Quote:
Originally Posted by bwslim69
My opinion and I could be completely incorrect: there have often been difficulties breaking into the job market and being a contributor to the economy. I know there certainly was amongst my friends and I in the early/mid 90's, there was to some extent in the early 2000s and there unquestionably was in post 2008.
However, this is the first generation with the ability to complain about it ubiquitously via social media. So there is a sort of reinforcement/confirmation bias in play here.
I also believe there are more students with worthless degrees from suspect institutions that aren't nearly as valuable as the students expected.
I have seen some statistics that at least tangentially support my thesis but I can't put my finger on them ATM
I can go further.
Millennial are the first generation living with a clearly lower standard of living then their parents. This is true for people with degrees and people without. Real wages have fallen since 1980, and that’s true for people with decent college degrees and not just “some college” or the University of Phoenix crowd.
Parts of the economy that used to be a safe haven for the well educated (eg Professorships) are now highly competitive and unstable careers with lower real pay then in previous generations.
Perversely, as the economy has moved against people outside the .1% of wealth, it’s also made it more of a requirement to have a decent degree to get a high paid job, while significantly raising the cost of said degree (famous writer James Thurber worked his way through OH State as a dishwasher—think anyone could do that now, about 100 years later?—and that was before modern college finance so he didn’t have 100k+ in debt)
So it’s not just confirmation bias, in America 50 years ago an able bodied man could go get a factory job that would support a family of 4 in a house w a car. The equivalent of about 50/hr job full time job today + pension. Said same factory work today is 12-18/hr and you’re lucky if you get benefits.
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