having the wedding of her dreams. She didn't do anything wrong but the marriages and families should be happening in people's 20's so that the fullness of parenthood could be lived by young families.
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,114|7600|PNW

priorities, man. gotta spend the best years of your life exclusively chained to education, college, and career building so you can get a job with good health insurance and pay for your studio apartment.

millennials watched their parents get hoodwinked by reagan, so easy to please after the gas crisis. younger people don't even have the silver lining of the clinton years to look back on.

ice to the tune of tens of billions of dollars is practice for when we haul people off to blacksites for breeding programs. too much to ask that the ultra wealthy share more of the pie and that real estate wall street get its greasy fingers out of the homebuilding pie.
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,114|7600|PNW

this thread is very peak-of-2010 vibe. "lmao, philosophy majors can't get jobs, lululul" never mind the huge chunk of successful people in american society who majored in humanities, never mind that tech college and stem graduates are working in coffee houses too. a real time capsule of attitudes still dumbly in evidence.

i'll keep my happy experience taking art, thanks. i hear grousing all the time from people about the reduction in quality of music, movies, art, literature from people who snuff disdainfully at formal education in humanities. do you want artists and writers, or not? because there are not enough suicidal, work-to-death prodigious, natural talents to go around. and the ones we do have could probably use therapists.

how is compu-stem contributing, exactly? replacing everything with ai.
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+690|4548
The 'just major in STEM' is one of the most poorly aged things from that time. Convinced some people far away from Silicon Valley to major in software engineering a generation before remote work became a thing.

The cost of housing so rapidly outpaced wages in every single part of the country that even a person with a good job in 2010 would need to make serious choices about career, marriage, family, housing etc.
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,114|7600|PNW

i am bone-tired of seeing articles digging at the selfishness of the childless. go after the cause, not the cope.
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+690|4548
It is literally a world wide birth depression. Every industrialized country is declining. You wouldn't be insane to look at a map of it and think there is something wrong with the way humanity is organized in the 21st century.
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
uziq
Member
+573|4280
i’m not a malthusian by any means but it seems pretty clear to me that the planet just isn’t equipped to deal with 10 billion people all trying to access a middle-class lifestyle. birth rates dropping in rich nations seems like the world reaching a healthier equilibrium.

that said, our economies and pension systems really aren’t set up for a world without near perpetual growth. lots of countries need to have serious conversations about degrowth-oriented policies.
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,114|7600|PNW

the planet could do that and more. not infinitely, obviously, but every living person on earth could be fed and comfortably housed if that's what power wanted.
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,854|6934|eXtreme to the maX

uziq wrote:

i’m not a malthusian by any means
I'm not a racist but...

What are our options?

Crimp the middle-class lifestyle? Turf everyone out of their wildly inefficient detached homes, cut their foreign holidays and push them into mega-blocks where the govt controls the heating and cooling and food supply?

Crimp the aspirations of people to be middle-class? Maybe make it a lottery. 1/1000 can have a lifestyle.

Crimp perpetual growth?

Crimp the global population?

Even if the world stopped emitting any CO2 at all right now we probably face unsurvivable warming thanks to the CO2 already in the air and the sea.
It would take planet-scale geo-engineering to even taper it off a bit.

None of this will happen - unless I am given absolute power - which I would accept.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2026-08-03 07:04:49)

Everything is great
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,114|7600|PNW

why are those your options? population growth is already slumping in some countries. isn't middle class mostly defined by spending power? a family that can afford all basic needs, and extras like vacations, on a single income used to be considered just entry level on the middle class! the middle class has been wiped the fuck out in the race for a trillionaire class. i'd ask how we went from tvs being a luxury to homes being a luxury, but we both know the answer at this point.

remember covid when lower emissions had stunning and almost immediate effects on city skylines? better drive to end fossil fuels and business/industrial resource/energy waste and pollution and pollution output would have dramatic. putting the plastic bottle in the right bin is nice, but isn't doing it. a flywheel analogy is probably more accurate than a pendulum swinging back, and full recovery for a lot of stuff will take decades more, centuries, millennia even in some cases, but how is the default option to just not do anything? i encounter that sentiment depressingly often. someone finally admits that shit is shit, but they're like "ah well, may as well not do anything," because who the fuck knows, or they still want ten cents cheaper gas. a perpetually tepid, selective environmentalist is almost worse. y'all need to get on antidepressants.

Last edited by unnamednewbie13 (2026-08-03 10:13:17)

uziq
Member
+573|4280

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

the planet could do that and more. not infinitely, obviously, but every living person on earth could be fed and comfortably housed if that's what power wanted.
quite a different proposition to “middle class lifestyle”, giving people basic shelter and a food supply. it’s people wanting access to 2 family cars parked outside a perfectly air conditioned home that is full of plastic consumables that is a steeper proposition.

and the idea we could house everyone sounds a lot like communism to me. a much harder sell than “we need to fix the retirement system so that it doesn’t depend on pension contributions from nonexistent gen alpha workers”.

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