Bob Herbert: Our Brightest Grads Are Still Struggling to Find Work.
By Susie Madrak Sunday Nov 01, 2009 6:00amBob Herbert, who so often sees what everyone else in the Village misses, writes about how young, promising grads are being shut out of the workforce:
As jobs become increasingly scarce, more and more college graduates are working for free, at internships, which is great for employers but something of a handicap for a young man or woman who has to pay for food or a place to live.
“The whole idea of apprenticeships is coming back into vogue, as it was 100 years ago,” said John Noble, director of the Office of Career Counseling at Williams College. “Certain industries, such as the media, TV, radio and so on, have always exploited recent graduates, giving them a chance to get into a very competitive field in exchange for making them work for no — or low — pay. But now this is spreading to many other industries.”
And let's not forget: This is how the media Village stays homogeneous. Only someone from a well-to-do family (and thus, unlikely to be a threat to the Establishment) can afford to take such internship opportunities.
Lonnie Dunlap, who heads the career services program at Northwestern University and has been advising young people on careers since the mid-70s, said today’s graduates are experiencing the worst employment market she’s ever seen.
“There’s a sense of huge emotional anxiety among our students,” she said. The young people are not only having trouble finding work themselves; many feel a sense of obligation to parents who are struggling with job losses and home foreclosures.
“In the past two years,” said Ms. Dunlap, “we have seen a huge uptick in the number of recent alums coming back for services because they still haven’t found work, as well as midcareer alums who have been laid off and need our help.”
Like Mr. Noble, she mentioned the growing use of interns versus paid employees and said she can see the value of such unpaid work for some recent graduates, “though, of course, not everyone can afford to do that.”
Despite the expansion of the gross domestic product in the quarter that ended in September, there is no sign of the kind of recovery in employment that would be needed to bring the American economy and the economic condition of American families back to robust health. It would be nice if some of the politicians and economists so obsessed with the G.D.P. would take a moment to look out the window at what is happening with real people in the real world.
They might see Laura Ram, who graduated from Baruch College in New York in May 2007. She was laid off from a full-time job almost exactly a year ago and hasn’t worked since. She’s been diligent about submitting applications and showing up at job fairs and so on, but nothing has come close to panning out.
“I haven’t gone on a single interview,” she said, “which manages to shock just about my entire family.”
These recent graduates have done everything society told them to do. They’ve worked hard, kept their noses clean and gotten a good education (in many cases from the nation’s best schools). They are ready and anxious to work. If we’re having trouble finding employment for even these kids, then we’re doing something profoundly wrong.
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unless it's for free or in a highly specialized position, and even then, the employee is expected to be selectively smart.
all day for internet moguls. Land of the Free Speech!
The great American middle class is largely a myth.
This has been perpetrated by the Owners, the upper class elite, they are less than 1% of the population yet they have half of the wealth. Half and gaining.
Doctors, Lawyers, middle managers, those are the middle class and that is 20% of the population all told.
The remaining 80% are the working class.
It has been in the Owners interest to conceal these facts from the supposed middle class so as to divide and conquer.
It seems that whenever I see most articles about unemployed folks the headline is always about unemployed college grads!What about the labors, construction workers,manufacturing jobs that are gone! Until these IMPORTANT workers go back to work the college grads better rig for weather because it's going to get worse before it gets better! College graduates had better tighten their belts and take ANY job just to stay alive!
Have worked in manufacturing all of my life and it is worse today than ever.
The Owners outsource whatever manufacturing, unskilled trade, skilled trade jobs they can.
They hide behind the legal shields of their trans national corporate persons and move capital freely around the globe in search of the LOWEST labor costs.
When China or India become too expensive they move elsewhere.
I'd only subtly disagree with one phrase-- "too expensive". It's not a matter of the labor becoming too expensive-- it's that some other region will emerge, willing to the work for even *less*. Corporations will chase that cheapest labor wherever it is, no matter what kind of profits they're already making.
It is a difference without a distinction.
There are infrastructure necessities that qualify the equation but the bottom line is everything.
For the Corporations, there is no morality or national identification.
Interesting tables on wealth and income distribution here.
The College Industrial Complex is another of the Great American Ponzi schemes.
A self fulfilling, self serving pyramid scheme.
I would think more highly of them if they told the unvarnished truth about job prospects to their prospective students. But then, more than half of those students probably would not bother.
Reign in the Wall Street Mafia, bring back the WPA and re-negotiate NAFTA and the WTO.
Alice, Alice, Alice...
Since most of us are, by virtue of a seldom-acknowledged legacy of our founding fathers, products of our system of 'public' education (a system that bears little resemblance to what our founding fathers intended...), most of us tend toward a micro-level awareness of the actual impact of this perverted system.
Public education perpetuates a highly sanitized propaganda designed to convince our children that the United States is the most benevolent, peace-loving Super Power on the planet, with the unenviable but noble responsibility for guiding the rest of the planet's lesser nations toward the Pristine Light of Democracy and Capitalism.
And, all good little boys and girls should study hard and stay in school so that they can earn the big bucks and buy the Big People's Toys we're all brainwashed to zealously covet, as though our lives depend upon having the newest iphone, or the fastest laptop, or the best HD flat screen tv money can buy...
God FORBID that we should tell our impressionable young hopefuls that a mere FRAGMENT of them will have a snowball's chance of getting a primo job pulling in better than a decent living wage!!! (GASP, cough, wheeze!!!)
As a 50+ yo who is underemployed and working three jobs (because the school district wherein I am struggling to achieve my teacher certification found me too erudite for their personal comfort), I can assure you that those of our youth who are bright enough to survive our now completely corrupted system of public education are experiencing the same lack of employment as the rest of us Twenty Percenters. The shrinking oasis of prestigious jobs for which we all aspire will continue to go even more exclusively to the privileged offspring of the wealthiest among us.
The rest of us are service industry and factory fodder, and that's all we're intended to be. I don't know why we're getting all uppity about this at this late stage of the game...
(snark, in case that flew over anyone's head...)
Snark, but then what did you actually mean?
I was snarking when I said we're being uppity...
I meant everything else.
This has been true for a few years now. I'm a semi-recent college grad, but I was "lucky" enough to find a job when I got out. One of those that completely preys upon new graduates, pays them nothing and calls them "contractors" so they don't get benefits. Luckily I have a much nicer job now, but it was hard to get.
I think about my fiancee who had to go through 6 years of schooling to get a $30,000 a year job that isn't very secure since no one knows what the hell the state will do with the mental health budget every year.
Really, though, three to five years experience is the new college degree. You went to college? Great. Work three to five years and then get back to us for this menial, low wage job. That's essentially how it is, 99% of the time.
I've been out of work for some time and I can't find anything either.
Im underqualified for a salary job, but I am overqualified for an hourly wage job. Im in this middle ground where absolutely no one wants you because you are either way too smart or not experienced enough.
When things do open up, they want 2-3 years experience in that position already. Customer Service? 2 years. Warehouse stocking? 2 years.
A friend of mine lost her job as an assistent manager, and now cannot find a new job because everywhere she goes tells her that she "made too much money at her last job so we cant hire you"
just way too smart, obviously, J M Ashby! Obviously seditious, by the sound of things! Oh, noes, mustn't have that, now, must we?!? Can't think for ourselves, now CAN WE?!?
(snark, again, in case anyone wonders...or cares...)
you have to have the degree AND the experience. If you opnly have experience, like me, you still can't have the job.
Even jobs like receptionist, office manager, salesperson, office assistant - they all want a BA now at least. And if you have the experience, but they use the lack of degree to turn you down, they don't call it discrimination. But it is.
This has been going on for years. So nice of somebody in the New York Times to actually wake up and smell the garbage that has been fermenting. Heck, I remember when I got my Economics MA in 1979. Started looking for work in the Pittsburgh area. Everyone told me to my face that I had to get some experience. "Sorry, but we cannot hire you" was the mantra. "Nice degree, but you must have some work experience". So, I wound up doing construction work thanks to Dad's Boilermakers Union. I saved up enough money to leave Pittsburgh and move to Los Angeles. Started looking for work and sure enough over and over "No experience". I still remember people laughing at me because I did construction work with an MA. Finally got a job with the Federal Government as a clerk. Barely made ends meet between rent and student loans. It took 4 years from when I got my MA before I got a steady job. Education? It's worthless and useless. I'm doing a job that only required a high school diploma. And experience...
I can understand the frustration but education is not worthless.
Education is certainly not worthless.
It IS expensive.
And time consuming.
I was one of the lucky ones with only $15,000 in debt when I graduated. I've had several kids out of college saying how envious they are because they have loan debts over $50,000. Slavery is alive an well in America, now the masters are the banks. Why anyone would go into so much debt to get such a useless piece of paper makes no sense to me.
my niece is finishing up a dental assistant course and as the final step before completing it, she's doing an 'internship' at a clinic. no salary -- but, oh, the experience she gains.
s/
and let me suggest that the hundreds of thousands returning to community colleges for new career training are all going to face the exact same issue when they complete those courses. she fortunately enrolled in this program early last year and will have that much of a head start; she said this year -- the classes are overfull.
and most of the poor hopefuls in my college algebra sessions haven't even SEEN math in better than 20 years! After making less than 50 on their first exam, they perpetually evince a 'deer in the headlights' countenance as they struggle to internalize again these daunting math concepts! I am constantly encouraging, and constantly acknowledging their successes--no matter how small--but I still get deer in the headlights...
sigh...
There was a Professor who posted an article in the University newspaper basically saying the College/University was not for getting a good job, or any job, but for enlightenment. After being enlightened, I dropped out and went to Trade School.
people in the trades who are smarter than the engineers who they work for. Trades and techs are doing the job engineers used to do while those with the degrees are pushing paper around in circles.
If we’re having trouble finding employment for even these kids, then we’re doing something profoundly wrong.
While this statement is true, I'd like to suggest that we are doing something wrong if anyone cannot find a job.
Where is Hubert H. Humphrey when you need him?
The joys...
My mother had no university degree, yet she got an office job with benefits back in the early 70s.
I have a degree and 20 yrs experience. Have worked in education, managed branch offices.
My mother was able to buy property, even take part in a credit union, have employer healthcare and a pension.
I have NEVER had a job with those things. Never had ANY benefits. No pension.
Someone has STOLEN our lives...
Ronald Reagan.
But the social forces that led to him were well under way after Henry Ford brought about mass production in 1910.
If you're not a physician or an engineer, the only education which currently has a payback is Oaksterdam. With Michigan recently legalizing medical marijuana, the Auto State may be our next "Don't drive stoned" state. Cheap foreclosed properties, I suspect, are about to be unofficially rezoned agricultural...
I hear they're making a killing in the financial services industry.
Move to China...I hear it's a nice mixture of capitalism and socialism.
India is a big growing market also.
G.M. is building new factories in Brazil.
tons of opportunity in the military too!
As I sit here contemplating my broke-ass life, I keep going back to the things I learned in college. I am currently out of work (almost three years), graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in sociology and a 3.8 grade point average, several years of administrative/clerical experience, and an ability to work with all types, assholes and all. However, even with all these wonderful qualities, I cannot find a job to save my life but others with less education and funky attitudes have lost their jobs and found new ones. Feelings of self-loathing and inadequacy run through my veins on a daily basis and a rage is building. A rage against a society that tells individuals that a college degree is the path to a better life, but does not disclose how centuries of stratification, racism, ageism, and gender bias have kept and will continue to keep the best and brightest out of the workforce. A rage against myself for waiting so long to get my shit together and therefore, having to deal with the consequences of being considered passé in the workforce.
I have two children graduating next year, one from high school, one from college, and I do not have a job! I walk a tightrope of insanity every day and I feel as though some people are laughing at me because I went to college at the age of thirty-one, earned a degree, but cannot find employment. I am from the ‘hood and being college educated is looked upon as less than nothing in ghetto. People told me I was too old to be going back to school, but I did not give a fuck. I wanted to be an educated woman who can converse almost on any subject with wit and objectivity. However, sometimes, I think they may have been right.
The devil has been whipping my ass as of late and has been telling me that I was fool to go to college. I am talented with some curlers and have the skills to become a licensed cosmetologist but I wanted a college degree. I love to read, think, and debate about life but it is hard to find jobs in those categories. What happens to people like me? I am not math and science oriented so majoring in business administration or engineering would have been a waste of time. I took an introduction to sociology class and was hooked from day one. Sociology explained so much to me and made me want to make a difference in the world. I have to live in this crazy shit: why not help out?
I guess I am just a broke-ass, frustrated intellectual trying to find her way in world where intellectual mediocrity is rewarded abundantly. But, fuck the devil! Martin Luther King and W.E.B Du Bois are two of the greatest figures in African-American history and they both majored in sociology, and had to deal with more obstacles than I will ever. Hopefully, some day soon, my time to shine will come. Until then, I will continue to take care of my children and pray.
Read the book "The Impossible Will take a Little While" by Paul Rogat Loeb sometime. It is an anthology of people who were sorely pressed by difficulties and seemingly insurmountable opposition---but through persistence went on to triumph. For example, this book has "Letter from A Birmingham Jail" by Dr King---who among other things said what he was afraid of most was not the KKK or the haters---but well off but apathetic people who did nothing. He never lost the vision of his dream and though it would have been very easy to give up---never did.
Paul's website: www.paulloeb.org
Good luck to you---good things come to those who persist in fulfilling their dreams against great odds.
Thanks for your words of encouragement and positivity.
I don't intend to be presumptuous, but have you read Their Eyes were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurtson, or I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, or Thou Shalt Not Be Aware by Alice Miller? Have you thought about chronicling your experiences? You write well... Just a thought...
Maya Angelou saved my life. You might do the same for someone or several someones...
You have not been presumptuous at all. My children constantly tell me I need to write a book. My life has been one filled with joy and pain and I would love to share it with the world.
with plastic to help them get a jump start in life anymore?
My grandson graduates from Uof Fl this spring with a BS in Computer Sciences and has 5 job offers the least of which is 60K with an 8K signing bonus
I hope that young people take note of the bankruptcy of our status quo and decide to create a better world based on equity and fairness, not crass consumerism and accumulation of wealth. Once they realize that there is little or nothing for them in the current system, I hope that will be sufficient incentive to change the world for the better that they will eventually inherit.
Go for it--we're counting on you.
And there is time to kill today
And then one day you find
Ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run
You missed the starting gun
to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking, racing around to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older, shorter of breath and one day closer to death.
Man, when I was 17 I loved that song, but I sure understand it better now.
The politicians have been faithfully taking the bribes and following orders from their corporate bosses and the lobbyists , they have auctioned off the country and what's left is an almost empty shell . Reagnomics and the trickle down theory has worked quite well , the wealthy have been making more money than they know what to do with and we on the middle and lower rungs of the ladder have been getting pissed on . It's a big deal here in Washington state , Boeing announced that it is taking the manufacturing of their latest plane out of state to South Carolina , wages are twenty something here ( union ) , fourteen dollars there ( no union ), sums things up doesn't it ? Employed or unemployed we'll continue to take it in the shorts and it'll get worse and worse I'm afraid . Like many other people I think most of us are in for some dark days ahead .
I have a MS in elementary teacher education and did a one year unpaid internship teaching 2nd grade last school year. This summer, I could not even get an INTERVIEW for a teaching position. Decided I needed to eat one way or another so I applied for a job at a daycare making $9.50 an hour. My interview went great. I was there over an hour! But in the end she still gave that job to someone else because I'm overqualified. WTF? Its a crazy world. I'm unemployed and have a 7 year old but I can't draw unemployment because I've been in school for the last 5 years instead of working.
I always feel like lying about my degree because most of the jobs I am forced to apply for consider me to be overqualified.
You aren't supposed to work for free in an apprenticeship. An apprentice gets room and board and possibly even a pittance as a stipend.
Don't forget the benefits!
Kinda what happens when the corporatocracy runs wild. Once they pillage this country they will take our economy and move on to another one. Maybe then new ideas will be welcomed.
So keep trying.
I'm 23, graduated from Western Michigan University in 2006 with a bachelor of science in Natural Resource Management/Atmospheric Science, and found a job after looking for 1 year (full disclosure: that first year out of school I was looking for a job IN MICHIGAN; the week I started looking around the country I landed an interview and ultimately a job in metro DC).
So I up and moved to metro DC. That job was terrible and after 5 months I applied for jobs with different engineering firms in the area and got hired at the place I currently work. I've been there for a year and a half.
My first raise sucked, but it was a raise. I'm not expecting this year's to be much better.
I'm just trying to build a resume of work experience, weather this storm, and gtfo as soon as things get better. Metro DC is alright and all but I just got married two weeks ago and I'm two decades away from being about to afford a single family home out here. I am optimistic that things will get better, eventually.
It's a hard environment but it's doable. I made a lot of sacrifices and worked my ass off to get to where I am today. My advice to people in my generation is to throw caution to the wind and move to where the jobs are. Continuously add to your skill-set repertoire, show up early, let your boss know you can stay late or come in on weekends if it will help your team make a deadline, and NEVER forget this one shitty piece of reality:
The best way to get a better job with better pay (once you have some experience) is TO ALREADY HAVE A JOB.
I've been dealing with this shit for the last six years when the economy was more "stable". Again, unless you force employers to hire people, regardless of color or gender, they won't. They don't give a fuck about skill or education anymore; they just want to keep pumping more hours out of people already on their salaries. Fuck Madoff. College is the real Ponzi scheme right now.
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