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This Is What Happens When A Millennial Tries To Get A Job
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:
Carnevale says graduates are feeling let down by their universities, even as the institutions jack up the cost of tuition. “I don’t know if you noticed,” he says, “but we have a debate raging in this country right now over whether universities are supposed to teach for enlightenment or to prepare students for the job market. You still see presidents at some very prestigious universities arguing for the former, not the latter.”
Of course that could be because graduates from "very prestigious universities" are often i) deeply connected thanks to family pedigree and ii) heavily recruited, making it easier for them to find jobs and thus rendering the distinction between teaching "enlightenment" and teaching hard skills less meaningful. Whatever the case, you can probably count "presidents at some very prestigious universities" unconcerned because as the following excerpt makes clear, they're doing just fine.
Via Bloomberg:
Ivy League presidential pay is looking more like the big leagues.
Columbia University paid President Lee Bollinger $4.6 million in 2013, a 36 percent increase from the year before, according to a tax filing released Tuesday. Yale University recently revealed it paid former President Richard Levin a bonus of $8.5 million when he retired in 2013 after 20 years.
Presidential pay at elite universities is increasingly resembling that of corporate America, with performance bonuses and exit packages. While colleges say the rewards reflect the complexity of running multi-billion-dollar organizations, professors, alumni and others have questioned whether it is appropriate for nonprofits.
Here to sum up what it's like to be a millennial with a newly-minted $35,000 degree hunting for a job in America is another recent graduate from the DC area who told Newsweek the following:
“You’re like, ‘I’ll do anything and apply for everything, but usually it’s an electronic filing and you’re spending all your time on it and never hear back. So far, I have applied for around 30 jobs, if not more, and have heard back on two of them. I didn’t get either job because I don’t have enough experience. These are entry-level jobs, but experienced people are taking them.”
Good luck millennials and remember, there's always the farm.
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I'm not a liberal, and I don't endorse the things you're talking about. I was Merely speaking from a place of the perspective of society. Liberalism is attractive to the young because despite their faults they're the only ones convincing anyone they care about human beings other than themselves. I'm not saying they have solid logic or make good policies.
In that case, I humbly beg your pardon.
No worries, friend!
Yo, yo, dood, not to worry.
All that crap is just propaganda pushed on us by the (s)think tanks, filled with super-losers like Tucker Carlson, Paul Wolfowitz and those psychos who had to flee their countries after the CIA-led coups were also overthrown (check out the think tank roster sometime, and see how many psychos you can find from Augusto Pinochet's regime, and a slew of other similar ones).
It is pretty galling to listen to boombers blaming anyone. If ever there was a generation that should have been smothered in their cribs...
That being said, I wish I saw more young people willing to:
1 - Learn to read, speak and write english well. This means cultivating an expansive vocabulary and becoming initimately familiar with the eight types of words in the english language and knowing exactly what each type does and how they all fit together into gramattically correct clauses and phrases. You will be amazed what having this skill can do for you in face to face interviews.
2 - Turn off the twitter hive mind and think in silence for at least an hour a day.
3 - Dream creatively from an empty slate. This is the opposite of watching TV.
One other point, if you will excuse my verbal flatulence.
I think your generation might still end up being the beginning of something new and wonderful.
You were the first ones to grow up being wired 100% of the time. I complain about the twitter hive mind, but I find that kind of thing repellent having been born to a world that was decidedly semi wired at best.
When Watson gets wired to a billion human minds via smartphones, it is hard to imagine what kind of wealth that world might produce.
Your job is to form a consensus of like minds that can agree on how to share that wealth equitably.
It is no easy job. Capitalism is the best distribution method we have found so far and we all see the holes tearing open in that system as it is corrupted into fascism.
Your generation is uniquely sitiuated to understand how to make massively distributed decisions in realtime or near realtime.
As much as I think this fucker is going down, there is still a decent chance that instead of blowing up and ending in death and misery, it could coalesce into an new and sparkling interweb of enlightened minds generating unimaginable wealth and then spreading that wealth in new egalitarian methods.
I'm much older than you, graduated from a very prestigious university, and I'm here to tell you that your career progression doesn't sound hugely different than what mine was decades ago.
If I've learned anything about the working world, it's the following:
1) It's 90% who you know, and 10% what you know. If you are connected into a job, they will assume that you will learn on the job, and the fact is 95% of all jobs can be learned on the job. There is NO substitute for networking when it comes to looking for work. All other methods are a DISTANT second.
2) If you are trying to get hired through the classifieds (or online, nowadays), I've got news for you: it was ALWAYS a unicorn hunt. They put impossible qualifications in the job description in order to (a) weed out candidates, (b) give the person doing the hiring plausible deniability if/when the person hired screws the pooch--Hoocoodanode! Look at their resume!, and (c) give themselves time to find someone that someone inside the company already knows and is willing to vouch for.
3) The only way to get hired regardless of qualifications is if you have foresight enough to develop skills in a very young, rapidly expanding industry. Trying to break into graphic arts today is almost hopeless. 25 years ago, at the dawn of the desktop publishing era, if you had design skills and even just a little computer smarts, it would have been almost impossible NOT to get hired if you tried even a little.
4) 99% of the jobs available are shitty jobs and 1% are good jobs. Why? People never quit the good jobs. People always quit the shitty jobs. Get it?
5) Figure out a way to start your own business (which you eventually figured out). Most of the time it won't work out the way you hope it will, but given the above numbers (99% of available jobs suck), the odds are still in your favor. Working for "the man" always does, and always will, suck.
All that said, I would agree that this is the worst time ever to be out of college. But that doesn't mean there was a time when finding a good job out of college was easy. It was always the exception, not the rule.
Good post BB. I have been preaching the same stuff to my kids for years.
College degree now is just a necessary credential in most cases anyhow. But, ROI has to be a factor. And that is a gamble to some degree. Using the world we came from as a guide is suicide though. Not all degrees are created equal, that is for sure. And not all careers require degrees either.
It's true - and I would say to anyone that a degree in design is a bad investment In General. Design is something that you probably need some inherent ability in to begin with, and the rest is best learned from real world job experience. Just find an internetship and start your design career. Skip college.
Apprenticeship was a lot more common at one time. Young people could start off earning money by being a helper while learning. Companies see that now as just not worth it. Tomorrow doesn't matter, it's all about today. Employers bitch and whine they can't find the experience and skills they need because they're too short-sighted and greedy to invest in that commitment.
That might also earn them a loyal employee, something else companies today don't care about. Employees get thrown away the minute they see fit, like an old shoe.
Outstanding comments, Buckaroo, and to add some harsh reality-based comments:
You (original commenter) are living through the extended fourth official jobless recovery, and with the previous three one-fifth of the then existing jobs disappeared, and only about one-half of that one-fifth were ever created again, and one-half of that one-half of the one-fifth paid far less than the preexisting jobs which disappeared.
This fourth one appears to have lost between one-fifth to one-fourt, and counting.
According to a study out from Rutgers awhile back, almost one-half of the so-called new jobs creation from the Obama Administration CANNOT BE VERIFIED --- if they can't be verified, they most likely do not exist!
So, a shrinking jobs base do to continuing and increasing offshoring of American jobs, and the importing of foreign visa scab workers.
'
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The term for this is "blat".
is a term which appeared in the Soviet Union to denote the use of informal agreements, exchanges of services, connections, Party contacts, or black market deals to achieve results or get ahead.[1]
The system of blat can be seen an example of social networks with some similarities to networking (especially 'good ol' boy' networks) in the United States, old boy networks in the United Kingdom and the former British Empire,[2]
or guanxi in China.[3] Accordingly, blatnoy means a man who obtains a job or gets into a university using connections, or sometimes bribes. In the Soviet republics, blatnoys were very much in demand as it was difficult to gain a post or enroll in some prestigious majors in universities without proper connections.
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It's one step from outright corruption, and it's ruining us.
Sensible analysis.
I really should have proof read this before posting it... and 1 edit limit... embarrassing.
Pretty good post BR, cogent, poignant and compelling.
3.5 of 5 and a greenie.
Don't worry about it.
Bad proofing from Tyler was the genesis of the excellent ZH meme Shitgum Suicide.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-04-05/abn-amro-ex-ceo-found-dead
I always wondered about that, thanks.
You are moving along due to your work ethic. In my day the work ethic probably pushed me along about double the pace you are so you have a steeper battle. But at least you keep fighting and are smart enough to know you had some good fortune along the way. It's awesome you stayed out of debt. Too bad folks like you and others here are outnumbered by the FSA.
Anyone who's ever managed people (adult daycare), knows that showing up (on time, ready to work - fed, clothed, washed, coiffed, habla Anglais, etc.) with good attitude and aptitude is what most employers want.
I think you are stuck in a rut --- no offense intended, darteaus!
That was the old days, today the employer just wants a zombie until they offshore the job.
So very true. I saw the bottom half of an engineering class hired relatively quickly, into mundane jobs. The top half, who ordinarily would have been headed to R&D or management roles, were left to rot (or go to grad school, and then rot).
Sorry, I had to downvote you. My last four employers didn't want aptitude. Oh, sure, they _said_ they did. But in practice what they really wanted was an obedient scapegoat. You're supposed to be a "team player" and agree that 2+2=5 lest you be labeled as "arrogant" and then throw yourself under the bus when, surprise, the project falls apart.
My biggest advice for your group is learn how to suck cock and kiss ass. If your people skills suck seek help. Plenty of fucking retrards will climb the ladder and leave you in the dust if you dont swallow that load.
Nice talents to list on your resume.
Do I hear the authoritative voice of experience?
Congrats on your professional survival.You will never know what you never had. Please ponder an "once upon a time" story that ended about 1999.
There was a time when US Tech and Manufacturing Corporations were starved for American Educated labor. Some of them had 3 shifts running almost year rouund to keep up with demands.
- Many had hiring recruiters in all 3 shifts so that workers could come in and apply for a job in person. The better companies had managers who could make hiring decisions for peer managers on multiple shifts, not just their own. What a radical idea yES? (The early bird principle at work here.)
- Almost every Engineering and CS graduate in almost all the US Universities had at least 2 to 4 job offers to choose from by the end of each May.
- Internships WERE PAID competively. That added 1+ year to graduation, but those were the most sought out graduates by every industry.
- By law there were few if any H1B workers. - ALLMOST NO TEMP WORKERS. One was hired as a full time company worker.
- Industrial competition for labor in general and the best labor in particular was FIERCE.
It was well known for many company mangers to up the salary offers in order to "close the applicants."
Nothing I have said is partucularly important. Just an illustration of what Americans have lost in the workplace. i am glad I am in the twillight of my career. If I were your age my peers might be demanding a revolution. Not much hope of that with the Gen X or Millenials however.
- MASTERS degrees were almost entirely sponsored by employers. Top Bachelors-level grads were hired as employees and received company salary/benefits/mentorship/access to resources while studying. Thesis'/dissertations were directly related to scientific problems faced by the sponsoring firm.
- Engineers were practically begged to return to their alma maters a year after graduation and recruit the next batch of hires, with presentations given on how great their employer treated them. Invitatations for tours and even flights paid for. I personally remember so many events for upper years students, both formal, and ad hoc (as in, down at the bar with the tab picked up by the employer) that it actually got in the way of studying or completing final project work for some.
- Engineering managers had complete hiring authority, and it was widely recognized that any engineer hired could easily create value in excess of his pay. None of this "I have to talk to HR about getting you an extra week off" nonsense that sounds like it was lifted from used car salesmen tactics ("I have to go ask my manager").
- Nobody, and I mean, nobody called IT, engineering, etc., a "cost center". Any accountant who did that probably would have found their tenure truncated during the next upheaval.
- Within reason, engineering and production facilities were always open for tours as a professional courtesy to individual engineers or groups of engineering professionals.
If you value freedom you will work for yourself. The thing that is important to understand is that employers look to retain good workers at the lowest cost and that is done with dependency. Corporations started all of this "benefits" crap years ago as a means of capturing employees, making it difficult to leave. The hardest thing you can do is walk away from a "job" to become self employed. Its tough, but freedom is tough. There is more to life than money and benefits.
I decided to go the corporate career path because I had the humility to admit that I didn't have the experience or skills to honestly sell my services to businesses that relied on them for the amount I would need to survive. I wanted real world experience aside more seasoned designers to learn and grow. At some point, maybe working for myself will be my path.
More to life than money and benefits? Really?
Try paying the mortgage and day care on that. Exploring your inner self doesn't feed the darlings and they tend to whine when they get hungry.
With all the taxes and government regs, it has become harder and harder to become successfully self-employed, but my hat's off to all who do.
Why do you have a mortgage?
Why do you pay for daycare?
You are staring at the bark of a tree.
You can't see the forest.
Seek_Truth,
I don't have a mortgage and don't have daycare. But the topic we are is millennials and they do have those things.
Debt is a form of slavery to be avoided at all costs. That said, I do think that money and benefits have their place because you don't become debt free without planning. Oh, and I never had a student loan either.
Misread you then, now that you have clarified where you are coming from.
I amend my statement to read: Millenials should learn that they don't need daycare or mortgages.
And any non-millenials too.
Seek_Truth,
I don't have a mortgage and don't have daycare. But the topic we are discussing is millennials and they do have those things.
Debt is a form of slavery to be avoided at all costs. That said, I do think that money and benefits have their place because you don't become debt free without planning. Oh, and I never had a student loan either.
That is the fucking definition of a worthless degree. I know so many fucking losers living with their parents with that exact same degree. "Oh I want to use photoshop all day and make lulzcats." Yea, enjoy your minimum wage and unemployment.
I'm happy for your success. It's strange how people feel the need to typify millemials. We are not some rare, strange breed. We just grew up in the age of the Internet boom.
A master in women’s studies equals a job at Hooters !
The meme that all young people are getting useless degrees and that's why they can't get work has to end. Show me real stats that prove that a large enough percentage of millenials are getting frivelous degrees to have a significant impact on the employability of millenials and then we can talk. Lets compare the number of students getting wacky degrees to those who can't find employment and see if this makes any sense.
Psychology is the most popular UG major.
I could do really well in my career if I had a psychology degree. In fact, I'd probably be MORE qualified for web design
Being able to figure out what makes a person tick is an incredibly valuable skill in life. Not sure that a psychology degree helps much with that, though. You are either born with it, or you learn it from interacting with lots of different people. When you keep your eyes and ears open, and your mouth shut, it is amazing what you can learn about people.
It's probably why I'm attracted to my career, I'm interested in the way people think... in understanding, predicting, and in a sense manipulating it. In my IRL life I've always been very good at figuring out what people want to hear in respect to what I want to achieve and using that to my advantage. Particularly authority figures, which has been immensely helpful. I've been on friendly terms with many of my professors, managers, bosses throughout my life. On the internet, however, I tend to be too... myself to be likable. This is getting pretty far off topic, though.
If there are no jobs, does it matter if the degree is useless? But you do have to wonder about the Occupy student who paid $250,000 for a degree in Haiku Poetry and then wondered why she had no job offer.
I wonder where her parents were? In the past, the folks provided career advice. Now that the village is raising the children, it appears that you just study what looks fun and is easy enough to allow plenty of time for drinking.
Given that Womyn's Studies is the province of screeching harpies and horsefaced lesbians, I guarantee you that no Womyn's Studies graduate has ever worked at Hooters.
Are you saying a Womyn's Studies graduate doesn't own her own body? Typical phallocratic rhetoric
/feministlogic
I have begun telling hubby that women should not have been given the vote. Wisely, hubby says nothing. Truly, most of the ones I know only discuss shopping and running the roads. It is very discouraging.
When I look at market fundamentals, I am seeing a major correction about September so I guess that means war. Wonder who with? China, Russia, or the Middle East. Choices, choices, choices.
Sweet Cheeks, you are a woman after my own heart. Most women are indeed useless. Tell your husband he is a lucky man.
Buckaroo Banzi,
My husband and I are indeed fortunate and blessed with each other. But I do wish both men and women were better informed; our futures depend upon it.
Is this really a woman specific problem, though? How many citizens are really qualified to vote if you really think about it? How many are indocrinated into camps by media - if they even care about politics at all? How many young people have been taught complete apathy to politics in both sexes?
Lots of neo-con ReadyReserve fodder.
Liberty is a demand. Tyranny is submission.
History does not repeat, tyranny does. e.g. there never has been in history an iPhone, but another government invading, raping, and pillaging another like the DC US is doing to Iraq has happened numerous times. There has never been an Internet in history until recently, but there have been a multitude of governments preoccupied with what people may be thinking and saying.
So apparently the Dallas/Fort Worth Airport has the capacity to expand to over 400 gates...which is truly staggering if you care about this stuff.
Also in theory you can fly a thousand passengers on the Airbus A380.
Qatar has on order one with the capacity of over 600.
Hope they have good bathrooms...
Hooter's is my favorite sports bar. Yeah baby !!!
so, like, what degree should one persue if one wants to work at hooters?
Why not just go full blown stripper and make some real cash
My Commencement Speech
Pay now and pay even more later young achievers,
or ACT now and maybe one day you'll get paid.
END THE FED this year for super extra credit!
And to all you babyboomer, dumb-fucking, dipshit, clueless cowards calling themselves parents and Dylan lovers, "get out of the way if you can't lend a hand."
The time is nigh. Good night and drive safely...
My Commencement Speech
You've been had. But it's not too late to follow in the footsteps of the most famous American student, the late, the great Charles Whitman.
Good night and drive safely...
So you study hard, get into some industry you didnt aim for and work your way up. Guess what, it sucks. Corporations will suck all the imagination and life out of you. Its fit for people who dont aspire or will never bother changing their lifestyle. Spend your time developing a career, take two weeks a year to visit family, and poof, you are 40. If that happened you likely followed the debt trap and have the turbo SUV and 3000 sq.ft. on .25 acres. All that you attempted to aviod became you. Lifestyle funnels you in, as well as experience. Other companies, especially in different industries, dont recognize the intangibles or aptitude. The game has changed. You have to hurdle the algos with a mirror resume to job req and then deal with the simpleton in HR.
My happiest times had nothing to do with money.
Do something that looking back will produce a smile. Travel, create, think, be.
Amen!
Wise words- happiness comes from within.
Slaving for riches is not the answer.
"What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?" - Mark 8:36,37
Correct - don't slave, but get/or make a job:
Paul worked as a tent-maker, surely not his chosen profession (Acts 18:3), and
"The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat" 2 Th 3:10
You've almost encouraged me to put the Cayenne in the garage and burn down my house.
Those simpletons in HR always seem to fund a safe and cosy niche.
You are right on Mike. I went to college as well and graduated but after that I really didn't do what everyone else did. I didn't even go to school for what everyone was going for. I went for horticulture. I was working on a golf course and I liked that a lot so I pursued after graduation and became assistant superintendent/mechanic/irrigation tech at a shitty par three course after a graduating. I saved money and drove shitty cars and lived in shitty apartment had two lawn chairs and crappy old TV left over from college with no cable, no internet and for several not even a phone. Finally I bought a computer and got a phone line and got in the interwebs where I met a Russian woman. I wasn't going anywhere though. Three years of conversing finally convinced that she is the real deal. There was no skype back then either. Finally, I went to Russia and pissed off my entire family. I paid my own way. Went through all of the bullshit and ended up marrying her and we have two children now.
During that period of time, which was like a 5 year span, the golf course I had been working at had been sold for real estate development(2005) and my Mother was undergoing chemotherapy for cancer.(Dad was already passed away). I grew up in a kind of poor family and we didn't have a lot but we had a paid for house and good property. Now I have multiple issues, I have to support my Mom because maintenance needs to be done to the house and property taxes paid, equipment fixed, bills paid both and Mom's and now I am out of a job and have a new to America Russian woman on the way. My brother helped when he could but he had his family to worry and was not thrilled with my decision to marry a Russian woman. And still had student loans to pay what I had saved was quickly depleted. That is when the credit card debt started and a gap in my coin collection began occur. I fucking hated it.
I found another assistant superintendent position in Wisconsin but it didn't pay well for my level of experience and it was salaried so I couldn't just work more hours to earn more so I kept looking and found a head superintendent position in southern Minnesota. They pay was good but the budget was tiny and I did that for two years. I went through a few different owner scenarios and that did work out but at least I had stabilized the listing ship and decided that they did not need a superintendent anymore. Out of work again. Now what to do. I was working too many hours and sometimes not coming home and with a new wife and new child that is not good. I looked for something else and I got hired by a company called LESCO. Now it is a big corporate thing and I was the Assistant Manager of a branch. The pay was good and the benefits were great. I was in sales and store management. About nine months passed and then John Deere bought LESCO and Fired just about everyone with more than one year of experience and totally fucked up the supply chain and then things became very hard between customers and myself. It became a shitshow. You could not get what the customer ordered. All day long I would have to take it on the chin from not only the customer but John Deere corporate. It was horrible and Mom was getting sicker and older and weaker and she needed help. Grin and fucking bear it man.
Then John Deere closed my store after they fired my manager but I had to run the store alone until the end of the year which I did. Then I got transferred to a different store but in market but a 45 minute drive one way. I paid off my student loans at this time by cashing in my Roth IRA and taking the tax hit. OK, my job was to convince my customers to do business there instead. I did that successfully and almost doubled the store's profits almost all on cash sales. Then a competing company went out of business in a somewhat different market so I was offered the branch manager position which I took and we moved to where we are now. That was a whole huge pain in the ass and the customers didn't John Deere's policies and they didn't like me for enforcing them. I can't let product go out the door without it being paid for. I would get, "But HydroLogic used to let us do that". Yeah, and HydroLogic is in bankruptcy proceedings and this ain't HydroLogic. My employees were all former HydroLogic employees as well so that was big hurdle but I overcame it and got them going on how run a store. Things went fairly well for a year and we had our second child. Mom was really starting to lose it and I was taking care of that situation as best I could still. She didn't have any money.
In 2011 things started to get really bad with her health and and there were a lot of power of attorney things that she would not sign. I got the property, my brother and sister got the life insurance money and fuck it dragged on for a long time the dementia set in. Gaurdianship had to be established through court proceedings and the estate settled, irrevocable trusts you name it and the list goes on. Finally, she passed away in 2012. I had so much going that I was not doing my job properly and my employees were not picking me up. I got fired. Fuck again. I cashed out what I had with the 401K and took another hit but I could survive for a while without selling any PM's. But now I had a house to renovate and get ready to sell.
I started calling around to people I know in the industry and found another job pretty much right away and this for a small supply company willing to compete. The pay was good so I took it and found out the hard way that that company sucks to work for because the GM is a psychopathic twit who text all sales people at 3 AM with some long winded text about how bad at sales we all were. Yeah, well, your business model sucks and I warned of that. I couldn't work with that guy. Their accounting was fucking up the billing if a purchase was done on credit and trying to charge extra and just generally pissing people off. More headaches. My job was to sell and I did make the sale and now it is all fucked up and I have to deal with it. Goodbye. I made sure to call everyone in my book of business and explain that situation and that I am sorry for the confusion and that I will not represent that company any longer because it is my reputation and I am not willing to damage it representing a bullshit outfit. Out of work again!LOL
What to do? Well, relationships in any industry are key so I went to work for a lawn care outfit that I helped build from the ground up. I could not pull a lot of money because you have to reinvest and was not technically even on the payroll. I managed through the winter and worked again last year, this time on payroll but it was 73 miles one way to the shop and that is not good and I know that we are chaning how we want to do things so I a still have a job there so to speak but I am not working there now. I needed benefits for my kids. I need healthcare and our operation can't afford that shit. We make money but if you are going to do capex there is no way in hell that you can offer benefits even to yourself. It's really hard to make money as a legit small business in lawn care that actually any insurance and overhead. We have a construction/remodel side that actually makes all of the money to sudsidies the piss poor on lawn care services. That is another story.
I did all of the remodeling work on that property in Wisconsin and I paid the taxes and the utilities and went there and the mundane. I was running up some debt on the old credit. I went through two different realtors over two years and nothing. Not a single offer. I kept lowering my price and spending more time on it while ignoring my career. I fought tooth and nail over every penny. Finally, I found a buyer on my own and I just waited out the contract with the real estate agent. He wanted who it was that made an offer and wouldn't tell him. He threated to sue me if I sold it and didn't give him commission. I asked for his list of protected buyer and this person;s name was not on it. Jan 3 2015 comes and the deal is done and closes in February, deposit check, bank has issues of course and pay off all of the debt accrued.
I did it. I discharged my debt. I executed and discharged my reponsibilities and obligations. I had to sacrifice so much to do that but I could not sacrifice my driven goal of completing this part of my life and I am ecstatic that it is over with now. RIP 1999-2015. Somehow through all of that time, I managed to accumulate some guns, ammo gold and silver and recently platinum. I made heavy coin silver when it hit $49.50. That helped me deal with all of the above.
Guess what I am doing now? I work on a golf course.;-) I know plenty of people and they know my history. Lot's of former customers still keep in touch with me. The beauty of this one is that I am just grounds crew but get paid an assistant super's wage because of my experience. That is perfect job for me right now because it covers what my monthly expenses are and I have no title and no management responsibilities. Not only that, I enjoy decent common courtesy from everyone on the staff. They all know that I was the boss more than once. The young college kids I work with can't understand why I don't complain or why I am not still a superintendent. Well, I am not going to explain everything. I consider my lucky that I was able deal with it all. Other people have it far worse than I did. You have to put all of the pieces together the best you can and fight through it.
One last observation though that bothered me a bit. A college kid came to work for his second season today as college is wrapping up but he has a Harley-Davidson and and a nice 1200 Sportster. He parked over in the assistant's driveway which off course property and I heard a little mention of that in the break while passing. It is his bike because I him going that way for lunch. I have a question to ask here: How did he afford that motorcycle? Is that your Dad's bike? He sure was not acting that way though. Harley riders are not ones to let their kid run their iron. I won't. Get your own. It is about a 6-7$K bike because it has some custom features and shotgun exhaust. Nice bike. I might need to own it eventually. How does college a kid afford a HD? Really? I could only dream of one day having a bike like that at his age and here he already has one. Finally, at age 41 after all the shit I finally bought a decent HD and decent one for my wife. I can't make false accusations but that one concerns me. Did he take out an extra amount in his student loans to buy that bike? I haven't said anything about it yet.
Manipuflation,
Did you read what you wrote? Wow. You perservered. You are a real success in my book.
Thank You for that comment sweet cheeks. I am not done perservering yet. I don't follow corporate policy too well. I can't say that I have beaten the system though. I am still here though. Now to take care of the offspring as best I can. At least I am well prepared for the teenage years that I will face from my own children. I think it might pretty tough to try to tell Dad some bullshit story about where either of them were at 12 AM and they know it.
I received a degree in English so that I could teach children how to read and write. They needed me because their parents were either too lazy, too stupid, or too busy chasing money to spend on salad shooters and lawn decorations to do it themselves. Thus, if you think that subjects such as English aren't worth studying in college, then teach your own children how to write (and write well, not 'good').
Yes, let's all be engineers and programmers and polymer chemists! Won't that be a fun world? I'd rather hang out with William Blake than with a polymer chemist, and so would you.
With that said, is anyone out there looking for a shaman to hire?
Depends on the dimensions and cup size of the chemist actually.
Beautifully written. My hat is off to you.
Kudos, creeko! :-) But, to survive in the School System, you might have to also coach some sport or do something else that makes the school money or otherwise makes it look good. Shakespeare? Website showing off to the community the students' talents? I'm not thinking, quite, School of Rock, but whatever gets notice, in a good way. Some of my favorite teachers were English teachers. Reading is the gateway to understanding.
Every parent goes through this:
The kid begins to find out that Mom and Dad DID have a clue when they were barking about becoming employable.
dad meet mom at hooters
pretty soon have take out
baby
I gotta job for young unemployed colledge educated females...The pay is a little better then minimum wage.
Ernst & Young LLP is always on the hunt for college grad slaves.
Long hours and low pay, but you're there for the experiece.
You'll be the Director at a company someday.
Stop crying.
I'm tired of reading this propaganda bullshit.
E&Y is just as nepotistically retarded as Deloitte and Douche. Do you remember that Adam Lanza guy who shot up something in Conneticut? Well his daddy worked as a corporate tax accountant at E&Y and his brother who was prolly a COMMUNITY COLLEGE undergrad was well employed there.
I wonder how he got THAT job! Not that there are CPAs , MBAs, etc. who would be tickled pink for a shot to work there.
The perceived (to me) racist, nepotistic, incompetant as the managers are at these firms frightens me. Companies don't have working business relationships anymore with their human capital.
Be your own bossman - the more I practice, the luckier I get
In 2009 after passing someones' stupid "I'm not an idiot" test for BJ's restaurant once. After working as a server before I got my degree.
Well the loser interviewing me for that position (in the SF YAY Area) asked me why I wanted to be a waiter instead of "making the big bucks in finance".
For the reputation that the SF Yay Area gets for its' intellectual talent, I ran into A LOT of idiots. They were not just "greedy", but tacky and stupid. Incredibly stupid, low class, retarded, braindead, not just narcissistic but almost sociopathically ***STUPID!***
I applied for a simple clerk/accountant job. The idiot who got a Masters in econ at Columbia asked me what I was going to do when the economy improved.
That was in 2009. Whatever happened to "I'm a great worker and I need a survival job?" I have a very low opinion of Columbia University, and it's not just because Arianna Huffington got her Masters in Econ there either. Because she's a braindead troll too.
I applied for a server position in a small diner. The restaurant manager was trying to hook up with me.
These kids who were able to get serving jobs post bachelors are the lucky ones .
This is before the overrepresented minority clause making my life an even BIGGER wreck!
The number of non-officers with bachelors with degrees make up most of the Navy bootcamp graduations. I wasn't well enough to get in.
BUT! After meeting very sophisticated educated people with either a CPA or a Masters in Accounting (and yes they're Asian AMERICANS) get laid off by the same Deloitte and Douche that fucked up unemployment to hell for U.S. citizens only during the holidays- I discovered that a "trophy" clique (white) girl who majored in preschool ed has a management position at that firm.
I think you have to know how to count to get a degree in preschool ed.
Apparently you don't need to know Quickbooks backwards and forwards, the last detail in GAAP on mark to market, how to correct journal entries on SAP, how to find the general ledger on Oracle, how to reverse entries on Quickbooks (Because it's such a "hard" system to learn-NOT)...how to line the check paper in the printer to cut checks, what an auditor is, how to do a pivot table and vlookup (not the best but this is the extent of data manipulation knowledge among the "experts" and "professionals"),
how to compose a double entry bookkeeping system of inventory, what the laws in China state is the difference between U.S. and their own standard Financial Statement formats, double declining depreciation, the difference between Amortization and Depreciation and taxes....none of that. I think you might need to know how to find Excel from the Start Up menu on a PC (not Mac) for the preschool major.
I'm sure she has "people skills", like my sniveling boss at the trading firm who didn't pass his S7 until after his entire team did.
While the "post racist" society put Americans with an Asian name into financial hardship.
I learned this only after I learned that public schools in CA are not allowed to give any hispanic student any grade lower than a "C" (even though the performance between them and the blacks out here are attrocious). Add the tax breaks companies get in this liberal state for hiring a quota of underrepresented minorities (black and latinos) - as if that wasn't racism at all!
The New Trade Theory financed by foreign loans to the U.S. Treasury financed government sponsored ops filled with obvious corruption, INCOMPETANCE, RACISM and nepotism didn't fix the economy! Maybe it fixed a portion of Latin America's economy. But not ours.
This country disgusts me.
"Millennials have also discovered what we’ve been harping on for months: for most Americans, there simply is no wage growth."
Progressive millennial assclowns also know their progressive hero obama says things are the best they have ever been-- a lie.
Embrace the progressive suck assclowns.
Oh and don't forget, the progressive stupid, it burns.
Grimaldus
Its the deflationary downward spiral of wages. As people witness their real income shrinking they are less inclined to productive efforts, which in turn leads to more automation/technology wage replacements. I see it everywhere. People are becoming increasingly indifferent to their performance and many employers are just scraping by. This looks to be going down, swirling ever faster and closer to the drain.
Amen Grimaldus.
Stupid fucking dommel. No idea what is right or wrong, They just know they want to be cool like the rest of their groupmind drones. They are a colony organism destined to die.
Since when did voting for people who actually know how to run a business become uncool?
How do you vote for some know nothing asshat who has never had a real job in his life? What did you think the consequences of putting that economically backwards rube in office would be?
Did you really burn your future to the ground just because the literatti who compose the twitter group mind said you should?
Unfucking believable.
Drink deep little millenial fanboys because this shit show it is going to get a lot worse before it gets any better.
And most of you fucking cunts won't even be here by the time it gets betters because you don't have the grit to grind out the hard times.
You will be shot, slaved, eaten or worse.
Perfectly brainwashed progressive assclowns a-plenty in this thread man, incredible. They were never told that government is the biggest and worst murderer ever in history. Power kills, millions upon million murdered by government and big government worshipping progressives cheer for more! The brainwashing has been successful, yes?
More government equals more murder.
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/MURDER.HTM
Progressive millennials are having a hard time because of the growth of criminal and tyrannical out of control government. A government that they work hard to support, a government that will steal everything from them and kill them without so much as a thought.
The progressive stupid, it burns.
Grimaldus
At 68 years old I'm a high dropout who is currently self employed as a waiter. I've just been asked to go to the cellar to fetch another cup of Strawberry Wine. I'ts a small place and so I must work as the vinter too. Life is good enough. Fine homemade wine makes it even better. Prosit !
Which is funny, because a little over 10 years ago, I was fresh out of college and struggling to find a job, and shortly before graduation, in the only appointment that I ever had with the career center (basically a guidance counselor), I took some test that suggested I take up farming.
I really feel for kids graduating today because I still remember what it was like to be out of college with a STEM degree, staring down the barrel of loans coming due, and having every door slammed in my face. It's a screwed up world and the last thing they need is a mob of clueless I've-got-mine assholes taking another dump down their throats.
Have your kid study Russian.
Full employment over there for Russian speakers.
Please!!!! comments like 'I really feel for kids graduating today' are really just a bunch of bleeding heart BS.. Why should we have to 'feel for them'?? why can't they realize that the real world outside of college or outside their little social circle doesn't revolve around them and a job isn't what you see on the 70 inch TV ?? Yes, life is hard too fucking bad... and the worst thing is that it seems everyone somehow expects a job to fall in ones lap.
Oh look, another grumpy old man with diarrhea who got lost on his way to the bathroom.
Yale is not for getting a job
it is for making connections
when you are rich you do not need a job, you need connections
Read the whole thread of comments on this article and just been hit by that fucking lightbulb moment again, directly and at 'Brother Rat', can you see why there can never be a political solution to our un-surmountable problems?
To those of you who are just the type of folk I love, fair play, to you cunts who cant see that your whole fucking life is, was, and continues to be a figment of your indoctrinated imagination, not so fucking fair play.
The kids, and mine are in this group, didnt cause the fucking collapse of world wide banking, didnt rig the 'Libor Rate' didnt fucking cover up endemic child abuse, and child rape, didnt vote for, and approve of fucking cunts like Bush, Bliar, Bush 2, Thatcher who had christmas lunch with jimmy the dead body fucking rapist saville for 13 years on the trot.
These kids had no say in this, these fucking kids are a victim of our collective circumstance, and just like me, stand here scratching their heads wondering what the fuck they are going to do about this shit.
There is no political solution as I say repeatedly on these pages, the only end to the shit we are living under is the lowest common denominator man has ever known, and I lost nearly everything I ever had in 2008, and the only thing that made me hang on was my two kids.
That lowest of the low what I would genuinely do you in for, is my kids. I will kill you first.
This ends in violence. it always did, and if you ever researched anything about history,
You would fucking know that. I may have been a daft cunt and knew nothing, but my children didnt, and have no part in this. Brother Rat, dont worry mate, folks like me are right by your side.
;-)
Yeah, like a lemming going over the fucking cliff.
We all have trials and tribulations, your kids are your focus, you obviously love them...so good.(sincerely)
But the rest of your arguement?...yeah, cannot WAIT to see the Utopia you guys create. Oh yeah, thats right...it'll never happen, we should all go home because a 25-year timeline destroyed the country forever.
See, you guys quit before you even try. And with even a small setback...you quit.
It ain't nintendo you fucks...no 2nd and 3rd life. With all your technology and "Knowledge" you cannot seem to put a simple person or persons up to a vote or organize to get the guy in office you want. What's that you say?....Obama was your guy?...you git fucked over?
Welcome to reality.....
Thank you, friend.
After reading the comments I see people painting either old or young with the same brush and it isn't true.
I have seen people who were older who were lazy and parasites and young with the same qualifications.
However I have seen the good qualities in both age groups as well.
A lot also depends on the employer and many of them are as bad or worse than some of employees which are trashed here.
organic farming is what to get into now with demand rising for organic food.
The real victims here are White male kids from middle and working class backgrounds. Discriminated against at every hands turn they'll be bottom of the heap when it comes to job opportunities in the country their ancestors built. No make-up Equality Manager jobs for them. But they'll have been conditioned anyway following their numerous rejections when they applied for university initially.
Oh please. actually this demographic does very well. White male kids also can make over $100,000 in any construction job or any trade in most major cities in the USA now if they don't want to do 4 years of college.
It is minority kids from middle & working class backgrounds who aren't into gangster & hip hop crap that are discriminated against especially for white collar jobs. Many have to literally change their names (ex. changing Sanchez to Sanchis) so their Resume isn't automatically put in the reject pile. Have you been in Boston, NYC or DC or any major city in the USA? White collar corporate jobs are comprised of almost entirely white males under the age of 40 with a few Indian & East Asians here & there (usually in non client facing positions).. Minorities make up almost all of the service positions at least in NYC -- if you goto the Upper East or Upper West side of Manhattan it is striking -- you never ever see any white person working at a supermarket or store just minorities who serve the top 1% who lives in those neigborhoods
The economy has been in the tank for a number of years now so there is no excuse for these college students to be graduating with degrees in sociology, psychology, anthropology, women's studies, black studies, Latino studies, or what-have-you. There is still a small number of career fields that result in job opportunities such as mechanical engineering, civil engineering, finance, construction management, ect. Maybe the high school kids are starting to realize that it doesn't matter if the richest kid in town goes to a "prestigious" college and majors in fluff because that kid's future was assured by his family connections even before he left high school. If they try the same thing they will be hit by a freight train.
the problem is there has always been a need for the top 10% of college grads and a fluctuating need for the rest. now that a college degree has no academic barrier the quality of the product is affected so there are even fewer qualified graduates as a percentage of total graduates. college is what high school was in the 50s back when the likes of ge and westinghouse taught high school grads to be engineers and scientists.
Actually engineering firms have been aiming for the bottom half of the graduating classes, simply because they cost less. Top grads have had extreme difficulty over the past decade, especially if they specialized. Employers have invested minimally in R&D, so top talent in the engineering world simply isn't deemed to be necessary or something worth paying for.
“It’s hard,” she [a waitress] 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."
That is exactly what I was told 12 years ago by a Filipino about the job situation in the Philippines. He said that you need a masters degree just to be hired to work in a video store. That was especially shocking because by 2003, DVDs were the normal format, so the video store job was not complicated by the need to ensure that tapes were rewound.
I've hired a lot of people over the years and the quality i find from the younger generation of employees is just not there. There are some that surprise me infrequently but for the most part: they have no skills. They havn't been taught anything of value. Their work ethic sucks. They really don't know what a true days' work IS. I grew up with the old saying "an honest days work for an honest days wage". They just don't seem to have been taught what that means. They have no idea about the value of money (not to mention what real money is- but thats another conversation entirely). They want to be walked through everything- they're kind of like robots. Set them on a task and they just stop when they can't figure something out. There isn't that curiosity or DRIVE to figure it out on their own. Overcoming obstacles isn't a pleasurable challenge for them. They'd rather make less money and do less work than the opposite. I'm conviced this os a parental issue on a number of levels. A parents job is to make ones self obsolete. Getting a kid to the point where he or shee can take care of themselves and make informed and thoughtful decisions that affect their lives. The idea that we should try to GOVE kids the things we may or may not have had when we were their age does them no good service.
The quality of the younger employees is a reflection of the new job environment. Many of them have seen their parents lose pensions they thought would be there, or have watched them laid off from positions they held for YEARS. Perhaps they have had to leave a foreclosed home afterwards, leave all their friends, change schools, etc...
Then they reach working-age, and they wonder why they should 'give' anything more than the very minimal, if even that, to a 'job'. And why SHOULD they? So they can be dumb fucks like their parents and get screwed too?
They won't, and no one should act surprised by this. Finding a good employee is going to get harder and harder as things deteriorate further. It's unfortunate for those many smaller businesses that don't deserve this, the BIG businesses are the ones who have been pulling the rug out from under labor's feet, but that's how these things play themselves out. It is going to be a very hostile environment, employment-wise, going forward.
Absolutely.
I've been working a part-time job in addition to my regular job for 15 years now. It started as don't-really-need-to-quit but became can't-really-afford-to-quit thanks to wage stagnation. Lately, management has been having a real hard time getting and keeping people so I've picked up a few more hours, during which time I get to hear all about said woes. Well, this weekend, the company announced it was raising its minimum wage to $9.
On the one hand, $9 is pitiful. When I started, the starting wage was $6. In 15 years, the price of everything's risen a hell of alot more than 50%. And they wonder why "nobody wants to work anymore." They've got another thing coming if they think the quality of applicants is going to improve much.
On the other hand, I just passed $9 last year. It's a part-time job for me so I don't fixate on it. It's almost accidental that I'm more reliable and productive. Yet, here they are, wiping out the pay differential that I've enjoyed. What, objectively, is the incentive for me to continue being a better employee?
And this is all before the outright psychotic environment that I've endured in the software development field. The overflow of H1Bs makes it difficult to get into to start with and then if you do make it over that hurdle management is so inept and defensive about it that being good at what you do is a liability.
As a recent 2014 graduate, I can attest to the difficult job market. There's simply too many degree-holders and too few desirable jobs.
I read a lot of comments from people much older and wiser than me, saying that kids in my generation are too entitled and reluctant to work hard at job considered "below us", and I would like to address that.
I come from a not well-off background. I earned a grant to go to college and have worked part-time while in school in order to have spending money. I have not relied on my parents at all. Given that, I do not consider most jobs below me, and I am willing to work hard to make it. I worked hard at school, but I also partied a lot. All of you hating on the partying.., there's a lot less partying going on today compared to what gen-x and baby boomers had.
BUT here's the issue. Rich kids are guaranteed jobs through connections. They get a head start through interships before they even started college. They get groomed towards that dream job after college. In comparison, I have had to work very hard, and actively network in order to merely get a shot at those opportunities. Now, why am I not willing to take jobs that are "below me" is because I am afraid of falling behind. These days, your job defines you. How could I ever compete for a a high-paying job if I spend my summer at a seasonal manual-labor job, compared to the rich frat kid, who barely had to move his finger to get that prestigious internship.
My point being is that, I am okay with starting from the bottom. In fact, I believe that this is the right way to go. But, only if everyone starts from the bottom. It pisses me off that some kids get shortcuts and an effortless experience at finding a job.
you're okay with starting at the bottom but you want life to be fair? that's your first lesson. ever see a crowd mob a water truck after a natural disaster? all of life is the same. if you want it, you take it because no one is giving it to you. even those rich connected kids have to perform at some point to go anywhere.
that's just life. life is a bitch, then you marry one(or more), then you die. you better have some fun in the meantime.
I'm trying to figure out your degree, what is it?
Your job defines you????? That's fucked up, man.
Economics, with a strong Math coursework and foreign language skills.
1.) These kids have no skills
2.) If you want a job, you MUST fake experience on your resume.
3.) If you don't cold-call the manager and tell him to give you an interview, you ain't getting one, sonny.
Point 2 is incredibly important and something all the H1B foreign workers have been doing for many years. Fake it 'till you make it.
But heaven forbid, try that as a US citizen, and you'll be on an industry-wide black-list in no time flat. Meanwhile, the people in HR doing the hiring these days don't really understand what they're really buying, only that the price is cheap.
I am a hamster:
I live in a glass aquarium, I have a clean house, fed once a day and all the water I want to drink. Plenty of exercise on my circular treadmill.
Why do I want to leave? Why should I stay? Questions I'm still trying to figure out.
with a stroke of my dictator pen, i would give an order that all city population over 500.000 have to build waste to energy plant.. it would half the unemployment, energy bill and the waste dumped in the ground, it would save the precious ground water.. yeah.. its an illusion from tuborg
So I keep hearing about this lack of jobs... yet I have an open head count I am hiring for. It's an entry level role - I actually want a recent college grad... I am even willing to train them on some coding that will be required... yet in the last two weeks I have received 11 resumes.... I've called local colleges and the response is that generally all the seniors that graduated were placed in jobs...
So why the disconnect?
What's wrong with 11 resumes? That's at least 10 people who aren't going to get the job. What do you think happens to those 10 or more people?
Or twin peaks, Tilted Kilt.
For what it's worth I'm a 34 year old tail Gen X and I think most jobs in America, as well as our society as a whole, is utter crap, and I will dedicate the rest of my life to extracting as much as I can from it in order to bring it down.
You older people have another thing coming if you think we're going to pump on your chests and clean up your poop as you lay dying. Get ready for misery. What comes around goes around.
Also, you have another thing coming if you think your multicultural kumbaya propaganda is working. I am highly racially aware, highly tribal, and ready to employ violence against anybody who treatens me.
Lighten up, Francis.
D-Fens,
Better sites exist for defusing your anger than one dealing with the economy. Just saying.
It is really scary. A couple of weeks ago my parents went to the local 4-H auction (in rural New England) that they go to every year. There were about ten teenagers volunteering to bring stuff forward to be sold and suchlike; that is typical. One of them is a relative; we know that she is on anti-psychotics. But the thing is that my dad (retired psychologist) watched them all interact with each other; their behavior was not normal. No fun; no joshing. All the teens were acting like they were on antipsychotics. The grown-ups around them were acting like normal humans. My parents were really freaked out by this.
plenty of work out there for trained killers
https://www.academi.com/pages/careers
Bonus if you speak Ukrainian or Russian.
Or Chechen.
The company searches for people of the utmost caliber; accountability, integrity and professionalism – all of which are requirements for an ACADEMI hire.
Killing is a valuable skill set, but being able to sleep afterwards is the tough part.
Mrs. Silencer's 25 year old daughter is a very young 25 and delusional about the world.
A very nice girl, but oblivious to reality. Folds under pressure.
She has tried to shake and explain and demonstrate the realities of the world into her daughter, but college, college, more college, gay friends, party party, and the zero accountability of attractive women has turned her reality scope into a fuzzy gen 1 night vision goggle with dead batteries.
We laugh about the wake up call she'll get one day, armed with little else but her expensive .phd in clulessness.
how big are her tits?
About as big as yours. Thanks for asking.
Didn't see that coming...
There is a real website named Counterpunch.
Cue Monty Python...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo
Okay without going to the details of where I work and what I do, I will say the following things.
I work with college freshmen, almost exclusively. No one over the age of 20. Here is what I see:
1. Young women are outperforming the young men, academically, by a very wide margin. The women are much more serious and apply themselves much more consistently than the men do. Their reading comprehension is, on average, much stronger, their vocabularies much broader, and their writing skills much more advanced than those of the young men. Also, the young women respond better to constructive criticism, are more adaptable and flexible in response to change or setbacks, and more are far more attentive in the classroom. Admittedly, maturity at this age is a factor.
2. Not 1 in 100 has any idea what is wrong with the US economy or job market.
3. Not 1 in 100 knows or understands what the Federal Reserve is, what it does, or why fiat is not money.
4. Last year, when incoming students pleaded with me for job leads, stating they were "desperate for work," I referred them en masse to a friend of mine in HR with UPS, who was hiring. These were permanent positions for those who perform, not seasonal.
Only 2 out of 184 students expressed any interest, and only 1 followed up. Interestingly, the one who did was hired, spent the past calendar year working very hard, and is now being promoted to a supervisory position.
5. A troubling number of these students - even the athletes - are overweight and out-of-shape. I can think of one in particular who, at 19, has the aches, pains, and limp of an elderly man 60 years his senior. It's sad.
6. A disturbing percentage of these students have a very difficult time following the most basic instructions, even after repeated reminders over the length of a full semester. How simple? As in, "your mid-term essay needs to be typed with 1-inch margins all around, except the left-hand margin, which is 1 1/2", size 12 font, Palatino Linotype."
And I get a hand-written paper with no name on it, and forget everything else.
7. Many of them will only do the absolute, bare minimum required for research, for discussion, for reading or for writing. For them, class is a place to put in some time on your way to a diploma and "a good-paying job." After that, it's "back to my iPhone." Or iPod.
8. They display addiction-like behavior toward their phones and electronic devices. Few of them read and even fewer of them even own, books (outside of what I assign).
9. They have a severe shortage of natural curiousity, and display a frightening tendency to believe whatever they're told by any authority figure. Please note that the MSM is, for too many of them, "an authority."
10. The Entitlement Mentality is pronounced. I've literally had people tell me, "but I passed all the state tests in high school. Why are you giving me an F!?" I've even had parents - yes, parents - call me up and angrily demand to know why their "baby" is failing my course. Please bear in mind, again, the students in question are adults.
I could go on (and on, and on)...
Signs of a society that is on its way OUT.
Thanks for putting all of that down. Good insight
I have a 21 year old daughter going into her third year in microbiology. She has always had the competitive drive to work like a rented mule at school and part time jobs.
I was surprised this past year when she housed with seven other "girls" and she told me what it was like. The seven were alcoholics, druggies, and sluts. Get so drunk at dinner time, they couldn't go out to the parties at night. The kitchen was a pig sty and my daughter tried to keep it clean.( she worked last summer cleaning motel rooms and toilets...this summer the management moved her up to front desk)
The others would buy booze and pot, and new Apple products... but then try to sponge money for food for the rest of the month.
These were nursing students.
Your right..."this is the signs of a society that is on its way out."
The nurses may very well be able to get jobs when they graduate, but microbiology jobs are few and far between.
I was thinking the same thing. If you are getting a nursing degree, you can take some time to party.
I want my daughter to come home and work here...I suggested any degree she wanted would be fine.
I have a rule...everyone gets kicked off the farm for a few years to see how the world treats them like shit...then if they come home they'll appreciate being their own boss here.
Northern Vigor, that's exactly why prostitution between two consenting adults should be legal.
These "girls" need jobs. Cum guzzling whores would seem to fit the bill nicely.
Win / win situation right there.
No child left behind and all that. Every person has his or her place.
Duc888,
Only the old guys are looking for prostitutes; everyone else is getting it free.
"The seven were alcoholics, druggies, and sluts.....These were nursing students."
You speak the truth my friend, I banged a whole lot of nursing students when I was a kid.
Lin S,
I regret to say that I saw much of the same in academia. The women were serious grad students who fulfilled and exceeded expectations. Each class was actually fun and attendance was around 95%.
The guys, on the other hand, were undergrads, but they were all on the 7+ year plan for that 4 year degree. I felt sorry for the parents and knew I would be seeing those "boys" again next semester.
They're fat because their IPhone is telling them that eating 3lb of bacon a day is good for them. As long as it's organic steroid free, free range pork fat it's good for you. Little Ceasars is even wrapping pizza in bacon. Couple that with sloth-like habits and you got yourself chubby little useless prick
1000% accurate, a good set of real-world evidence that USA is a culture/society on a downward trajectory. One reason alone is the cause, though it has many forms - without continuous struggle and striving for survival, comfort, dreams, etc, individuals and the societies composed from them, decay and decline. The entitlement state is cultural poison, works slowly, like lead poisoning, but has same terminal effect.
The primary reason why the females are more focused, skilled and productive than the males is because at their ages, the males are disadvantaged by testosterone surging and the combined mental and physical desire and pursuit of sex, whereas the females get all the sex they want by just no saying "no", ie no wasted energy or time.
One point I would like to add to this observation:
One of the reasons why the males are no longer star pupils is that the curriculum has been altered (read: feminized) to the point that there is nothing in class to catch their interest from K on upwards.
It does make me wonder if this was why girls used to be academic underachievers in the years when school was built around masculine subjects and styles of presentation (do your own work as opposed to "group projects").
But surely there should be room for everyone.
What am I saying?
In the Educational Reich?
Forgive me, for I have dared to question and not blindly obeyed as I was told to do.
I think you are spot on and would only add that there is confusion over the roles of schools, colleges (including universities) and vocational education and that there is too much sports and militarism in educational institutions. Who are the real role models here?
Well, Inhibi look at the bright side. Your children will be right up there with those Asians/Indians and will learn to study all day. All those Asians and Indians you keep talking about, have parents and grand-parents who experienced joblessness /poverty 100 times worse than what you are experiencing today. And those parents scared the beejeesus out of their progeny about being jobless and poor. believe me, because I'm one of those parents. People with Masters/PhD in subjects like Chem. Phys, Math couldn't find jobs. Ever. Most took up jobs in completely unrelated fields. Only those who migrated West had hopes of finding a job in fundamental science. Because while West boomed the Rest had gone bust. Remember, Universe favors cycles, zeros and every other round shape.
My next door neighbors are millennials. For the Midwest, this is a pretty dense urban neighborhood, old homes close together. The woman bought the house with the help of her parents about eight years ago. Then she met this crew of bearded hipsters. One apparently stuck, and he was a farmer. They have been raising chickens and a huge garden. They build everything by hand. I applaud them, a farm in this densely packed neighborhood. I work with other millennials. They have part time jobs, live with their parents, and are oblivious to everything but their phones.
This is a super interesting thread, especially the stories of people who have come from nothing, war or general shit to later find success. It occurs to me that the advice implied here is of value to those that are just starting out. The gist as I see it:
Work your ass off regardless of what you may perceive of as your odds of succeeding. If you work hard, make every effort to be the best you can at what you do, believe it will happen and network your ass off something will come along for you.
Keep a humorous and positive attitude because people don't want to network with a miserable dick. Live below your means and save for opportunity, put your damn phone away and concede that you are responsible for your life's final outcome regardless of circumstance.
Be prepared to fight your way up by proving your value. Success can be achieved with or without college. If you are doing the above things you have a huge advantage over your peers regardless of generation.
Great text but what will you have on the top.. bruised and angry friends, loneliness, lung cancer and people who laugh at your selfishness.. there is more in this world Kevin.. That's the gaffe my friend. You gotta keep yourself small. Innocuous. Be the little guy. You know, the nerd... the leper... shit-kickin' surfer. Look at me. Underestimated from day one. You'd never think I was a master of the universe, now would ya?
I see what your getting at and you make a good point; however, I would disagree that success or money in general is evil. Much like weapons it is just a tool and intent means everything. I want to be rock solid so that people that I care about always have a place to go to feel safe in a shit world. I am not claiming to be a saint either, as I wouldn't mind having a pool at that sanctuary. ( : I do try to keep in mind that feeling secure financially may be a fools errand and that judging success by wealth may be a poor measure.
I can see that as a human race we have developed a bit..a bit.. we are not all gordon gekkos here and never will be. thanx for your reply
One way of openning up good-income-earning opportunities for millenials nationwide is to legalize prostitution, especially since the millenials are the only segment of the population who are not massively obese - yet.
I am among the oldest of the millenials. I had a 6 figure salary before I turned 30. I have no debt. I net 6 figures a year and have multiple 6 figures in assets/capital amassed.
The only people my age I have seen fail are those that simply won't work for whatever reason or those that insist on being in a "creative" field where they can express themselves (graphic art, etc.). Those that wisely look at the job market and pursue qualifications for jobs that are in demand and pay well succeed. Those that pursue their "passion" in nonsense nobody cares about fail.
Simple.
There's huge numbers of young STEM grads unemployed. Some of the top universities can only claim a 30% placement rate post-graduation. Are you really going to suggest that its their fault that they couldn't find a job, when many employers receive thosuands of applications from people like them, but proceed to fill the jobs with foreigners?
STEM grads are often considered to be 'overqualified' for lesser jobs as well. Not too many engineering grads do very well as bartenders or cocktail waitresses if you catch my drift.
You have to do whatever it takes to reach a level of success you are comfortable with. You may have to move across the country or to another country. You may have to do work you don't enjoy (shocking, I know). You may have to study hard and learn something most other people either can't or won't. Most people take the path of least resistance and gravitate towards what is "comfortable" to them and then bitch about their lot in life.
Opportunity is about the willingness to do what the other guy won't. That is how to succeed in life - do what other people can't or won't. This principle applies to almost everything in life.
Actually it doesn't.
Only America (relative to the rest of the rich world), do you have to sacrifice a work life balance and slave for something with you don't like to do to be "successful".
That's what America relies on...people like you. You are the one who greases the skids so the upper one percent can claim 99 percent of all new income gains.
'Work 'Merican work'.
Since when is a 40 hour week considered slaving?
I was always glad to just have a job whether it was my construction company, academia, or tech support. All of them were good jobs and sometimes, I had to balance all three. If you like what you do, (hint-this is a learnable skill) you never have to go to work.
I'm not referring to myself. I work hard for 40 hours and go home. But you must be under some delusion if you think most salary job are only 40 hours a week. They're not. My two roommates are salary and work 60 plus a week. I'm lucky.
And to your point, 40 a week ain't slaving. It's the saps who think they're "successful" because of monetary reasons but have no life outside of work.
Now, I'm not even referring or getting into vacation time, which 90% of Americans get either no vacation time or up two weeks. Meanwhile, in the Netherlands (among many) you start off with 5 or 6 weeks. That's a month a year we don't have for ourselves. Do that for 12 years and you just lost a good year of your life. I know, I know, business would just grind to a halt if I want to Australia and New Zealand for 5 weeks.....
By, all means vote for Jeb or Hillary.
Bernie 2016.