1 in 2 new graduates are jobless or underemployed

[bricolage]

While I don't have much time for the student sense of entitlement that usually accompanies these things, it is an important change in labour demographics and further evidence of disparities between the expectations that society develops and the reality that capitalism delivers. An interesting article anyway.


Broken down by occupation, young college graduates were heavily represented in jobs that require a high school diploma or less.

In the last year, they were more likely to be employed as waiters, waitresses, bartenders and food-service helpers than as engineers, physicists, chemists and mathematicians combined (100,000 versus 90,000). There were more working in office-related jobs such as receptionist or payroll clerk than in all computer professional jobs (163,000 versus 100,000). More also were employed as cashiers, retail clerks and customer representatives than engineers (125,000 versus 80,000).

According to government projections released last month, only three of the 30 occupations with the largest projected number of job openings by 2020 will require a bachelor's degree or higher to fill the position — teachers, college professors and accountants. Most job openings are in professions such as retail sales, fast food and truck driving, jobs which aren't easily replaced by computers.http://news.yahoo.com/1-2-graduates-jobless-underemployed-140300522.html

[moulinrouge]

While I don't have much time for the student sense of entitlement that usually accompanies these things, it is an important change in labour demographics and further evidence of disparities between the expectations that society develops and the reality that capitalism delivers. An interesting article anyway.

http://news.yahoo.com/1-2-graduates-jobless-underemployed-140300522.html

Lets hope this will radicalise the students who thought university was a ticket to the bourgoise.

[Threetune]

The ruined middle class being driven down into the working class.

[Pretty Flaco]

The ruined middle class being driven down into the working class.

except most of the american middle class was already working class. just because they're better off doesn't mean they're not working class.

[Rusty Shackleford]

yeah thats why i stopped going to school.


maybe ill go to trade school some day.

[L.A.P.]

I want to be a college professor, I'm so fucked.

[Nox]

And the other problem that comes with this is that even if you look for a basic job after graduating, many companies won't employ you because you're "overqualified"

[Ose]

And the other problem that comes with this is that even if you look for a basic job after graduating, many companies won't employ you because you're "overqualified"
Yup. I spent over a year applying for jobs and being told this, although I don't really see how a degree in philosophy overqualifies me for anything. Then, after all that time, I finally landed my dream: a minimum wage job. So yeah, I guess I'm a case in point.

I didn't go to university to get a job though.

[black magick hustla]

do something that has a lot of math most people are scared of it so its easier to get a job imho.

[WanderingCactus]

I can't wait for my post-college debt and unemployment. It will be glorious.

[Metacomet]

I can't wait for my post-college debt and unemployment. It will be glorious.

it is, it's a blast

[gorillafuck]

going to college seems like a pretty needlessly elaborate way to drink all the time.

[bcbm]

i think i will go back to school

[Sendo]

While I don't have much time for the student sense of entitlement that usually accompanies these things, it is an important change in labour demographics and further evidence of disparities between the expectations that society develops and the reality that capitalism delivers. An interesting article anyway.

http://news.yahoo.com/1-2-graduates-jobless-underemployed-140300522.html

Of course, there's a sense of entitlement to work opportunities. I graduated in the early 2000s from high school and EVERYONE I KNEW except for one fellow student wise beyond his years (wise, period) urged me to accept the offer to one of the many overrated private universities in the USA with the expectation that the BA was still a guaranteed job-getter. There was an implicit social contract with every president since Clinton that if you buckle down and study and mortgage your future away then you will get a fitting and good-paying job.

Yes, good-paying. Because I don't want my parents home to get repossessed because we can't make the outrageous student loan payments while being underemployed. For anyone graduating with $100,000 in debt and their family's property as collateral, wanting a job that pays above $25,000/year is not greed or wannabe bourgeois.

Yes, I did get scholarships, but living outside of home and going to a school with ever-rising tuition (started off at 40,000/yr all expenses included at year 1) and going to school for four years has an effect.

But yes, laugh at the children of the working class and the "middle class" who squandered four years of their lives and are worse off than their peers who went to work right away and worked up the ladder for four years and didn't accumulate tens of thousands of dollars of debt.

Because these 22-year olds with no prospects should suffer for trying to become the successful yuppies everyone told them to become when they were 17 and 18 and deciding their futures.

I wonder if we should complain about the sense of entitlement of veterans who signed up for the military expecting to get job skills, good references, and money for university.

[Sendo]

Lets hope this will radicalise the students who thought university was a ticket to the bourgoise.

Let's hope some naive black people get lynched so they will see that Obama's America is not post-racial at all.

I won't understand this glee people have when people who are doing alright must struggle. Misery loves company I suppose. It's not like the sons and daughters of nurses and schoolteachers are exploiting anyone.

Yes, I wish the people of the so-called middle class would understand their predicament and that 95% of them will fall into a more destitute strata of the working class. Yes, if they side with the haute bourgeoisie when the time comes, then they are the enemy.

But I don't understand this glee. Being proven right with "I told you so" moments like this is a really empty feeling.

[moulinrouge]

Let's hope some naive black people get lynched so they will see that Obama's America is not post-racial at all.

I won't understand this glee people have when people who are doing alright must struggle. Misery loves company I suppose. It's not like the sons and daughters of nurses and schoolteachers are exploiting anyone.

Yes, I wish the people of the so-called middle class would understand their predicament and that 95% of them will fall into a more destitute strata of the working class. Yes, if they side with the haute bourgeoisie when the time comes, then they are the enemy.

But I don't understand this glee. Being proven right with "I told you so" moments like this is a really empty feeling.

People getting radicalized because of their condition in the capitalist system, we sure don't want that.

[RedSonRising]

Lets hope this will radicalise the students who thought university was a ticket to the bourgoise.

It already has, and I think it will continue to over the next year:

SKQKM-_rrrE

[Sendo]

People getting radicalized because of their condition in the capitalist system, we sure don't want that.

How about Bill Gates burns down your house and all your possessions and then assassinates everyone you know and love. You'd be really radicalized then! You'd be an even greater warrior than Che because you would have absolutely nothing left to lose!

Let's also hope that all Americans start starving, too, so they can see how broken the capitalist method of food distribution is!

Nevermind the fact that some recent graduates might be in their mid or late 20s or even older and had other commitments (perhaps taking care of younger siblings or their own children) and had to really put a lot on the line to get that degree.

Their new-found poverty will teach them a good lesson in the realities of capitalism! I hope everyone making over $40,000 a year gets fired so they can wake up from their Disney-land dreams.

It's become painfully apparent that this board is filled with kiddie tendencies. "Gaddafi and Bush are both assholes, DIE DIE DIE!" "I hope everyone gets fucked over so they become radicalized because they're too dumb to learn about socialism!" "OMG!1! The revolution starts now!"

Need I remind you lot that you can't organize workers very easily when they're unemployed? Do you think the Black Panther Party had an easier time organizing people when so many in the ghetto were unemployed or underemployed? Yeah, that made their job easier. I know Huey was really hoping the local governments in California would de-fund road construction so that the isolated black community would get radicalized. Oh wait, the Black Panthers became vigilante traffic cops outside of schools until the local government paid for stop signs.

But no, your battle plans are all much better. Now let's hope that Medicare gets completely eliminated. If old people see their friends and neighbours start dropping like flies, they'll stop voting conservative!

I should also mention that the last time radicalism peaked was during the latter half of the Golden Age of Capitalism of the 1960s and early 1970s right before the post-1973 era of capitalism.

If people are going to get fucked over, I'd rather they know why it is happening and be appropriately radicalized.

But even more than that, I'd like to have a good economy and have people get radicalized anyway.

If my fat friend has a heart attack, of course I want it to wake him up and make him exercise. But should I get excited?! "Oh swell! Fred just had a heart attack! Now he'll finally exercise! He's only 30 so there's time to really turn his life around!"

[Metacomet]

Of course, there's a sense of entitlement to work opportunities. I graduated in the early 2000s from high school and EVERYONE I KNEW except for one fellow student wise beyond his years (wise, period) urged me to accept the offer to one of the many overrated private universities in the USA with the expectation that the BA was still a guaranteed job-getter. There was an implicit social contract with every president since Clinton that if you buckle down and study and mortgage your future away then you will get a fitting and good-paying job.

Yes, good-paying. Because I don't want my parents home to get repossessed because we can't make the outrageous student loan payments while being underemployed. For anyone graduating with $100,000 in debt and their family's property as collateral, wanting a job that pays above $25,000/year is not greed or wannabe bourgeois.

Yes, I did get scholarships, but living outside of home and going to a school with ever-rising tuition (started off at 40,000/yr all expenses included at year 1) and going to school for four years has an effect.

But yes, laugh at the children of the working class and the "middle class" who squandered four years of their lives and are worse off than their peers who went to work right away and worked up the ladder for four years and didn't accumulate tens of thousands of dollars of debt.

Because these 22-year olds with no prospects should suffer for trying to become the successful yuppies everyone told them to become when they were 17 and 18 and deciding their futures.

I wonder if we should complain about the sense of entitlement of veterans who signed up for the military expecting to get job skills, good references, and money for university.


I don't think I could have said it better myself. I feel like I'm rolling the dice going more into debt for grad school. If it works, I'll be a genius. If it fails.........well then I'll be in the same position I am now just with more in debt payments then I physically earn a month (Well I am already "overqualified" for most minimum wage jobs, so I guess that will make me laughably overqualified). I guess I could live outside. Or find someone rich to marry.

I hate to say it but I think it's bad when the idea of debt for education is so bad that it makes you think of suicide being the only escape.

[u.s.red]

Classic capitalist crisis: overproduction and underconsumption of college students; too much education, too much knowledge, too many skills. Now I hope they will all get a real education in socialism.

[Os Cangaceiros]

words

I don't think that's a very productive way to discuss an issue. If you feel that he's mistaken why not explain it in a way that's not so hostile?

Anyway, communists have a pretty bad track record of predicting when and how major social revolt will come about. Social revolt has come about when times have been bad; times were still pretty bad in 1934, for example, despite a minor uptick in the economy, but revolt was strong that year, and continued even into the "double-dip" that followed. Social revolt has come about when times have been good, too...some thought that the social contract between labor and capital at the end of WW2 would completely satiate labor's appetite for more and more, but this turned out to be incorrect.

Likewise there have been times of both prosperity and misery in which people haven't revolted. I think the bottom line is that we don't know, "scientists of revolution" that we are. It's very difficult to predict radical events. The closest I've seen to it happening was a chart showing a correlation between the rising price of food and revolutions/coups/revolts etc.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I don't think that's a very productive way to discuss an issue. If you feel that he's mistaken why not explain it in a way that's not so hostile?

Anyway, communists have a pretty bad track record of predicting when and how major social revolt will come about. Social revolt has come about when times have been bad; times were still pretty bad in 1934, for example, despite a minor uptick in the economy, but revolt was strong that year, and continued even into the "double-dip" that followed. Social revolt has come about when times have been good, too...some thought that the social contract between labor and capital at the end of WW2 would completely satiate labor's appetite for more and more, but this turned out to be incorrect.

Likewise there have been times of both prosperity and misery in which people haven't revolted. I think the bottom line is that we don't know, "scientists of revolution" that we are. It's very difficult to predict radical events. The closest I've seen to it happening was a chart showing a correlation between the rising price of food and revolutions/coups/revolts etc.

Doesn't that tell you something about the importance of mass "voluntarism," ignoring economic situations (except for the broad "capitalism has already developed sufficient productive forces") and going directly for the political instead?

Kudos to Sendo for rebuffing the OP's rather ignorant statement on the "student sense of entitlement." Very personally, to me this is somewhat old news, going back to the early part of the last decade.

[Sendo]

I don't think that's a very productive way to discuss an issue. If you feel that he's mistaken why not explain it in a way that's not so hostile?

Anyway, communists have a pretty bad track record of predicting when and how major social revolt will come about. Social revolt has come about when times have been bad; times were still pretty bad in 1934, for example, despite a minor uptick in the economy, but revolt was strong that year, and continued even into the "double-dip" that followed. Social revolt has come about when times have been good, too...some thought that the social contract between labor and capital at the end of WW2 would completely satiate labor's appetite for more and more, but this turned out to be incorrect.

Likewise there have been times of both prosperity and misery in which people haven't revolted. I think the bottom line is that we don't know, "scientists of revolution" that we are. It's very difficult to predict radical events. The closest I've seen to it happening was a chart showing a correlation between the rising price of food and revolutions/coups/revolts etc.

Personally knowing people in the post-productive American economy who are struggling to start their own lives and leave home or are struggling to find full-time work, knowing people in this situation makes my patience thin for people cheerleading an economic collapse.

This isn't 18th century France. Any desperate violence or spontaneous rebellion will be sporadic, pointless, and squashed. Socialist revolutions succeed based on the organization of a revolutionary army or on widespread unionism. I don't know why anyone thinks that hard times are necessary or universally good.

Shit got bad in Central and Western Europe in the 1930s and look at what happened. Fascists took power in the soon-to-be Yugoslavia, Germany, Poland, Spain, Italy, and nearly everyone else was sympathetic to fascism until 1939. Then again, the Depression was high-water mark for the CP-USA. So.....I should be hoping for the return of soup lines and starvation and tuberculosis and polio and segregation?

[Os Cangaceiros]

Personally knowing people in the post-productive American economy who are struggling to start their own lives and leave home or are struggling to find full-time work, knowing people in this situation makes my patience thin for people cheerleading an economic collapse.

This isn't 18th century France. Any desperate violence or spontaneous rebellion will be sporadic, pointless, and squashed. Socialist revolutions succeed based on the organization of a revolutionary army or on widespread unionism. I don't know why anyone thinks that hard times are necessary or universally good.

Shit got bad in Central and Western Europe in the 1930s and look at what happened. Fascists took power in the soon-to-be Yugoslavia, Germany, Poland, Spain, Italy, and nearly everyone else was sympathetic to fascism until 1939. Then again, the Depression was high-water mark for the CP-USA. So.....I should be hoping for the return of soup lines and starvation and tuberculosis and polio and segregation?

A lot of young people frequent this site and may not have fully formed opinions yet. Just sayin'.