Yet Another Article On Delayed Careers

<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/01/fashion/recent-college-graduates-wait-for-their-real-careers-to-begin.html?_r=1%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/01/fashion/recent-college-graduates-wait-for-their-real-careers-to-begin.html?_r=1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>This feels true-to-life, but there are some inadvertently hilarious aspects to this. Amy Klein, presented by the article as a young woman in limbo because she can't find a job in her field, is an actual-factual bona fide rock star -- the lead guitarist in a band that was pretty much the Official Critics' Darling of 2010, and touring constantly for the past couple of years. Klein is a wonderful writer, too, with much-admired blogs and occasional freelance articles. My daughter -- stuck in a real job, with health benefits and all, and a need to wear nice clothes to work -- is not much of an idol-worshiper, but if she had an idol it would be Amy Klein.</p>

<p>Whose older sister is apparently a professor at Georgia Tech. The gap between punk rocker and engineer is substantially more narrow than most of us usually think.</p>

<p>I have a different take on this article.</p>

<p>People who look at the past and think situations are going to be similar in the future are in for a rude awakening. This is going to have huge implications for society. I wonder sometimes, because I am getting older, am i just becoming more negative about the United States…and then I read articles like this. </p>

<p>This whole idea of going to the right schools, paying through the nose, and everything is
going to work out is an idea that doesn’t look right.</p>

<p>I noticed that somebody mentioned going to law school in the article…another field that is flooded with people and that was once very lucrative and is now slowly deflating.</p>

<p>Our generation turned the United States from a land of opportunity to just land.</p>

<p>"Meet the members of what might be called Generation Limbo: highly educated 20-somethings, whose careers are stuck in neutral, coping with dead-end jobs and listless prospects.</p>

<p>And so they wait: for the economy to turn, for good jobs to materialize, for their lucky break. Some do so bitterly, frustrated that their well-mapped careers have gone astray. Others do so anxiously, wondering how they are going to pay their rent, their school loans, their living expenses — sometimes resorting to once-unthinkable government handouts.</p>

<p>“We did everything we were supposed to,” said Stephanie Morales, 23, who graduated from Dartmouth College in 2009 with hopes of working in the arts. Instead she ended up waiting tables at a Chart House restaurant in Weehawken, N.J., earning $2.17 an hour plus tips, to pay off her student loans. “What was the point of working so hard for 22 years if there was nothing out there?” said Ms. Morales, who is now a paralegal and plans on attending law school.</p>

<p>Some of Ms. Morales’s classmates have found themselves on welfare. “You don’t expect someone who just spent four years in Ivy League schools to be on food stamps,” said Ms. Morales, who estimates that a half-dozen of her friends are on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. A few are even helping younger graduates figure out how to apply. “We are passing on these traditions on how to work in the adult world as working poor,” Ms. Morales said.</p>

<p>But then there are people like Ms. Kelly and Ms. Klein, who are more laissez-faire. With the job market still bleak, their motto might as well be: “No career? No prospects? No worries!” (Well, at least for the time being.)</p>

<p>After all, much of the situation is out of their control, as victims of bad timing. Ms. Klein contrasted her Harvard classmates with the ones of her older sister, who graduated from Harvard seven years earlier. Those graduates, she said, were career-obsessed and, helped along by a strong economy, aggressively pursued high-powered jobs right after graduation.</p>

<p>By comparison, Ms. Kelly said her classmates seemed resigned to waiting for the economic tides to turn. “Plenty of people work in bookstores and work in low-end administrative jobs, even though they have a Harvard degree,” she said. “They are thinking more in terms of creating their own kinds of life that interests them, rather than following a conventional idea of success and job security.”</p>

<p>I doubt many Ivy parents are bragging about their kids on food stamps, but perhaps it will help protect the program from budget cuts.</p>

<p>To me, this situation as detailed in this article about recent college graduates, plus the stagnation of wages for the middle class over the past 10 years, is now looking more and more like Japan’s " lost decade".</p>

<p>“I doubt many Ivy parents are bragging about their kids on food stamps, but perhaps it will help protect the program from budget cuts.”</p>

<p>:)</p>

<p>Sorry, I graduated from college in the late '70’s and I had classmates on food stamps.</p>

<p>This isn’t new; this just proves that we all have short memories and that guess what? our economy is cyclical. </p>

<p>I finished business school in the depths of a recession, and took the best offer I got (which happened to be the only offer I got) since I owed a boatload and had to start paying those loans back. Interest rates were 12%!!!</p>

<p>I think a major difference was expectations. If you graduated from college in the 70’s you didn’t think you’d be going out to clubs every night or buying the latest gadgets or even owning a car. You knew you’d be tripled or quadrupled up in a grubby apartment and trying to make ends meet as best you could.</p>

<p>I look at my neighbors kids who are grousing that their entry level jobs won’t let them live in a doorman apartment on the Upper West side of Manhattan or in a cool loft, or in Dupont Circle or in a trendy neighborhood in Chicago and I think it’s funny. What 21 or 22 year old ever thought they’d have a grownup lifestyle right out of college? They can’t cut their monthly expenses- they’ve grown up with Starbucks and fun evenings out and Ipads and 200 channels of cable TV.</p>

<p>I can’t remember any of my friends graduating from college into a job which afforded the lifestyle that many college kids today are used to. You had three choices (if you weren’t going to grad school)-</p>

<p>1- A boring career track job. (bank training program, insurance claims adjuster type position, etc.). You had one or two roommates; you hoped to work hard and get promoted so you could make “real” money and maybe buy a clunker used car.</p>

<p>2- An interesting sexy job- publishing, music industry, art museum. You had three or four roommates; you knew you’d never be able to aspire to a better lifestyle until you were ready to “sell out” but for now, you had a roof over your head even if you were broke after paying your loans.</p>

<p>3- off the grid- selling scuba equipment in Key West, ski instructor in Aspen, waitress in Maui. You were just buying time until you figured out your life or met a rich spouse.</p>

<p>I don’t see a lot of differences frankly, between the late 70’s and now. Except that new grads don’t want to live the lifestyle that their salaries dictate, and it’s important to be able to blame someone for being over your head in debt.</p>

<p>“I don’t see a lot of differences frankly, between the late 70’s and now”</p>

<p>level and duration of unemployment. The late 70s recession hit in '79, we had a brief recovery, and then a second dip in 1982. By 1984 UE was still high, but it was “morning in America” - at least in many regions and sectors. We will be five years on from 2008 in 2013. While I hope we will be seeing real improvement by then, I think the prospects for this going on for longer (till households are much further along in deleveraging) are substantial.</p>

<p>I attended college in the late 1970s. I studied economics. I learned that, while it was hard, maybe impossible, to fully even out the business cycle, it WAS possible to avoid a catastrophic depression using fiscal tools. Now I see a willful, I would say ignorant, refusal to use those tools. I see the use of those tools demonized. </p>

<p>Makes we wish Id majored in Comp Lit or something. At least I would have less to get angry about.</p>

<p>I agree with blossom, however, there is a difference between then and now in everyday costs of living. We didn’t need to pay for cable TV, internet service, cell phones, laptops and high gas prices back then. We don’t need to do that now, either, but I can’t imagine ambitious young people being kept in the awareness loop without most of those things.</p>

<p>Bay- I bought my first designer handbag for my 30th birthday. It was made by Coach; it lasted about 20 years. By the time I bought it I already owned a home, had two kids, had paid off my college loans, had been earning a professional level salary for several years.</p>

<p>Is a Coach bag a rite of passage for young women these days? Apparently so- but for HS graduation, or Sweet 16, or “I’m heading off to college”, and I’m told by my kids that Coach (which seems to cost triple what it cost 15 years ago) is “Middle Market” these days.</p>

<p>How did we raise a generation that can’t wait until they are financially secure to aspire to luxuries? I know many young kids in their early 20’s who don’t consider a couple of days at the local beach “a real vacation”. And these aren’t the children of what we used to call “the idle rich”. These are the children of working professionals and small business owners… who couldn’t take a vacation for years because they were paying college tuition (or saving for college tuition) and their kids assume that in year 2 or 3 of their careers they’ll be taking cruises or heading off to Brazil for Carnival???</p>

<p>I don’t get it. But I guess if you’ve been going to Acapulco or Aruba for Spring break during college, the definition of “vacation” has ratcheted upwards.</p>

<p>“I don’t see a lot of differences frankly, between the late 70’s and now.”</p>

<p>There are major differences between the 70’s and now…</p>

<p>I graduated in the 70’s too.</p>

<p>blossom </p>

<p>yeah, those kids sound spoiled. I havent heard anything like that first hand (or even RL second hand) myself. Im not THAT close to many recent grads, but AFAICT most with professional jobs are grateful. Far from expecting to live on the UWS, in NYC they are pioneering Fort Greene, Bushwick, Harlem, Morningside Heights, and even the South Bronx. With roommates, in lots of cases. Here in DC they are pioneering a half dozen nabes you wouldnt have wanted to set foot in 10 years ago. I know one recent grad who is moving to Clarendon which IS safe and where all the partying 20 somethings go - but he’s going to have roommates, for sure, and if a car, not a fancy one, and Im pretty sure hes grateful for where hes gotten. The kids who are UE, or who are scraping by on min wage jobs, on part time, free lance gigs, I think have good reason to be not so happy.</p>

<p>Is it mostly because of the business cycle? Sure. So? Adults, in positions of power and influence, looking at current govt deficits, manage to ignore the effects of the business cycle - how can I blame a 20 something pounding the pavement while worried about repaying loans for not taking the long view? My heart goes out to these kids - I want to tell them things WILL get better, but I dont want to blame them for their anxiety.</p>

<p>“Makes we wish Id majored in Comp Lit or something. At least I would have less to get angry about.”</p>

<p>LOL.</p>

<p>I majored in Comp Lit and today’s America makes me wish I’d majored in economics or something. At least I would have known who s****ed us and how to protect myself in the future.</p>

<p>My husband and I graduated in the late 70s and were talking the other evening about how we never had any doubt that we could find jobs that would support us, in retail if nothing else. Some of our friends’ children and children’s friends can not find work in retail, or bar tending or waiting tables. Another thing I think is different is that it was much easier to get into graduate school in the late 70s and early 80s and that was a very comfortable place to wait for the economy to improve. Stipends were much lower but it was possible to get by.</p>

<p>I don’t remember health insurance being a huge concern. It was certainly much less expensive.</p>

<p>Rents are 10 times what they were in the 70s, but salaries are not. H and I paid $135 for an apartment in Santa Ana across from the South Coast Plaza. I went to UCI and worked at Sears at night. He also went to UCI and worked part-time. We had enough money to buy groceries, put gas in our two cars, insure them, and pay our rent and utilities.
Today, that same apartment rents for $1250. Gas and insurance are much higher relatively, and retail salaries are only about three times what they were back then. It’s just much more difficult financially than it was in the early 70s, even without allowing for cell phones, internet, etc. </p>

<pre><code>As far as expectations go, I think it depends. Yes, there are some spoiled kids out there. Much of our society has become more spoiled- not just our kids. But I also know many who live with two or three room mates and eat ramen in order to have their autonomy. The question is, how long will they have to live that lifestyle? Will their education pay off? I think for some, it will. The ones who work very hard, are very street smart, have a lot of social savvy and some lucky breaks will do well. For the average kid, I am much less optimistic.
</code></pre>

<p>“Far from expecting to live on the UWS, in NYC they are pioneering Fort Greene, Bushwick, Harlem, Morningside Heights, and even the South Bronx.”</p>

<p>Ft. Greene, Harlem, Morningside Hgts, and BedStuy are not the out-posts that your posts suggests. Twenty-somethings who choose those neighborhood over UWS and Park Slope are not “roiughing it” so much as opting to live among like-minded trendy/edgy/hip yage-peers rather than the young-family crowd which is more insterested in strollers and getting into the “right” pre-school.</p>

<p>I know that things are different than in the 70s. Yes, rents are higher, but my D’s undergrad debt ($18K) is reasonable (mine was $4k in 1977), and in the 70s. none of my unemployed friends had health insurance; now thanks to Obama-care, recent grads can still get benefits thru their parents. </p>

<p>I have also read the NYT articles about kids living in the city buying a plate of rice/beans and making it last a week. I often wonder why those kids don’t cook up a big pot of rice/beans themslves instead of buying a single serving at a restaurant. I also wonder why, living so close to the edge, they all feel the need for premium cable and the latest phone/droid/gadget (not to mention unlimited texting, unlimited data and other assorted features - - each with a not insignif price tag).</p>

<p>“Far from expecting to live on the UWS, in NYC they are pioneering Fort Greene, Bushwick, Harlem, Morningside Heights, and even the South Bronx.”</p>

<p>Ft. Greene, Harlem, Morningside Hgts, and BedStuy are not the out-posts that your posts suggests. Twenty-somethings who choose those neighborhood over UWS and Park Slope are not “roiughing it” so much as opting to live among like-minded trendy/edgy/hip yage-peers rather than the young-family crowd which is more insterested in strollers and getting into the “right” pre-school."</p>

<p>pardon me for mixing things up quickly.</p>

<p>SoBronx, Harlem, and I think parts of morningside heights - and bushwick, Bed stuy, and crown heights - are roughing it, IMO. Maybe not for greene anymore - but the post I was responding to said they wanted to live on the UWS (where I think there are still some young single folks). Of course the nabes they go to become hip - because youth attracts hipness. And I think even in those nabes I list they are often living with roommates.</p>

<p>Anyway, I dont see how thats so different from the 1970s and 1980s. I dont recall my fellow boomers being so hardy or uninclined to whine. Perhaps I misrember - I hope its not my memory going.</p>

<p>There’s a lot in common between now and the late 70s. I think blossom is right that when we came out of college, it was assumed that you might spend a few years scraping around before developing traction. On the other hand, someone else was right in noting that few of us had more than a few thousand dollars of college debt to service.</p>

<p>When my wife graduated from our single-initial-on-CC college, she had no job and no prospects. No parental support, either. She did have a boyfriend (me) who let her stay with him while she looked for a job, but we both agreed at the time that we shouldn’t live together. She owned nothing that couldn’t fit in a not-very-large backpack – maybe 10-11 articles of clothing total, not counting underwear. Some networking help from a not-close friend got her a sales job with a wholesale jeweler, and answering a want ad got her a second, part-time job as a swing-shift receptionist at the Stanford Medical Center ER. Neither of these had anything to do with her training or her career aspirations, but they paid rent and bought food. It took her six or seven months to find the kind of cool social-justice job she wanted, and even then it was in a field that was somewhat outside her interests (and that ultimately she chose not to stay in). She didn’t complain about this at all, it was more or less what she expected, since she wasn’t aiming for the kind of job that had training programs and hired dozens of people from on-campus interviews. We wound up continuing to live together, but never just the two of us alone – we always had at least one other roommate, and sometimes as many as 4.</p>

<p>Our children’s friends have followed a very similar path. Two years after graduation, almost all of our daughter’s college friends have real jobs and a little bit of traction in some field reflecting their interests – and there are a lot of English, theater, and fine-arts majors in that group. None, including my daughter, has gone effortlessly into exactly the sort of job they dreamed about it college.</p>

<p>Re: NYC neighborhoods. Finding appropriately affordable NYC space has been a big part of my kid’s life the past couple of years. I don’t think she knows anyone living anywhere that could legitimately be called “the South Bronx”. Harlem she was interested in – she thought it was great value – and she definitely knows people like her there. We had a whole discussion just a couple of nights ago about the line between South Williamsburg or Clinton Hill and Bed-Stuy, and she said that it had less and less meaning these days. Everyone has at least one roommate.</p>

<p>There was not much parental pressure to get on with things and get a career type job as everyone knew they were hard to find then. I managed to get jobs in the public sector administration area to ride out most of the 70’s when I was not in school. Not great money but good benefits. I usually had a roommate to keep costs down but did manage to buy a nice little sporty car (1972 BMW 2002 tii for the car nuts) and a TV. Not much college debt either. Paid around $250 every quarter. Got to live in Madison, LA, Boulder and Austin. Buying a house not even a consideration then. Best years of my life.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>It must have been a while since you have been back to Brooklyn. There were places where I would have never thought about living in Bed Stuy, Bushwick & Williamsburg that are now some of the trendiest up and coming neighborhoods in Brooklyn. Bed Stuy is now ~50% white. I remember living in Bed Stuy and my mom would not let us walk to Lewis Avenue. Now Lewis ave is SOLA a nice selection of shops, restaurants. I joke with my sister that I cannot afford to live in the old neighborhood. My sister who still lives in the brownstone that we grew up in said that rents are now ~1500 for one bedroom brownstone apartment . I would not call that roughing it.</p>

<p>That’s pretty true for most towns, though. Even 20 years can develop a town pretty quickly. My hometown in Nebraska used to be a dinky little place with only a few farms and silos, and now it’s been assimilated into a nearby town that expanded over, converting everything to parking lots and shopping districts. It’s a good thing, but it can also be unsettling if you haven’t been there in a while.</p>