'A Black Hole': America's New Graduates Discover a Dismal Job Market (nbcnews.com) 198
NBC News reports that in the U.S., many recent graduates looking to enter the labor force "are painting a dire picture of their job search."
NBC News asked people who recently finished technical school, college or graduate school how their job application process was going, and in more than 100 responses, the graduates described months spent searching for a job, hundreds of applications and zero responses from employers — even with degrees once thought to be in high demand, like computer science or engineering.
Some said they struggled to get an hourly retail position or are making salaries well below what they had been expecting in fields they hadn't planned to work in. "It was very frustrating," said Jensen Kornfeind, who graduated this spring from Temple University with a degree in international trade. "Out of 70-plus job applications, I had three job interviews, and out of those three, I got ghosted from two of them."
The national economic data backs up their experience. The unemployment rate among recent graduates has been increasing this year to an average of 5.3%, compared to around 4% for the labor force as a whole, making it one of the toughest job markets for recent graduates since 2015, according to an analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York released Friday. "Recent college graduates are on the margin of the labor market, and so they're the first to feel when the labor market slows and hiring slows," said Jaison Abel, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Across the economy, hiring in recent months has ground to its slowest pace since the start of the pandemic, with employers adding just 73,000 jobs in July, according to data released Friday... Tech workers have been some of the hardest hit in a slowing job market, with more than 400 employers including Meta, Intel and Cisco announcing more than 130,000 jobs cut in 2025, according to tech job site TrueUp.
The article cites an economist at Indeed Hiring Lab who believes early adoption of AI "is also likely driving some of the cuts and leading employers to rethink hiring plans in anticipation of AI's future role." So besides federal policy changes, the article blames "the emergence of AI, which some companies have said they are using to replace certain entry-level jobs, like those in customer support or basic software development."
Seven months after graduating, one CS major told NBC News he'd applied for 100 jobs, and got one job offer — for the 4 a.m. shift at Starbucks.
Some said they struggled to get an hourly retail position or are making salaries well below what they had been expecting in fields they hadn't planned to work in. "It was very frustrating," said Jensen Kornfeind, who graduated this spring from Temple University with a degree in international trade. "Out of 70-plus job applications, I had three job interviews, and out of those three, I got ghosted from two of them."
The national economic data backs up their experience. The unemployment rate among recent graduates has been increasing this year to an average of 5.3%, compared to around 4% for the labor force as a whole, making it one of the toughest job markets for recent graduates since 2015, according to an analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York released Friday. "Recent college graduates are on the margin of the labor market, and so they're the first to feel when the labor market slows and hiring slows," said Jaison Abel, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Across the economy, hiring in recent months has ground to its slowest pace since the start of the pandemic, with employers adding just 73,000 jobs in July, according to data released Friday... Tech workers have been some of the hardest hit in a slowing job market, with more than 400 employers including Meta, Intel and Cisco announcing more than 130,000 jobs cut in 2025, according to tech job site TrueUp.
The article cites an economist at Indeed Hiring Lab who believes early adoption of AI "is also likely driving some of the cuts and leading employers to rethink hiring plans in anticipation of AI's future role." So besides federal policy changes, the article blames "the emergence of AI, which some companies have said they are using to replace certain entry-level jobs, like those in customer support or basic software development."
Seven months after graduating, one CS major told NBC News he'd applied for 100 jobs, and got one job offer — for the 4 a.m. shift at Starbucks.
Dont' worry (Score:5, Funny)
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" exactly like the people voted for!"
The people didn't vote FOR anything, IMO. Way too many voted against something.
People didn't like Biden *OR* Harris. They held their nose and voted AGAINST Trump. Unsuccessfully
Many Trump voters likewise didn't like Trump, but voted AGAINST Harris.
Both parties are providing crap candidates.
Re:The people didn't vote for this shit (Score:5, Insightful)
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Support for notorious liars like Donald Trump and Boris Johnson seems to skew older. Boomers and early Gen X. A lot of them seem to be getting their information from Facebook, and shitting on information that is credible.
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Not that Republicans are going to make things any better for young guys, but for all the claims by dems and their far left overlords about how stupid republicans are, the republicans were astute enough to see a group with an issue, and to offer them something.
To pretend to offer them something, you mean. That's the problem, a yuuuge percentage of those young guys are exactly as stupid and bereft of morality as the Democrats think they are.
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While it might make you feel good to use the Democrats touchwood that claims anyone not voting for them is stupid,
1) They are provably stupid.
2) It doesn't make me feel good. Facts don't care about feelings. You have to acknowledge facts whether they make you feel good or not.
what's your plan - eliminate all young males who you claim are stupid?
Why am I supposed to have the plan to fix decades of Republicans deliberately compromising education systems to create a malleable proletariat?
those who dehumanize the opposition.
Saying people are stupid isn't dehumanizing them. It's acknowledging reality. Pretending real things aren't real doesn't help anything.
Instead, anyone suggesting actual fixes is castigated as MAGA, or alt-right.
Who's suggesting actual (meaning workable) fixes? What are they?
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While it might make you feel good to use the Democrats touchwood that claims anyone not voting for them is stupid,
1) They are provably stupid.
Right. Here's your problem - how are you planning to get rid of people that a smart person like you considers stupid? The DNC awaits your in-depth analysis.
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Here's your problem - how are you planning to get rid of people that a smart person like you considers stupid? The DNC awaits your in-depth analysis.
I am not planning to get rid of anyone. It's telling that this is your only proposed solution.
The DNC awaiting my analysis is the problem. They are the ones hired to solve this problem. Your insistence that I solve the problem is also part of the problem. If someone who was not elected and is not paid to solve this problem is supposed to solve it, it might as well be you. What's your plan besides "getting rid of" people? Every time you say that you make it clear that's the best solution you can come up with
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And now all the countries have called Trump's bluff. 90 deals in 90 days turned int
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It's funny that you have said that Dems want to put young mails back on the plantation, yet it is Trump that has repeatedly said that he was bringing jobs back to America.
The plantation I speak of isnot jerbs, it is a return of young men to a system that has turned against them because they are males.
In order to thrive, we have to remember that both male and female have to co-exist. I've worked with many women since the late 1970's These were not the present day meme of the strong independent victim narrative. What happened that men have to avoid women in the workplace.
My guess is after metoo turned into a spot where men can get cancelled without due process, then the
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>> it is a return of young men to a system that has turned against them because they are males.
i love how dudes completely lose their shit when exposed to even a small fraction of what it's been like to be a woman for all of human history
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I know it is en vogue to trash on trans youth in organized sports. But how many actual, concrete examples of "men dominating their daughters sports" can you actually produce? I know it is not zero, but is it even as many as 10 trans girls below Division I NCAA level that are affecting outcomes in competition? And even if it was more than 10, I don't see how that qualifies as "suffering under the tyranny"
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Even 1 is too many
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Do you know how many trans athletes there are in the whole United States that are competing?
5. Five.
I doubt they are "dominating" because you'd have heard of them making the news due to their superior athletic ability. But they aren't.
Want to know why? Trans people aren't cross-dressers. They're people who go so far as to multilate themselves. And that also means having to take things like testosterone suppressants which kills a lot of the "male athletic advantage". Most trans people who t
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If straight cis males attempted suicide at anything near the rate that trans kids did, it wouldn't be 11 per day. I'd be 100s. Suicidal ideation is about 20% in teen cis males vs 85% for trans kids. Attempted suicide is ~10% cis vs 55% trans.
Here is a bit of an issue. If a person isn't even sure of what they are, there is some confusion involved. perhaps a bit of therapy might help.
A real question - after gender affirming care, Chloe Cole, whose transitioning included puberty blockers, injections to try to make her skeletal structure more like a males, and who had her breasts lopped off at 15, and nipples place "in a more masculine position" she became suicidal, where before she got gender affirming care, she was not suicidal. She was confu
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60 minutes has a podcast. Maybe the problem is that 60 minutes is boring.
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While I certainly think we can look at trends within certain generations and identify problems, your post has several gross oversimplifications and does nothing constructive.
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While I certainly think we can look at trends within certain generations and identify problems, your post has several gross oversimplifications and does nothing constructive.
The refusal to take telling does anything constructive? If someone points out that there is a different way, and the response is nothing but proof that some groups will refuse any criticism - how do we work this?
If I tell a GenZ'er they should not take their mommy and/or daddy to a job interview, and the reply is something akin to "Fuck you old man".
If I tell one that They need better communications skills and they text me with a U (turd emoji)
If I can't get them to show up on time or meet deadlines.
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If someone points out that there is a different way, and the response is nothing but proof that some groups will refuse any criticism - how do we work this?
Because that doesn't work for everyone. You are basically saying that everyone should make the same sacrifices you have.
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If someone points out that there is a different way, and the response is nothing but proof that some groups will refuse any criticism - how do we work this?
Because that doesn't work for everyone. You are basically saying that everyone should make the same sacrifices you have.
I see. We must achieve success without making sacrifices. Here's the thin. I made my sacrifices when I was young. I had three different retirement packages. I lived in a mobile home until my mid 30s, and save money for a home I paid off in around 13-14 years, I drove cars for ten years, and kept furniture longer than most.
I provided a lot of value to those I worked for in my career, and was paid three times as much as the closest employee with the same job description. I world to get the job done, and
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A handful of mean-spirited boomers and a ton of mean-spirited Gen x did sure but voter suppression is the only reason their a guy one
The Gen xers are dumb. I mean real dumb. I mean the boomers I get they're going to be dead soon and most of them are already retired. Classic I got mine fuck you Boomer behavior.
And I get that the older Gen x that did all this have the same I got mine fuck you attitude. But they don't got theirs. They still have jobs and they don't have solid retirements lined up. Never mind the fact that they're 401ks are about to get looted by the same private equity ghouls that stole everybody's pensions.
This is the fuck around part in about 5 or 6 years to find out hits during Trump's third term. That's when they all lose their houses. I've said it before but about half the people reading this are going to be homeless by then.
I'm sure they'll blame trans girls playing field hockey and Hunter biden's laptop but that won't get them their houses back.
Ummmm, go fuck yourself.
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I have a question for you. Did you work a food service or retail job while you were in college? Never mind if it could actually pay for college or not. The question is did you even bother to try. Did you get try to get a migrant agricultural job in the summer? Did you do literally anything? Its not a case of FYGM. Its a case of you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. People who aren't too good to work are out there working, building a future.
And Gen X is about to be screwed over,
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Actually...yes. Hell I was working in the food service industry when I was 16yrs old going forward....why do you ask?
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I have a question for you. Did you work a food service or retail job while you were in college? Never mind if it could actually pay for college or not.
For comparison, when I was a kid in grade school, I sold Christmas and other cards. I worked in a pizza place in junior high. I played in a band that made money. (I was making a hundred a week in High school in the late 60's early 70's. My first job after graduation was as a full time electronics tech, and two part time lifeguard jobs. Then I was a traveling auto parts salesman. Finally I got my professional job and put myself through college while working full time. Even now that I'm retired, I'm working p
Re:The people didn't vote for this shit (Score:4, Insightful)
As a boomer I still worry about 13 things which could happen.
1. Misinformation campaigns.
2. Stock market crashes.
3. Mass unemployment.
4. Social security and medicare going away.
5. Run on the banks.
6. Deflation followed by hyperinflation.
7. Private equity buying out publicly traded companies and removing them form large index funds, and the index funds crashing.
8. Natural disasters increasing because of bad environmental policy.
9. Fees to do anything other than sleep.
10. The takeover of state governments by the federal government.
11. Court judges and Supreme Court Justices interned (i.e. jailed)
12. The end of American democracy, the rise of the Great American Firewall and Canadian as well as Mexican border walls meant to keep Americans from emigrating, not the other way around.
13. Global thermonuclear war.
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"13. Global thermonuclear war."
Would you like to play a nice game of Chess?
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I will say, though, that the industrial revolution was very effective at taking away farms that had been in families for generations. Banks wormed their way in and then foreclosed. Of course family farms are part subsistence but also businesses, with large recurring expenses which homes do not have. So I'm pretty sure he's wrong. Not sure if I can be certain. Perhaps
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Property taxes and insurance. Most people who are mortgage-free are old and retired/near retirement, ie on a fixed income. There are programs to help the elderly with property taxes, but they still have to pay them. I'm in my early 40s and the vast majority of my mortgage payments go to escrow to pay for taxes and insurance. Flood insurance was like $400 before Harvey a
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Yeah. I feel ya.
I decided from day one that I was not going to drain our resources on a hopeless cause. I mean, just no fucking way.
Fortunately, I have good insurance through my job and we have only spent maybe $2-$3K/year for all of the cancer-related bills. That's really not bad.
Unfortunately, I will be terminated due to disability in a few months (after six months of short term disability). I'll lose my awesome medical plan that I pay $2500/year for. I can get the same plan via COBRA for up to 24 months
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Ok, listen up brother. I may have some news you can use!
In my case, I had the employee basic life insurance paid for by the company (1.5x salary) and the supplemental insurance I paid for (5x salary). I had another $30K through my wife's employer, paid by her company.
Here is the news maybe you can use.
The policies have a "terminal illness benefit". This is something very common in life insurance policies and you DEFINITELY want to check to see if yours does. Nobody will go out of their way to tell you this.
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GenX here. I just want to address your comment about jobs and retirement.
I'm retiring this year, at age 54. I'll get 80% of my pay for life. I've also got right at $1M saved up ($512K in retirement funds, the rest not).
That does not include the $500K or so my wife has saved up, as she continues to work at her $165K/year job.
It also does not include the $100K in our 9 year old's college fund.
We are in ZERO danger of losing our house which, has only $365K due on it. I could pay that off in cash right now, and STILL have about $100K left over.
But nice try with your doom and gloom bullshit. Maybe if you were less focused on doom and gloom and more on getting ahead, you might see something positive in the future too.
I retired similarly at 55 - even though my supervisor said I couldn't afford to. Even after I showed him the numbers in my next to last review. The no one can retire early any more is a meme too many have bought into.
So, I'm doing six figures in retirement, no mortgage. I have two retirement accounts I haven't tapped yet. And with my present part time job, I won't tap them until I have to draw money out of them by law. Might have to look into a trust - the question will be irrevocable or revokable.
Doom
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What percentage of Americans does that happen for?
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I can ask you one question that totally blows your case to shit.
Triggered much? I have your blown to shit answer below.
What percentage of Americans does that happen for?
It isn't a matter of percentages. It is a matter of what a person can do if they plan and live within their means, and plays the long game rather than the need for instant gratification
I'd be pretty foolish to think that everyone will do that. They have differing ideas on how to spend their money. But for those who will listen, there is another way. And your percentage based idea sort of casts me and registrations suck out of legitimacy - tries to an
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How so?
What else do I have to do?
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Unless he's being sarcastic, he seems to have said that you're sane and level-headed. But hey, sarcasm.
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It's hard to tell what most of you are saying anymore.
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Doom and gloom man. Jesus Christ.
Colleges have been around in one form or another for thousands of years. They're not going away in the next nine.
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This makes no sense, literally. Biden stepped down, and HARRIS ran. Is that what you meant?
And if so, you're not paying attention to *actual* voting machine hacking (actually, the tabulators), as paid for by Mu$k.
It's almost as if (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure it'll all turn around in 2 weeks. Right around the time the Epstein documents get released.
And other news Ghislain Maxwell has been transferred to a club fed prison and newsmax is now telling their viewers that she's innocent. Pardon in three. Two. One....
Re:It's almost as if (Score:5, Informative)
Re:It's almost as if (Score:4, Funny)
You again painting the Big Beautiful Economic Picture black for no reason at all.
Yes, there are tariffs, but they are taming inflation as revenues come in, and make Americans richer because of all that windfall payment mountain - 100 billions!!11! HUNDRED BILLIONS US DALLARS!111!1 - every month.
And there are now plenty of jobs that will be available to new AI graduates.
They can go to the factory shop to assemble great American automobiles, like the GREAT American FIAT 124 clone [x.com].
They can go to the fields to pick the Great American crops.
They can go to the farms to take care of the Great American pigs.
Finally, they can work for ICE and help the Country remove all those Invaders.
There is a bright future ahead, and only you, the people entrenched in the Big Globalist Lie are blocking it from happening.
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No, the anti-MAGA are. You fell in line behind a nice old man with a brain rot, then you threw him under the bus for a cardboard cutout and you lost everything. The MAGA stuck behind a nasty geezer with a brain rot, won and destroyed your illusions about "America". We saw you for what you truly are, little crying pussies who have no spine. But Jesus, look at how loud your mouths are.
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That's a shitty situation indeed if you have not voted for the orange shitgibbon and got served this mess to deal with anyway. Little I can to to help except repeat what I've already said many times - the longer you (the US citizens) put up with it, the worse it will get.
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could appeal the racist boomers
God damn, it must be nice to be so fucking oblivious to facts [pewresearch.org] (and your own ageism):
Men – especially men under 50 – backed Trump by larger margins. Men supported Trump by a wider margin than in 2020. Trump narrowly won men under age 50, a shift from 2020 when men in that age group favored Biden by 10 points.
The Dems are trying to figure out how to deal with the male problem. Turns out that constant dehumanization of males eventually gets the males to figure out the Dems don't like us. I guess they didn't realize that men can vote too.
It was pretty obvious that especially this past election was gynocentric, and anti-male. Things like the super cringe "Men for Kamala" ad and "vote against your husband" political ad submitted as evidence.
In the meantime, the DNC got rid of a young man who told them they might
The AI promise? (Score:3)
Is this because companies are trying to leverage as much AI as they can these days?
We're told that AI will improve everyone's life and give us all more leisure time -- but I'm getting the impression that "leisure" is equated with "unemployed" by those making the predictions. With AI taking over so many roles that often required a degree I think it will only serve to make the rich richer and the poor poorer, with no trickle-down or benefit to those who can't use it to their own advantage.
Only time will tell I guess.
The hustle economy (Score:2)
We're told that AI will improve everyone's life and give us all more leisure time
I don't think anyone credible is saying that. At best the argument is that productivity is increased. Sometimes people connect the dots and argue that this will make our service economy cheaper. But at no point did capitalism promise you that you won't have to hustle anymore.
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"We're told that AI will improve everyone's life and give us all more leisure time -- but I'm getting the impression that "leisure" is equated with "unemployed" by those making the predictions."
Correct.
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It's a stick to hit hard workers with, work harder or better replaced. Just like offshoring / outsourcing was.
Re:The AI promise? (Score:5, Insightful)
I know there are a lot of big company CEOs saying this stuff, but I don't personally believe it. AI is doing *something*, but it's not as profound as all that.
I think there's just a general downturn, and it's hitting tech harder than most. The tech industry, and particularly the AI industry can't admit they're not peddling quite as much of their crap as they once were, so they're cutting their costs where they can - and are masking it as "efficiency improvements thanks to AI".
It's not all about the USA, but recent US Economic policy has been hit-and-miss at best. Whatever your idealogical thoughts on the matter, it's left most of the world holding its breath - and that means no new investment in anything, be it a big new plant in $country or even just hiring one extra person in your small company. No one wants any long term liabilities right now - just in case it all changes again, or indeed if we do have global recessions.
That all pre-supposes people have money to make long-term investments - which I suspect they don't. Inflation has hit just about every modern economy in the world, and there's a cost of living issue in most economies as a result. That means the masses just aren't buying as much, which means the mega corps aren't selling as much (and probably aren't advertising as much - hence the tech slowdown).
Most countries don't have a lot of spare money for investments right now either. My own country gave away all of its money to big companies during the pandemic. We didn't actually have piles of it before then, but we've sure got a lot more debt problems now. Even the government has to tighten its belt (or put up taxes, which it's been stupid enough to do already - rumours are it'll do it again soon too). So you're not going to see government stimulus doing too much for the foreseeable either - in my country, you might already argue the government is doing the opposite of stimulus, and that argument may get stronger if they make more policy mistakes. No AI was responsible for any of this.
All in all, yes, AI has its part to play in all this, but it's more likely the excuse for inaction, or the excuse for cutting costs more than it's the cause of any of it.
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The tech market in particular is saturated with victims of layoffs dating back to 2024. Your explanations are inaccurate.
America is great (Score:4, Funny)
The economy is being carefully managed by Wharton School graduate.
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Re:America is great (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would one need to do this in an MBA outfit?
You don't attend one to learn things, that's what you do in undergrad. You don't attend one to do research, for that you attend a program that lets you do a PhD.
The MBA outfits aren't schools, they are clubs where you make acquaintances to do business. Hence the large membership fee.
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no, because to him the definition of waste, fraud, and abuse is money spent on education, research and public well-being. Remember, his business is a club for shady deals.
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Question (Score:3, Insightful)
Is this the "winning" I keep hearing about?
Re:Question (Score:5, Insightful)
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It is. When the orange rapist talks about how "we are winning", that "we" does not include you.
Solution: rig the numbers (Score:4, Informative)
https://www.bbc.com/news/artic... [bbc.com]
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No no, the numbers are great, the greatest numbers we've ever seen. It's all the fault of those woke business owners who are deliberately not hiring people just to try and make Trump look bad. No doubt those woke employers were put there by Biden as well and it's also all his fault.
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Worthless degrees (Score:2, Interesting)
Try training for a trade in demand. (Score:3, Informative)
Plumber, electrician, welder, mechanic, and a whole bunch more.
See Mike Rowe's take on this:
https://youtu.be/HJRyMQiTJF4 [youtu.be]
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For that matter grafting fruit trees is quite an art.
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We're not there yet, but being told to go into a trade may become the new "learn to code". In the meantime, private equity is buying up local companies that deal in skilled trades (plumbing, HVAC, electrical), consolidating them under one roof, which will result in limited competition and drive down wages.
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What Research? Oh, and I Read the Article! (Score:5, Insightful)
What a huge sample size, " and in more than 100 responses". Wow, NBC really did their research; 100 chosen responses.
Last year the stories were about how Gen Z having a hard time finding work was due to their unrealistic demands about pay, working hours, perks, and so on.
White collar work, especially in IT, is on the way down. If the now extinct or going extinct jobs were jobs were fulfilled by reading SO and pasting crap together, or reading articles and creating summaries, yeah those are done, except for when particular experience is required. Sometimes knowledge of an industry is required to get the work correct.
How many bots are posting here?
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Well, the article lines up with what I am seeing. My son just got hired with a BS in physics after looking for over a year. He applied to every job he was remotely qualified for He had multiple internships during his degree. And he only got a call back once he got internal referrals.
The story is the same from my students out of BS in CS. Hundreds of applications for internahip that never answer. And probanly 6 month to find a related job after graduation for most good students.
This seems to have started as
Other metrics (Score:5, Insightful)
A 5.5% unemployment rate doesn't seen so bad for the average probability of a single recent graduate finding a job. In a good year, the unemployment rate would be 2-3%. Viewed from the employment perspective, an average 94.5% probability of finding a job compared to 97-98% didn't seem so bad.
The two missing metrics are (1) the percentage that has given up on finding a job and therefore distorts the true unemployment rate and (2) the underemployment rate that counts graduates that technically have a job but not in their field or not close to the expected wages. That's what we should be talking about.
Of course, now that the government people in charge of regarding these metrics are being fired for political reasons (i.e., because they didn't publish the desired numbers), good luck on finding metrics that we can have confidence in.
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It should be "number of residents who are legally and physically able to work" (ie. no minors ineligible to work, no disabled persons, no elderly unable to work, etc.) in the calculation.
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A 5.5% unemployment rate doesn't seen so bad for the average probability of a single recent graduate finding a job.
You actually BELIEVE those numbers? Oh my.
Productivity is leaping ahead. Business lags. (Score:2)
If it's to be believed that productivity has sky rocketed because of AI. Then the problem lies with business/government being able to take advantage of that massive boost.
Every advancement in productivity since fire and the wheel has ultimately resulted in jobs expansion with people being able to do more.
The problem here as I see it is that the business have stayed the same. It's just that the effort required to achieve those business goals has plummeted. What hasn't happened yet is businesses capitalisi
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education or indoctrination? (Score:2)
The news from higher education invariably falls into one of two categories:
Is this an accurate reflection of reality? I have no idea. But from the perspective of an employer, looking for evidence that a candidate is educated (as opposed to indoctrinated), degrees are looking increasingly worthless.
The saddest thing (Score:5, Insightful)
I grew up in a family of blue collar factory workers and tradespeople. None of them, including not a single master mason, master electrician, master welder, master plumber, master mechanic, and master carpenter (all with over a decade of experience) encouraged their kids to do anything except for get degrees. Why? Significant periods of unemployment, companies jerking you around, problems getting the general contractor / businesses to pay up, problems everywhere, and margins becoming so thin they couldn't see their kids averaging out (over a work career) as good as themselves in that same time frame.
Let me make this clear: Not a single one, from factory workers to highly skilled artisans, told their kids to get trades jobs because they knew the life personally. The only people who idolize tradepeople lives are people looking in from the outside. The work is hard, regularly filthy, sometimes highly dangerous, and often underpaid. Yeah, they're in a mini-boom for now. That being said, in a few years they might in a work famine again. Just look at electricians getting canned from solar projects that now have to scrap it out trying to find ANY job.
By the by, our parents were right for many of us. A part of it was what jobs you were lucky enough to get into, but most at least averaged out a smidge better. A few of us got some really high paying jobs exceedingly better than average. Some of us, the ones that went into tech, got better than average so far. So a college degree, granted we could work summers and pay for our college in cash, made our lives FAR better than our parents. I'm in far better shape than my parents at the same age. Even amongst our peers those who went into the trades are falling apart, physically, with a ridiculous number of surgeries from years of work wear / injuries as we're getting older. Surgeries, I might add, that are costing an ever increasing amount as their health insurance benefits wither.
Re:The saddest thing (Score:5, Interesting)
Surgeries, I might add, that are costing an ever increasing amount as their health insurance benefits wither.
Thanks, Obama!
That is less than half a joke, because the ACA a) writes profit for insurance companies right into the law and b) caps the amount they can charge at a percentage of the cost of care, which means they are motivated to drive up the prices.
The preexisting conditions part of the ACA is good. The rest of it is crap. It's designed to force people to purchase more expensive health insurance plans, and then to pay for it with tax money if individual people cannot afford it, making The People pay for it instead (APTC.) This is a direct handout to an industry which should not even be allowed to exist.
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Speaking of which, I've watched employer health care go from not bad at all to a definite have / have not scenario. You have a good job, usually college education required, you get decent insurance. You have a mediocre job you get, at best, mediocre insurance.
Was it good? No. Was it as bad as what there beforehand? No. That's the problem. The US healthcare sys
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The US needs a credible third party, maybe more (Score:2)
From an outside perspective it does not make any sense that such a large and important country has only two flavours of party on tap.
Do no despair! (Score:3)
As this is not a political post I'll not try to sway you as to what the root cause might be I will let you determine that all by yourself.
I got all my fingers crossed for all Americans and their future...
Reverse Ghosting (Score:2)
Wait, so 4.0 to 5.3% unemployemnt? (Score:2)
Did I read those numbers right? How is that a disaster?
So a college grad has a 94.7% chance of finding work? They have to beat out the bottom 5.3% of competing workers?
I'm having trouble processing how this is "dismal." Not as good as before, sure. But dismal?
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Seattle?
You can start improving your left by moving to a low cost of living area. Hint: from where you are, go east.
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Wars, depopulation trends, the collapse of the Yen carry trade, and other factors conspire to weaken economies worldwide. It's quite exceptional that the American jobs market has done as well as it has.