One of my daughter’s friends majored in landscape architecture, which is as practical as engineering. He is having a lot of problems. My son-in-law is in law school. In ordinary times getting paid internships for the summer was easy, now very few students are finding any. My company used to hire new college grads - not for a while. Engineering PhDs from Stanford with good connections can get jobs - it is pretty tough for anyone else.
Why hire a student? Because the student has had time to learn a lot of the latest technology, while those of us who have been working for a while get set in our ways. When we retire it is good to have some people already trained.
Another example of underemployment is someone who has had a professional job, been laid off, but can no longer find a replacement. I’m not talking art history majors here, I’m talking about people majoring in areas where they learn specific and useful skills, but who are having trouble getting work in their areas.
Excellent point. I had fantasies of retiring at 61 or so, but unless my portfolio shoots up a lot soon, that is not going to happen. And I’ve got a lot more money saved for retirement than most people. The early retirees I know are people who got laid off with a good package who are too old to ever find another job.
They are also legally mandated to take like 30 vacation days a year (compared with none in the US although 10 holidays and 2-4 weeks vacation is typical).
Like it matters though. Doesn’t their socialist welfare state take care of them all?
It doesn’t necessarily increase demand, but it frees up labor and capital to perform other activities. There is always work that needs doing. 50 years ago people were saying that automation would lead to a 2 day work week. Why do you think that never happened?
Or he goes and finds a job doing something else if and when that happens.
Have you not noticed the permanent non-zero-ness of unemployment figures? This situation was reached a long time ago. It used to be thought that would be a good thing. Mechanisation was meant to set us free from wage slavery and allow us all to subsist with less labour and greater material well being. That’s one of the measures of a civilised life, in the most primitive societies all people work all the time just for food. In more advanced societies people work less and get more, ultimately based on the man hour productivity of agriculture, and resource extraction. OF course all of our excess productivity is siphoned off into the pockets of those powerful enough to take it for themselves while other people work ten hours a day for a pittance.
Not in any of the stuff I read 40 years ago they weren’t. Getting 40 hours out of people costs a lot less than 20xs as much as getting 2 hours.
I noted that automation does improve productivity, and improves the supply side. And I also noted that decreasing product prices does increase the demand side. But you didn’t respond to the main point - if the savings in productivity goes to the bottom line (or overseas) and not to wages for those who are still employed there is a decrease in demand, and not enough demand to buy the new things being efficiently manufactured. During the Bush years this contradiction was papered over by the housing bubble, which increased demand through borrowing, and we know how that turned out.
If the rewards of increase productivity go only to the stockholders (and high level execs) the CEOs are popular in the short term but this leads to disaster in the long term.
BTW, I think the best examination of this problem - 45 years ago - was in the stories of Mack Reynolds, mostly published in Analog. In his future Earth, there were not jobs enough for everyone, so most people live off dividends from a universal stock offering everyone gets. He also talks quite a bit about the difficulty of disappearing in a society with pretty much universal use of credit cards - or perhaps debit cards. That is one solution to the problem, but hardly the best.
Unemployment will never be and should never be zero. Some churn in the labor market is good. There is a certain natural level of unemployment, which I think used to be around 3%. During the Bubble unemployment actually dipped below this, but that wasn’t necessarily a good thing, because back then companies were hiring anything that breathed more or less. We’re way above it now, and have been for a while.
You can go back to the Middle Ages and see the same concerns, the same worry, and the same changes over time. As individuals, some people fall through the cracks with each change. And honestly, with a few exceptions (the late 90s were so cool, and from a labor shortage standpoint, so was the period after the Black Plague) there have never really been enough jobs to go around - as Voyager says, unemployment has a “natural” rate of about 3%. There are times when unemployment is higher, and times when its lower.
One thing we aren’t good at as a society is really planning for the fact that sometimes, times suck. When the good times roll, we convince ourselves that its the “new economy” and things will never get bad again. And instead of - as individuals and as a nation - setting aside some of that surplus for the time the crops fail - we spend ourselves right into a bubble.
Because there are a lot of people- mostly young women- who think they can get a media degree and then somehow they’ll end up on television and become OMG FAMOUS!1!!Shift+one. And none of the major media outlets will hire you unless you have A) A degree or B) Years and years and years of experience.
There are media jobs, just not as many as there are graduates. And most of them are fairly mundane “behind-the-scenes” jobs which are perfectly respectable and worthwhile positions, but still generally not especially well paid. A full-time Journalist in Queensland makes about $38-$40,000 a year, which is exactly what a full-time retail worker makes. And the retail worker didn’t have to go to University for 3 years and rack up a $30,000+ Higher Education Loan debt to do it.
The thing is, some jobs are what might be described as a “Calling”- and journalism is arguably one of them. That’s why there are people who really do want to be journalists for the “right” reasons, who go to university and get a degree that doesn’t guarantee them a job at the end of it.
In my case, I got a degree to get a professional job in the media doing something more worthwhile than writing the fishing report for an obscure small town community newspaper. I don’t expect to be made Head of Online News for the ABC the day after graduation or anything like that, but I do expect a job that pays more than someone working full time in a supermarket.
Well, I was just trying to give credit where credit was due. Is it still partisan if it is true?
The shortage isn’t in blue collar workers, the shortage is in blue collar jobs. We have states full of blue collar workers but there is a vanishing number of blue collar jobs that aren’t getting shipped to China or being filled by cheap immigrant labor.
If he’s having lots of problems finding a job, as opposed to engineering grads, why would you conclude his course of study is “as practical as engineering”?
And why would you expect this? Are you special?
I mean, it’s not you, personally, so I don’t mean it like that. It’s everyone. I don’t personally know ANYONE in my social circle who got a job out of university that paid especially well. Everyone I know scraped and fought to earn their way into good paying jobs. I started out in my career getting ten bucks an hour; I took a substantial pay CUT to start out in civvie work as opposed to the Army. My sister waited tables. My wife worked a shit job. My best friend worked a shit job. My wife’s best friend worked a shit job. We all had to work even shittier jobs to pay FOR school. Everyone I can think of worked shit jobs to start. In a few fields you can start off pretty well, but in most you start off with shit jobs, get a shitty apartment, and buy cheap beer. If you aren’t born into money, its supposed to work that way.
About 18 years from now my daughter will, hopefully, graduate from university, and she’ll probably have to do a shit job. I hope she lucks out, but the odds are she’ll have to do something for little money and scrape by until she proves herself and gains the experience to move up. And so be it. If she’s like most people she’ll learn from it.
What entitles a 22-year-old university grad to anything but a shit job?
I mean, I do understand things are tough right now, but we’re in a recession. They’ll be back up in a few years.
Yes I do. You can’t measure the practicality of a subject area by instantaneous employment figures. Landscape architects are trained to do specific and practical jobs, much like engineers - or regular architects. You can’t be very aware of the field to be asking that question.
I know quite a few fellow engineers who have been out of work for a while. Are their talents suddenly not practical?
When I got out of college I was offered a job at $16K a year, good money for 1973. I think it might have been a shit job, but it was a good-paying shit job. I wisely didn’t take it and went to grad school for 1/4 the salary.
If you are graduating into a field where you need an apprenticeship, or where even most good jobs don’t pay well, then I agree with you. But it is not always so.
Wait a minute – how can plumbing work and electrical work be shipped to China or filled by cheap immigrants? The work has be done at the site, and generally it has to be done by licensed, skilled workers.
I asked a question you didn’t answer; how do you conclude this person’s skills are practical?
You may think a landscape architect is an immensely important job. Well, that’s great, but I don’t see you hiring him. If the job has long term prospects then the jobs will come; we’re in a pretty bad recession, but in the long run a useful job is a useful job. Do landscape architects usually do well? If so, well, the recession will end.
I don’t understand. I don’t hire landscape architects. My backyard is landscaped already, though if I wished to redo it I might hire him. However I am not a landscape architect, so I have no idea of whether he is a good one or not.
Here is the Wikipedia entry on landscape architecture. I don’t see the relevance of my perception of its importance. The fact is, buildings and parks are landscaped, and doing so well tells special skills and training - for instance knowing which plants can go where. is that not practical?
A reduction in the amount of building clearly maps into a reduction in jobs for landscape architects. I originally mentioned him as an example to show that those who went to school in very practical areas are also affected.
I’m of two minds about majoring in non-practical areas. Everyone in my family is very practical, including my kids. However my wife’s best friend wanted to major in art history, and her father made her major in business. She worked in business for 30 years and did okay, but hated every minute of it. Maybe she would have been happier a little poorer.
In my case, I can genuinely say “Yes, I really am that good”; I have years of experience as a columnist, feature writer, and photographer, and I now have a postgraduate degree from a respected University to go with it. I’m not a 22 year old fresh-faced uni grad with no experience or practical skills, and that’s why I expect a job that pays better than working in the supermarket.
As to the rest of your points and their general focus, I understand what you’re saying, but the thing is: the entire point of getting a degree is to get a job that pays better than a job which doesn’t require a degree.
Like I said, neither I nor any of my friends at uni expects a job paying $100k plus straight off the bat. It doesn’t work that way and we don’t expect it to. But given than a floor staff job at any major retailer pays $38k, and a graduate position with a Government Department pays $50k, I don’t think it’s unreasonable for any university graduate to expect at least $45k or so. Especially because you’ve probably been working the $38k equivalent job at least part-time to finance your studies anyway.
this is largely a myth. Hunter Gatherers may have had to only work 20 hours a week to meet their needs even in relatively harsh Australia.
see here: Original affluent society - Wikipedia
Also, in Ancient Futures its documented, subsistence farmers who own their own land in harsh Ladakh (high altitude desert) only work full time 4-5 months of the year. The rest is largely taken up by festivals and religious ceremonies.
Somehow for most of us, we’ve ended up having to work LONGER hours than our ancestors to survive.
Well, no, obviously, this isn’t true; we work far less just to survive. If all you wanted to do was meet the basic needs of survival you wouldn’t need to work 20 hours a week. You’d barely have to work at all. Get 3-4 friends, work 10-15 hours a week each, and you can live in a two-room apartment in conditions our ancestors would have found luxurious beyond their wildest dreams.
We work 40 hours a week not to survive, but to live in wealth beyond the imagination of our ancestors.
I guess if you keep sending the resumes out (note: Create a resume web site - hugely productive. Make sure it looks sharp. Get someone with a real camera to take photos of you for use on the site) you might get one.
Maybe. Or maybe people just want to take a course of study. University and income are correlated, but it depends what you take. Some people aren’t really super jazzed about big money.
But you’re not applying for a job as floor staff with a major retailer. You’re not applying for a graduate position with the government department. Those jobs have nothing to do with it.
If you want that kind of money, go work in those jobs. If you want to work in a field where entry level positions pay less, then you’ll have to accept less. Jobs are NOT paid according to the education of the people filling the jobs, they’re paid according to what the market determines the job is worth. Surely you looked into this before going back to school? You’re an experienced guy who seems to have some brains.
Degrees don’t guarantee a job ,or that you can do the job at all. A degree opens the door . If you are hired they will teach you the job.
I know plenty of engineers and ITs that are looking for work.
I know a woman who worked at Ford as a secretarial type worker for 6 years. She has a degree. She got laid off. They called her up wanting her to come back. She would have to take on more execs and she would get paid 10 bucks an hour.
With the cost of college going up at an alarming rate, how can new grads ever pay off their loans? They get out of college with an educational mortgage. Pay and security is dropping. It does look grim.
I read last week that American corporations still have another 30 percent of their staff to offshore. They are not done.
You seem to think that corporations exist for the purpose of employing people.
The problem, IMHO, is this “me me me” entitlement attitude people in this country have grown up with. The education teaches people that as long as they do what they are told (mostly by BAs making $40,000 a year) they advance to the next level. K-5, middle school, high school, college, maybe grad school and so on. So by the time people are in their 20s, they automatically expect that will continue.
The working world is not like that. You generally don’t apply and get hired just because you are qualified. You don’t automatically advance to the next level in your company just because you completed all the requested tasks over the year. It’s all about being able to perform work that someone else needs doing. It doesn’t matter if you are a plumber, computer programmer or a lawyer. If people don’t need pipes fixed, applications written or lawyerin’, no one is going to pay you.
In other words, it’s not about what you want. It’s about what other people need done.