This Is What Happens When A Millennial Tries To Get A Job

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Tyler Durden:

In “Global Youth Unemployment Hits 35 Million As Recent Grads Lean On Parents,” we documented what we have called the “pitiable plight” of recent college graduates whose degrees now cost in excess of $35,000 and who are entering a job market bereft of real opportunities for gainful employment. The OECD estimates that in member countries, as many as 35 million people aged 16-29 are out of work. In a related story, Sallie Mae (from which the nation’s number-one issuer of student loan-backed ABS was spun last year) recently reported that better than two-thirds of parents expect to provide financial support to their children post-graduation. With this in mind, consider the following data on youth unemployment in the US.

From Generation Opportunity (a nonprofit):

  • The effective (U-6) unemployment rate for 18-29 year olds, which adjusts for labor force participation by including those who have given up looking for work, is 13.8 percent (NSA). The (U-3) unemployment rate for 18-29 year olds is 7.9 percent (NSA).
  • The declining labor force participation rate has created an additional 1.828 million young adults that are not counted as “unemployed” by the U.S. Department of Labor because they are not in the labor force, meaning that those young people have given up looking for work due to the lack of jobs.
  • The effective (U-6) unemployment rate for 18-29 year old African-Americans is 19.6 percent (NSA); the (U-3) unemployment rate is 12.8 percent (NSA).
  • The effective (U-6) unemployment rate for 18-29 year old Hispanics is 14.1 percent (NSA); the (U-3) unemployment rate is 9 percent (NSA).
  • The effective (U-6) unemployment rate for 18-29 year old women is 11.7 percent (NSA); the (U-3) unemployment rate is 7.5 percent (NSA).

“College graduates will spend the upcoming month looking toward their futures – but as they celebrate, their ability to get a job remains top of mind. Young people have seen their economic situation improve in 2015. While we’re glad for that, April’s jobs report still shows a 13.8 percent youth unemployment rate, a discouragingly high number for those who are hoping to embark on their careers in the next few weeks,” the group’s Director of Policy Engagement at Generation Opportunity Luke Kenworthy says.

“If you look at the numbers starting in 2009, we’ve been in the longest sustained period of unemployment since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began collecting their data following World War II. This misconception that we don’t want jobs or that we’re lazy and entitled is nonsense,” a spokesman added, in a statement to Newsweek.

According to the OECD, one of the reasons recent graduates have so much trouble finding jobs is that their degrees aren’t preparing them for life in the workplace with 10% of new graduates displaying poor literacy skills and 14% exhibiting subpar numeracy skills.

But it’s not just the skills gap. College degrees (even graduate degrees) have become so commonplace (thanks in part to the proliferation of student loans) that they are no longer sufficient in and of themselves to guarantee their holders will find good jobs. One 25-year old who lives in the nation’s capital told Newsweek that even with her master’s degree, she has found waitressing is the better option in today’s job market:

Millennials face higher university tuitions and student loan debt than ever before, as well as stiffer competition when they enter the workforce. A 25-year-old who recently earned a master’s and is living with a friend in Washington, D.C., tells Newsweek she is waitressing while looking for a job better suited to her qualifications.“It’s hard,” she says. “They don’t want to pay you extra for your master’s. There are enough people with master’s degrees that they can require them.”

As a reminder…

Millennials have also discovered what we’ve been harping on for months: for most Americans, there simply is no wage growth.

Millennials are getting lower earnings compared with the nation’s median income, versus people of that age a decade ago. “We find that because of the difficulties facing millennials, they are delaying these important life decisions, like getting married, buying a home, starting a family,” Pasch says.

 

In a study by Carnevale’s center at Georgetown, the age at which young adults on average reach the median wage, across education levels, increased from 26 to 30 between 1980 and 2012. Those hardest hit were high school graduates and young men. Full-time employment for high school graduates declined 13 percentage points for the period, while the rate for university graduates declined by 8 points. As of 2012, young men earned only 58 percent of the mean wage, down from 85 percent in 1980.

Circling back to the issue of whether millennials are getting what they paid for (or, more appropriately, what they almost certainly didn’t pay for and never will) from US colleges and universities, it’s looking increasingly likely that the push to educate America’s youth (spearheaded by easy access to borrowed money) may end up backfiring, as prospective students assess the difficulty recent graduates have had in finding jobs that are commensurate with their experience and ask themselves if four years of their lives and $35,000 in debt is really worth it. Here’s Newsweek again:

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But unemployment numbers are low. Isn’t that great?

While getting an MA in Statistics at Columbia leads to 100% employment.
So…..look at the vast preponderance of the types of last names who majored in Statistics.
Some people are waitressing because they majored in ”Womyns’ studies” or other rot.
Some people have their future set because they majored in something USEFUL.

The job market sucks for most people seeking employment.

Stop blaming it on the JOB CREATORS? surely you aren’t suggesting that it is the duty of the Federal government to make sure that all have worth while jobs THAT IS SOCIALISM !! just let the free market work. Yes it is true that corporate profits and the Dow are all at all time records, but soon it will “trickle down” to those at the bottom. Let’s make sure that we give them all tax breaks, without them companies would lode the chance to offshore their profits and would be FORCED to reinvest here

the number of millenials looking for jobs is just about the same as the number of government workers that have left work while Obama has been POTUS

@john:

soon it will “trickle down” to those at the bottom.

Not until it can be determined which onerous laws and regulations Obama has had enacted but he has either altered or delayed. Business cannot plan without knowing how badly this economic idiot will screw them and in what way.

This is why profits are going into the mattress instead of invested in growth.

the number of millenials looking for jobs is just about the same as the number of government workers that have left work while Obama has been POTUS

Is this some sort of idiotic guess or do you have some evidence to back up such a ridiculous claim?