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Young workers seek new paths to jobs
A teenager fills out an application at a job fair in the Queens borough of New York City. With the youth unemployment rate at double the national average, many young workers are finding that the path they thought would lead to a career -- go to college, work hard, land a job -- may not be for them.
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Tess Vigeland: Young people are among the Americans hurt most by the Great Recession. The unemployment rate for 16- to 24-year-olds is more than double the national average. A lot of young workers are realizing that the path they thought would lead to a career -- go to college, work hard, get a great job -- may not pan out.
Today we kick off a series called "Clocked In," from our partners at Youth Radio. They're examining some of the new paths that young people are choosing. Here's reporter Sayre Quevedo.
Sayre Quevedo: Comedian Chris Rock has this great stand up bit where he talks about working at Red Lobster as a teen, dishwashing in the back of the restaurant. His job was to basically scrape shrimp into trash cans all day.
I’ve also worked as a dishwasher, so I know what it’s like to come home stinking of Hollandaise. Touching leftovers isn’t even the worst part. What’s worse, Rock says, is glancing up at the clock.
Chris Rock (from comedy routine): When you got a career, there ain’t enough time in the day. When you got a job, there’s too much time.
But these days jobs -- not careers -- are what a lot of us are able to get.
Marlene Schoefer-Wulf: She wanted me to reorganize the nail polishes in rainbow order.
My friend Marlene Schoefer-Wulf used to work retail, and she’ll never forget the moment she realized it was a dead end. It happened one Friday night, after she’d already worked nine hours, when her boss asked her to get all creative the nail gloss.
Schoefer-Wulf: It was a box filled with nail polish, but it wasn’t organized at all. It was just a box with like a thousand nail polish shades in it. I actually, I dreamt of this for nights afterwards because it was mindless work. And I want to do something where my brain is engaged and I’m happy working, and I’m not being taken advantage of.
Every young person I know has a story like this. And the question we all ask is: “How do we go from sorting nail polish to actually earning a decent wage, and maybe even liking our jobs -- without being crippled by college debt?"
Stephanie Luce: I myself feel torn about recommending young people to go to college.
Which is a little awkward for Stephanie Luce, because she works at a college. She’s a professor of labor studies at the City University of New York.
Luce: I believe higher education is very valuable in its own right, but I would hate to have anyone take on that kind of debt.
Here’s the problem. There are two competing realities for my generation. College is getting more expensive and careers, they’re just hard to come by.
Luce: Young people today are among the first generations in the history of the United States that cannot be assured of earning average wages higher than their parents.
Okay, so I don't know about you but I find that kind of depressing. I’m 19, and like a lot of people my age, I spend most of my time thinking about the future. I spoke to bunch of my peers and we’re all anxious about what’s next.
Young worker 1: Right now I don’t really feel like what I’m passionate about is something I could pursue as a career.
Young worker 2: Trying to get a job without a highschool diploma is hard…won’t nobody hire you.
Young worker 3: I really gave up on jobs due to the fact of how hard it is to get them. They're only paying you so little in order to take care of so much.
On the other hand, there are employers, educators and organizations that are coming up with solutions to address the skills gap and put young adults to work. I know, good news about the economy? That’s something everyone, especially my peers, need to hear right now.
I’m Sayre Quevedo for Marketplace.
Vigeland: Our series "Clocked In" picks back up next week. It's produced by Youth Radio's "New Options Desk," which reports on how young adults are finding work.
I'd like to know what this means for parents of young children who have bought the party line about saving for college using government-backed products such as the 529.
My goal is to help get my kids off on the right foot financially as they transition into adulthood, in 2027 - 2030 or so. When I graduated from high school in 1998 that pretty much meant going to college. If that is in question today, 2012, then what will that mean in two decades?
As I look at where things were in 1998 when I left home and went to college and where things are now in 2012, almost 15 years later, and articles like this where kids are challenging the importance of a degree, I'm not sure that saving for college is the right thing. Especially if I choose a tax-protected option that locks me into using that money for a certain purposed like school.
In my job, I hire people all the time and pay them $100k+ per year and I can't remember the last time I checked their resume to see if they had a college degree. I scan their resume to make sure they have one, then I call them to make sure they can communicate, then I invite them in to make sure they know how to make eye contact and have a conversation. Lastly, I make sure they have the experience and skills I need and/or the capacity to learn. Then I hire.
Harvard, vs. Ohio State, vs. the local community college, vs. I-never-even-ask-if-they-went-to-school isn't playing a role in the process at all.
In this day in age, maybe it would be better for me to set aside $150k over the next 18 years for my children to use to buy real estate, or start a business, or something like that, rather than drop what looks like it could be seven figures on a piece of paper that isn't doing anyone any favors lately.
So, as I try to save that $150k, what's the new party line? What savings product or vehicle should I be using?
"And I want to do something where my brain is engaged and I’m happy working, and I’m not being taken advantage of."
Wait.....being asked to arrange nail polish bottles is taking advantage of you? After working a 9 hour day? My heart is breaking for you. Do you really understand the kind of job you're going to get as a student? This is it. In fact, that sounds like an incredibly awesome first job. Do you really think 9 hours is a long day? You have to pay your dues, just like the rest of us had to. I'm sorry you've been raised to think you are so precious and special. Wake up and grow up!
I also heard "Young people today are among the first generations in the history of the United States that cannot be assured of earning average wages higher than their parents."
Does this mean, ever? Or right out of the gate? It seems to me kids are coming out of college expecting to make $30, 40, or 50k at their first job. Are they really this clueless? Have parents done such a bad job of educating them about what the world of work is like? Have they been so protected?
*sigh*
First of all I think that everyone absolutely has their dues but common lets be real here and look at the situation. Today's graduating student's parents went to college and while they worked hard through it, I will say that the intensity and competition wasn't even close to how it is now. 20 to 30 years ago you could work for a summer to pay off one year of college at most universities. Now days unless you are on scholarship or grants most students are graduating with 10's of thousands of dollars of debt and still working during the summers to pay for a small chunk of it.
Now days you can't graduate and hope to compete for a job with out having a least two internships while in school and most aren't paid so you still have to work part time to pay rent. It used to be good to have a 3.o in college but now days that is bottom of the barrel. Also, we all now that it isn't what you know but who you know and with all the platforms (social media, career event, peer gathering) that we have these days for networking, just staying up on that is extremely time consuming.
So lets add that up... 2 Internships + Full Time Student + Part Time Job + Constant Networking and relationship building. Older Generations say that we feel entitled and that we have to pay our dues. Well I think that it is clear that we are paying our dues much more now days while getting an education both through paying out of noses for college and busting tail at internships, jobs and school. Now those students are coming out of college in more debt than older generations could have ever fathomed and in an economy that the older generations have tanked and they are making less average wages (as you stated) with the cost of living and inflation still going up. Hmmm no wonder we are expecting sorry NEEDING those jobs that pay $30, $40, or $50K!
You say that we are clueless and need to wake up but really maybe you need to wake up because clearly you don't have a clue with regards to what students are going through these day in comparison to you. Maybe you should also look at the insanely fast changing trends and technologies that we live with now days. Students are the ones that understand it and can make it work effectively faster than any other generation. It is the young generation that is creating new businesses such as Google, Facebook and many more industry leading companies. Maybe you need to look at companies like Google who are spending millions to train the older level management one how to adapt to new young fresh out of college graduates because they are the ones that know the capabilities of new technology and more important how to make it applicable to already existing business.
The world of work is changing and you are clearly not seeing it so maybe you are in need of a little educating.
*sigh"
No sh*t. I came of age during the Golden 90's when you could climb the ladder on "aptitude," but I still had to go to college to prove my dedication and build my knowledge base. I still had to work demeaning jobs for low pay. I am near 40 and still paying off my student loan. When I was young, I too, had to jump on sporadic opportunities to showcase my value, have the courage to introduce myself to executives, and humbly ask for the chance to break into my field.
My first real job in my career field paid $23K/year. Peanuts, then and now. Fifteen years later, I am well-paid as a senior level professional, but it has taken this long and -- trust me -- no one is going to hand this job to you fresh out of college.
That reality does not bespeak the condition of the economy. It's simply that higher paying jobs require more experience and skill, and you earn that over the years by nimbly and aptly applying your intelligence and chutzpah -- if you have them. The economy betrays its sinking depths when you are no longer able to find a job organizing nail polish in the rainbow spectrum. There are worse jobs out there and I've done them.
The media is feeding you kids a line of BS longer than the one used to "bury" Osama at sea. Becoming successful is still about the same things it always was: ambition, intelligence, character. Get on it, kids.
I'm a 27-year-old engineer, and I got a $50k job right out of college. It's not that uncommon really...in fact, I was at the low end of the pay scale for my graduating class. I know people who got $100k+ on their first job.
This is how the modern economy works. You're either going somewhere, and you're going to get there quickly, or you're stuck making minimum wage for the rest of your life. The "dues paying" mentality is hopelessly obsolete.
I'm a 27-year old in marketing that doesn't make near that much, nor did I have the opportunity. I found my first full-time job two years after I graduated with a Bachelor's degree. College gave me a great education, but it didn't guarantee a job after graduation--even with an internship with a major ad agency (which had a full hiring freeze at the time). If college graduates can't find jobs, it's not always from lack of trying. The ones who succeed are those who find their own opportunities to grow and stand out. Or they will create their own opportunities.
So Marlene Schoefer-Wulf had already worked 9 hrs at her retail job before she was asked to sort hundreds of bottles of nail polish into rainbow order, ROYGBIV one assumes. Sure, fatigue is not kind to our creative skills but she still saw this task as "mindless" after sleeping on it, and singles it out to this day. Having heard this on "Marketplace" after 8 hrs at my engineering job, I immediately thought of possibilities for trying out efficient sort-merge algorithms (a mere 1024 bottles or so would be around 2^10 and could likely be counted to 1% precision in under a minute by splitting groups in half several times). As for what to do with gold, silver, brown, and black, one should appeal to the electrical resistor code, which also employs ROYGBIV. So far we've connected with physics, computer science and electrical engineering. Statistical observations might keep one amused while sorting and merging the various groups, so now we have math/statistics in the game. Gee, this reminds me of how I brightened up my "boring" summer jobs during college some 40 years ago, but there was often LESS to work with than this. Marlene, I can only hope that you find your way into more interesting work by starting right where you are and making the most of it.
