53
Percent Of All Young College Graduates In America Are
Either Unemployed Or Underemployed
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com
http://albertpeia.com/53percentununderemploymentforyoungcollegegrads.htm
If
you are in college right now, you will most likely either be unemployed or
working a job that only requires a high school degree when you graduate.
The truth is that the U.S. economy is not coming anywhere close to producing
enough jobs for the hordes of new college graduates that are entering the
workforce every year. In 2011, 53 percent of all Americans with a
bachelor's degree under the age of 25 were either unemployed or
underemployed. Millions upon millions of young college graduates feel
like the system has totally failed them. They worked hard in school all
their lives, they went into huge amounts of debt in order to get the college
education that they were told they "must have" in order to get a good
job, but after graduation they found that there were only a handful of good
jobs for the huge waves of college graduates that were entering the "real
world". All over
All over the
In
the last year, they were more likely to be employed as waiters, waitresses,
bartenders and food-service helpers than as engineers, physicists, chemists and
mathematicians combined (100,000 versus 90,000). There were more working in office-related jobs such as receptionist or
payroll clerk than in all computer professional jobs (163,000 versus 100,000).
More also were employed as cashiers, retail clerks and customer representatives
than engineers (125,000 versus 80,000).
Can you imagine working really hard
all throughout high school and college and always getting good grades and then
ending up as a bartender?
Sadly, many hard working college
graduates cannot seem to find a decent job no matter how hard they try.
The following is one example from the CNBC article mentioned above....
"I
don't even know what I'm looking for," says Michael Bledsoe, who described
months of fruitless job searches as he served customers at a
Initially
hopeful that his college education would create opportunities, Bledsoe
languished for three months before finally taking a job as a barista, a
position he has held for the last two years. In the beginning he sent three or
four resumes day. But, Bledsoe said, employers questioned his lack of
experience or the practical worth of his major. Now he sends
a resume once every two weeks or so.
Have you ever been there?
Have you ever sent out resumes week
after week, month after month, only to get absolutely nowhere?
Many recent college graduates are
being advised by "career counselors" that they should go back and
"get more education".
But is that really the answer?
The truth is that there are lots and lots of unemployed and underemployed
Americans with advanced degrees too. For example, a recent Business Insider article
profiled a law school graduate named
She
remains on food stamps so her social life suffers. She can't afford a car, so
she has to rely on the bus to get around
"That
has been really hard for me," she says. "I have absolutely no credit
anymore. I haven't been able to pay loans. It's scary, and it's a hard thing to
think you’re a lawyer but you’re impoverished. People don’t understand that
most lawyers actually aren’t making the big money."
But what "more education"
will do is that it will get you into even more debt. Student loan debt
can be one of the cruelest forms of debt, because it cannot be discharged in
bankruptcy.
As I wrote about a few days ago, total student loan
debt in the
Sadly, many students do everything
"right" and still end up in the middle of a
nightmare.
But it is not just young college
graduates that are suffering in this economy.
As I wrote about a while back, the
The mainstream media keeps telling us
that unemployment is going down, but the truth is that the percentage of working
age Americans that are employed is
not increasing. In March 2010, 58.5 percent of all working age Americans had a
job. In March 2012, 58.5 percent of all working age
Americans had a job.
Does that sounds like improvement?
Of course not.
Unlike what we have seen after every
other recession in the post-World War II era, the employment to population
ratio is not bouncing back, and that is really bad news.
The main reason for this is because
of the bad economy, but also it is important to understand that we are
transitioning away from an "employment economy".
Today, most large corporations view
employees as very expensive "liabilities". The goal for most
large corporations is to minimize those "liabilities" as much as
possible. In fact, these days some large corporations lay off huge
numbers of workers even while they are making huge profits at the same time.
Once upon a time, Henry Ford made a
conscious decision to pay his workers enough money so that they could afford to
buy the cars that they were making.
Today, most corporations simply do
not care about the living standards of their workers. They simply want to
maximize profits to the fullest extent possible.
Many small businesses would like to
hire more workers, but the federal government has made hiring workers so
complicated and so expensive that it has become exceedingly difficult to make a
profit on a worker. Most of the time it is simply
easier to try to do more with what you already have.
The number of Americans that can work
a job ("just over broke") and still live "the American
Dream" is steadily shrinking. Increasingly, the financial rewards in
our economy are being funneled to the very top of organizations and workers are
finding that their living standards continue to slowly go down.
At corporations that belong to the
Standard & Poor's 500 stock index, CEOs earn 380 times what the average worker makes
at those companies. In 1980, CEOs only earned 42 times what the average worker made at
those companies.
A fundamental shift is happening in
our economy and it is not going to be reversed any time soon. Workers are
not valued at most companies anymore. No matter how much of yourself you
give to your company, when the day comes that you become
"disposable", you will be cast aside as so much rubbish.
That is why I try to encourage people
to start their own businesses and to be their own bosses. There is no job
security anymore. The job that you have today could be gone tomorrow.
Meanwhile, the federal government is
actually spending your money to train foreign workers to take our
jobs. The following is from a recent Daily Caller article....
While
the president has been urging “insourcing,” the
government has been sending money to the
According
to
The
pair are calling on the United States Agency for International Development
(USAID) to immediately suspend what is known as the Job Enabling English
Proficiency (JEEP) program.
Can you believe that?
Over and over again, our politicians
talk about the need to keep jobs in the
It is truly maddening.
So what are the hordes of American
workers that cannot find jobs supposed to do?
Well, one thing we are definitely
seeing is a huge rise in the number of Americans that are dependent on the government.
For example, at the end of the Reagan
administration the ratio of workers on Social Security disability to active
workers was about 2 percent.
Today, it is over 6 percent.
During the first four months of 2012
alone, 539,000 more Americans were added to the
Social Security disability rolls and another 725,000 submitted new applications.
Another federal program that is
experiencing explosive growth is food stamps.
Last year, one out of every seven
Americans was on food stamps, and the Congressional Budget Office is
projecting that the number of people on food stamps will continue to grow through 2014.
It is so sad to see what is happening
to
Right now there are millions upon
millions of Americans that are sitting at home wallowing in despair. They
don't understand why nobody will hire them and they are rapidly running out of
options.
The following is a comment that a
reader left on one of my recent articles about the middle class....
I
cannot believe my present situation…
I
worked hard in school and college so that I could escape the low income
uneducated mess I grew up in.
I
made all the correct decisions with my career, finances, etc. I cannot figure
out how I got to where I am at now.
In
late 2008 I was laid off in the IT field. I was a go-getter, and I didn’t let
anyone tell me the economy would make it difficult to find a job. I had another
within 4 weeks.
Was laid off from that job last year.
I qualified for unemployment, but then my employer decides to bring a bunch of
lawyers and fight my eligibility. After I won again, they appealed again. I
finally couldn’t afford to keep paying attorney fees. I finally lost the
appeal. I had to pay all that money back.
I’m
still trying to find a job in my field. Being the go-getting I am, I immediately took a job waiting tables which amounted to
a 75% pay-cut.
I
had saved 6 months of expenses and that is completely dry. I have completely
drained my retirement and savings. Still cannot find a livable wage job after
almost a decade in my field.
Things
are slowly going into default and it feels utterly hopeless and stressful. My
pristine credit rating is gone, my savings and everything I worked for is gone.
I haven’t missed a payment on my mortgage, but it is coming. I can’t cut
anything more than I already have.
I
just can’t figure out how this could have happened to me. I played by the rules
and made all the right choices. I skipped vacations and time off to prove I was
a good worker and had what it took to be a valuable employee.
I
really am just at a loss at this point. I’m single and have no family. This is
really make-or-break for me. I have no fallback plan. The feeling of failure is
just gut-wrenching.
Please say a prayer for that reader
and for all of the other hard working Americans out there that are desperate to
find a job.
If you are at the end of your rope,
please do not give up. Even in the darkest moments, there is always a way
to turn things around if you will just keep on fighting.
Sadly, way too many people are giving
up on life because of the economy. In
The
economic downturn that has shaken
When the next major economic downturn
happens in the
But people need to realize that our
lives are not about how much stuff we own.
Even if every single thing is taken
away from you and you are left with nothing that does not mean that your life
is over.
Even if you have not been able to
find a job for years, that does not mean that you
should give up.
In life, everyone gets knocked down.
But unless you are dead, there is always a way to get
things turned around in a more positive direction.
One thing that I have learned in life
is that you must never, ever, ever, ever give up.
The years ahead are going to be
really hard for the global economy, but that doesn't mean that they have to be
horrible years for you.
The years ahead can be the very best
years of your entire life, but that will never happen if you decide to simply
give up.
