Reading the news recently made me wonder about this.
Various threads here (and common sense) have told me that once you hit 40 (or so), the chances of you getting a new job outside retail or fast food diminish extremely significantly. The recession caused a lot of people at or near that age to lose their jobs. It’s also caused a “delay” in the job hunt for those people, such that it takes a significant amount of time, in some cases years, in which they can’t find permanent full-time work.
Putting these two together, it seems to me that those people will likely never find permanent work again. That means no retirement, possible/probable poverty, and all those good things that cause a drain on governments nationwide. Heck, given all this, someone laid off since the turn of the century of the “right” age who’s been getting by on freelancing or temp work could be in the same boat, and thus could have permanently “ruined their life” at age 30! That’s a pretty sobering thought, given how long people live these days.
Are we looking at a crisis here, especially when it comes to larger (government) financial matters (unless we get to the point where we’re content to let all those people sleep under bridges)?
I think I’m there. I am way underemployed, and there is no way anyone would hire me in my old position in software with so many eager new college grads with more experience in more recent technology. I’m always working on one startup idea or another, but unless that hits I’ll be making 1/4 of what I used to make.
I like what I do now, but the pay is just not the same.
Yes. Definitely. For sure. You can bet the ranch on it. Huge numbers of Americans(people living in America) will be permanently unemployed.
This labor economic condition is not just a recession nor a Depression, it is a **structural **change of labor in the economic system of the United States - caused by “free trade” (which is not free, nor fair) policies.
The American voters are getting the “free trade” system that they have been voting for the past 30 years or so.
The new “free trade” system results in a global labor market, which means that jobs will move to countries that have cheaper labor. The protective tariffs (which protected American jobs and American factories) set up by the founding fathers 200 years ago are now gone. All jobs that “can” be outsourced and sent out of the country, “will” be sent out of the country. The only jobs remaining in the United States will be medical, government, retail, legal/law enforcement, transportation, and tourist related jobs that cannot be outsourced.
Those jobs that were sent to Asia are not coming back which is what makes it different this time.
Compounding the current unemployment situation, is the United States immigration policies which continue to let in record numbers of immigrants, millions more immigrants each and every year. Each month approximately 200,000 MORE people enter the U.S. labor market with most of them being immigrants.
The combination of “free trade” policies sending jobs to asia along with adding millions more immigrants chasing fewer and fewer jobs result in long term structural lifetime job shortages.
Eventually they WILL!!! be sleeping under bridges because the huge debts being accumulated by the United States will eventually result in cutting off all government welfare.
There is no way to avoid this future of extreme unemployment as long as the voters in the United States continue to want to overpopulate the country with immigrants and as long as the voters want to continue to send our remaining jobs out of the country.
A lot of people here are pretty fucking ignorant when it comes to anything having to do with business and economics. Then again, a lot of them don’t have jobs that are that great to begin with anyway. Economic conditions go in cycles and this cycle is not any different.
As you progress in your career, you are expected to have a different job at 40 than you would at 25. Typically at 40 you would be looking at mid to senior level management jobs. These jobs tend to may more, but they also tend to be in fewer quantity. OTOH, most companies I have been talking to are looking for senior people to build the business, not worker bee analysts.
The notion that your career is over at 40 is patently ridiculous. Unless, of course, you haven’t progressed in it since you were 25. I know plenty of people who lost their jobs in their late 30s, 40s and 50s and they all have found jobs in this economy withing 6-12 months.
When people refer to a “lost generation” of unemployed and underemployed, they are generally referring to people graduating college in the past few years. New college graduates are often dependent on large companies to hire bunches of them through campus recruiting. These positions are important for new graduates to gain experience, build their resumes and start their careers as well as begin to build their adult life. As they spend more and more time unemployed living with their parents or underemployed working at the mall, they can begin to fall behind.
For example, I graduated college in 1996. I found it relatively easy to find jobs in technology consulting for the next 5 years.
In 2001 I graduated business school right before the dot com crash and 9/11. Fortunately I had a good job lined up with a prestigeous firm in New York. However the company overhired and I didn’t have a lot of work to do for about 18 months and eventually they laid a bunch of us off. Some people in my class had their offers recinded or their start dates delayed a year or more. Some people couldn’t find jobs at all for a long time.
Just to ask: what do you think of age discrimination as a problem for job hunters? I’ve never thought that the problem mentioned in my OP was purely business/economic related (though age discrimination does have some roots in business/economic thinking, even if it’s wrong-headed).
“structural change”? What does that even mean? The economy is constantly undergoing a structural change. That is the strength of the American economy.
I don’t think it really becomes an issue until your 50s or 60s or if you are looking to start a career in an industry that is particularly youth oriented.
In my field of technology/management consulting, firms tend to hire a lot of young 20-something year old associates. That’s because we make them work 90 hours a week and they usually burn out after a couple of years. People in their late 30s-50s tend to get hired at the manager to partner level because they aren’t hired to be drones. They are hired to bring their 20 years of industry experience and grow the business.
Most economics experts would say that is a good thing.
Let’s hope not, since most of the re-hiring in the early 40s was for the business of killing Japs and Germans.
I’m not going to wade into the discussion of whether it will happen here, but if a “Lost Generation” is where we’re heading, this article about what’s been happening in Japan over the last couple decades might become very relevant to the US. It sounds pretty ugly for those who get the shit end of the deal.
Susanann, what you are missing with your rant on outsourcing is that all of those people in China and India working those outsourced jobs now have rising income. They therefore present new markets for our products. While an American toiling in a textile factory might lose his job to an overseas worker, another American can later sell a copy of Microsoft Windows to that foreign textile worker when he buys his first PC.
We are currently in a period of transition. Eventually, wages will continue to rise in developing countries, until it no longer makes sense to outsource a given job.
And while the founding fathers may have indeed have set up protective tariffs over 200 years ago (when economics was in its infancy), it is also notable that all tariffs were eliminated between the various States within the U.S., resulting in free trade within the borders of the U.S. and which contributed to rising income for all Americans.
That works great when companies are growing.New people are added at the bootom and we need more peuple in the ranks above them. Combined with natural attrition it kept things stable. Now look a a company that is not growing, or even shrinking. They still need those jobs done at the bottom, but they don’t need the new jobs at the top. The number of jobs available for promotion diminishes, and then when you add in mergers you now have multiple people doing the same job so you look for ways to cut cost and get rid of one of them,
Some of the smart people paying attention to their career paths will do well, others will find that they can be replaced by a college grad with an advanced degree who will work more hours for less money
What is all but certain is that those who do find work will be working longer hours for less money for people who truly do not give a damn - and getting fired faster and more often.
The strength of the American economy is that people are disposable. That’s not going to change anytime soon.
That would work fine with free trade in both directions, which is not what we have today - as shown by China’s control of its currency so it does not float the way it should in a true free market and encourage imports. Second, that copy of Windows will no doubt be pirated, since the Chinese government only enforces anti-piracy laws when someone is watching.
I was also shocked at how hard it is to get a job when you’re over 40. I have been underemployed since 2005, severely unemployed for the last 2.5 years.
I have tons of qualifications an degree from the U of Chicago and excellent references. The temp agencies tell me there is just too much competition for jobs.
Remember not only are you competing against Americans you’re competing against the world now. Sure you can design killer graphics in all the Adobe programs. So can a guy in India and he can do it for a lot less and it doesn’t take your boss any longer to email him than you.
I see this as a great adjustment. Kind of like in the early 80s when we moved from factories to service.
I really am starting to wonder if I’ll ever find perm work again. I doubt it. The longer the gap the harder it is. Unless we go back to the boom of the late 90s, I don’t think so.
I recall I was the overnight manager in a hotel in the mid to late 90s and I woud always be short night desk clerks. I would say to H/R “get me someone.” They would be like “I put an ad in all these papers NO ONE applied.” No one wants to work overnights.
I wound up calling other hotels and bribing their night clerks away with more money.
Ah for those days when jobs came looking for you huh?
Are you serious? Peasants in China don’t buy legitimate copies of our software, and even if they did, the money flows to Microsoft, who does their best to outsource jobs or failing that, bring in workers on a visa. About the only guaranteed jobs Microsoft creates in this country involve the prison labor they use to package the software.
The lack of job growth seems to be more structural.
In the last 10 years, there has been no net job growth despite a population boom. Population went from 280 to about 315 million, but the number of jobs went from 132 million to about 131 million. Normally you’d see 20% net job growth per decade. Instead we saw none.
In the recession, we lost the equivalent of about 3 million jobs by cutting people’s hours from full time to part time.
So the 7ish million jobs lost in the recession is just the tip of the iceberg. We are arguably closer to 30-40 million jobs short.
So there are major issues which give all the power to employers and shrink the job market. The recession is just the straw that finally broke things.
How do other nations deal with long term unemployment?
All those Asians that we are losing our jobs to - they are offering to do them for a lower price. Capitalism at its finest. We can keep those jobs - we have to stop believing we are worth
American style wages.
Not only are we “currently” 30-40 million jobs short, but that shortage is continuing to grow and it is becoming worse each and every year. American companies are outsourcing MORE and MORE!!!, and they are moving MORE!!! factories to asia. It hasnt stopped. Moreover, we are continuing to overpopulate and are adding millions more ADDITIONAL immigrants to our population of job seekers every year. By 2040 there will be over 400 million people in America and at the same time we will lose tens of millions MORE jobs.
How do other nations deal with their long term unemployment? Answer: They avoid it. They protect THEIR jobs and they protect THEIR industry.
China’s motto is: *** “If it isn’t made in China, then it isn’t sold in China” *** China is selling a ton of cars to Chinese people but none of the cars sold in China are made in Detroit.
It is almost impossible to sell American made cars, televisions, whatever in Japan because of all the restrictions they place on imports into Japan.
If any particular item is manufactured in Canada, then they don’t want any competing American similar products to be sold there.
The EU only allows “free trade” low trade barriers amongst themselves between member countries.
Most other countries also try to protect their borders and try to limit their immigration. It is also nearly impossible for millions of immigrants to move to China, or Mexico, etc. because they protect their borders and have strict limitations on letting foreigners move there…and even harder for millions of American citizens to get a work permit to work in China, Mexico, Switzerland, Canada, etc.
China is booming with lots of job growth , but if you think you and millions of others can move to china and get those jobs, you are crazy because they dont let foreigners take their jobs.
YOu have absolutely no idea how hard it is for a large group of Americans to get a visa and a work permit to live and get employed in Switzerland.
