[Sixstrings]

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Call it the recession's lost generation.

In record-setting numbers, young adults struggling to find work are shunning long-distance moves to live with Mom and Dad, delaying marriage and buying fewer homes, often raising kids out of wedlock. They suffer from the highest unemployment since World War II and risk living in poverty more than others - nearly 1 in 5.

New 2010 census data released Thursday show the wrenching impact of a recession that officially ended in mid-2009. It highlights the missed opportunities and dim prospects for a generation of mostly 20-somethings and 30-somethings coming of age in a prolonged slump with high unemployment.

"We have a monster jobs problem, and young people are the biggest losers," said Andrew Sum, an economist and director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University. He noted that for recent college grads now getting by with waitressing, bartending and odd jobs, they will have to compete with new graduates for entry-level career positions when the job market eventually does improve.

"Their really high levels of underemployment and unemployment will haunt young people for at least another decade," Sum said.

Richard Freeman, an economist at Harvard University, added: "These people will be scarred, and they will be called the `lost generation' - in that their careers would not be the same way if we had avoided this economic disaster."
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_CENSUS_RECESSIONS_IMPACT?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2011-09-22-00-17-27

I see this in my own family. When I was 19 I was working full time making $17 per hour (inflation has doubled since then so that's like $34 per hour now). I could afford my own apartment. Now I have a relative that age, he can't find work more than twenty hours per week $9 an hour.

Anyway he wants to move out of the parents home, start life, but it's impossible. Just can't be done on part time work for nine bucks an hour. He actually has college all paid for already but is "taking a year off" sigh.. great kid otherwise though, hard worker, ten years ago he could have found full time work and had his first apartment etc.

On top of all that he has no medical insurance. His father's insurance was too expensive so they went with the state plan for kids.. but he's too old now. And although in apparent good health (weight lifter, sports) now he has a potentially serious medical issue that needs looked into -- but no insurance.. was at the hospital the other night and he walked out because he has no coverage and is scared of the huge bill. The parents are lower end upper middle class.. I don't know the whole story on why they can't help him with some insurance other than it's prohibitively expensive. I've rambled into a whole other topic here but not sure what he can do.. 20 hours a week does he make too much for Medicaid?

Anyway it sucks.. lost generation indeed..

[Duende]

I find myself really depressed about this situation. I have low grade anxiety pretty much permanently. For some context, I'm an early 30's male living in DC at a 'desk job'. I'm starting a family amidst all this and it's really stressful. I'm angry at myself that I put myself in a position to be dependent upon a steady paycheck, but it's difficult to imagine what other options might be.

I wonder how my life would be different if I didn't listen to the 'message' when I was younger about taking on student loan debt; that it would pay off in the long run. Many writers whose work I really respect (John Michael Greer, for example) have a really good grip on the situation. And I'm attempting to free myself from the system as much as possible, as they advise. However, when you have debt to service, there's no other answer but to keep a job in the economy as long as possible. If the jobs situation is a game of musical chairs, I'm determined to have a chair for as long as possible. It's frustrating to be beholden to a system that I know is so screwed up, both for my sanity and for the environment.

I should count my blessings though, because I'm aware that things could be a lot worse. I have some younger siblings whose situation is tougher for the simple fact that their start in the job market came later than mine. The way I see it, as a young person, you're screwed either way. Either you go to college and take on enormous debt in the teeth of insanely high tuition and have trouble finding a job; or, you opt not to go to college and practically guarantee that you will be outcompeted by those who did take on huge loans for college. Talk about a damned if you do or damned if you don't...

[Ibon]

I fear for the lack of opportunities for my own two daughters. But you know you do have to hold somewhat contradictory emotions regarding this situation. On the one hand the personal hardships this causes for your immediate family and on the other hand the understanding that it requires exactly this type of economic dysfunction to allow greater number of citizens to begin to question the systemic weaknesses of our economic system.

We sometimes like to discuss in these idealistic terms a steady state non growth sustainable economy as if this will manifest itself effortlessly out of wise choices by our government.

For years I have been tooting the same message that the catalyst of change are consequences. The economic reality in America today is a direct consequence of unsustainable economic practices. With all the corruption included.

Isn't the uprising required to challenge the embedded interests that keep our economic system entrenched in failure only possible through consequences that are felt by citizens disenfranchised from a system they were mislead to believe in who then awaken to rise and challenge the status quo.

America will have its Arab Spring.......but just like the Tunesian fruit vendor who couldn't make ends meet and he lit himself on fire so will it also be in America when similar economic hardships finally mobilize a generation.

[pfreyre]

First off, we have had a Mohamed Bouazizi here in the US. His name is Thomas Ball, and he lit himself on fire in front of the New Hampshire county courthouse a few short months ago. Where was his press coverage?

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/guest-post-new-hampshire-man-burns-self-courthouse-protest

I digress though... As a 25 year old who graduated from college in 2009, I am definitely one of the lost generation of the US. I left college in Chicago to return back home to Minneapolis in order to start my life. I lived with my parents for a few months, then was able to find a reasonable apartment and move out. Since March of 2010 I have had not less than 5 jobs: 1 permanent job (although I made slightly more than min. wage) and 4 contractual jobs with time periods ranging between 6 months - 1 year. I think that "contractor" is my permanent title from here on. I am a determined person, but I think the only way I can make it is if I can work for a small business that caters to basic human needs or become a farmer.

In a recent video Michael Ruppert said that his generation (the baby boomers) have screwed over everyone under 30. Well, where is my generation? Stand up all you Millennials and be heard. We must fight for our future!

[evilgenius]

I don't think that the young are the only lost people out there. I'm 47 and have never made more than $15 per hour in my life. I did make more than that working for myself, but after taxes (both sides of taxes) it didn't work out to that. I'm not very greedy and I'm an introvert, though, and what I made seemed enough. I didn't need to buy over renting. I didn't need to support a family. I read a lot of books and drank up life in order to learn. I did attend 'some college'.

Since I entered my forties, though, I have been giving my wants more thought. I started investing in stocks. After I came back from a year in Europe I went back to school. I reasoned that if I wanted to make more money, not a vast stack maybe, but more than $15 per hour, I was going to have to learn how to do more complicated stuff and get that degree stamp to prove it. I'm in my last semester right now.

What my situation has taught me is that, although you can change the pace of your life, life can change faster than anything you thought you planned for. The knowledge I have gained has been almost superseded as fast as I could learn it. Ten years ago knowing this or that from one class alone would have been a ticket to a high income. Today it will place you in a camp full of people all gnawing on old soup bones.

My degree will be in CIS (Computer Information Systems) with an emphasis in web development. At my age I know after I get out of school I have to hit the ground running. I lament that things have changed in this field so much that the school probably should have changed their curriculum before I started there. I lament that the pace of change has moved faster than so many minds in charge of the curriculum could see to keep up. I lament that the field itself has changed so much that now very easy do it yourself website builders are everywhere. I don't lament that when I think about what people who need websites have to go through. I do for myself. In response to what I saw coming I decided to concentrate on database tech in school alongside the web stuff. I reckon that will give me an edge for at least a little while, as that kind of logic is not as easy to automate insofar as it goes when it meets individual and small business reality. I will probably not sell much work to cookie cutter customers, but I may still find enough work to make this happen.

As far as paying for school goes, I didn't borrow. Neither did I choose an expensive school over a state school. Taking out student loans seemed like entirely the wrong thing to do. I reasoned that with what was happening in the economy I might find myself competing with others doing the same stuff such that in order to be successful I might have to charge less than them. How could I enter that kind of game with a high fixed cost per month? Most likely I will be working for myself at my age, so it made no sense to gamble.

I don't have any guarantees. I probably won't have any health insurance. As the very last year of the Baby Boom Generation I have pretty much been turned on by those who came before me. My whole life I was being turned on by them either in lack of respect for my decreased interest in excess and my increased interest in general knowledge or because the places that they took in order to get where they were turned out to be the very first places they targeted for automation. I worked in those places (call me a sucker). That's the biggest reason why I made so little. I'm trying to find where the edge of that envelope is that they and the natural changes they wrought (don't interpret this as me condemning those changes) brought to the working world. I want to see if I can get somehow outside of it, into a situation where I can do better.

[Sys1]

It's really hard to be unable to find a descent job and founding a family.
But it's harder to see people succeeding at it while you fail.
It's not just about the economic collapse of a dying civilisation.
Cheap oil has allowed people to live well. Even weak or dumb ones.
"Happy days" won't come again, at least not during our lifetime.
We are in the middle of a Darwin selection and only the best will survive.

[EnergyUnlimited]

It's really hard to be unable to find a descent job and founding a family.
But it's harder to see people succeeding at it while you fail.
It's not just about the economic collapse of a dying civilisation.
Cheap oil has allowed people to live well. Even weak or dumb ones.
"Happy days" won't come again, at least not during our lifetime.
We are in the middle of a Darwin selection and only the best will survive.

Actually it is not Darwin selection, which favors most fit.

Current selection is favoring older generation (eg. 35-60 yo) against younger one.
That also include access to women (majority of whom are security seekers and will rather go for "rich/well off" than for those "fit").
So genes of young men are increasingly selected out but this has much more to do with pitiful state of economy than with Darwinian principles.

[Duende]

Sys1 wrote:

It's really hard to be unable to find a descent job and founding a family.
But it's harder to see people succeeding at it while you fail.
It's not just about the economic collapse of a dying civilisation.
Cheap oil has allowed people to live well. Even weak or dumb ones.
"Happy days" won't come again, at least not during our lifetime.
We are in the middle of a Darwin selection and only the best will survive.

Agreed. Here's the question that I would imagine many high school-aged kids are wrestling with now: do you try to outcompete your peers for fewer and fewer jobs by getting that degree and taking on that debt, or do you opt out of the system and learn skills that will be needed later on (i.e. carpentry, farming, etc.)? Both strategies have risks associated with them: going to college and taking on huge debt in the hopes of getting a rare well-paying job, or forsaking the debt in favor of learning 'skills of the future' like carpentry or farming which do not pay well now, but will likely be in demand in the future. Neither selection is particularly economically bountiful, hence: damned if you do, damned if you don't.

[Timo]

I dare say that we all face much more than a lost generation due to our economic futility. I'm 46, the son of a very damned good local elected official (mother, deceased in 1997), and a minister (since renounced the frock), white, male, college educated, with a masters degree to boot. I've had every possible advantage society can offer at nearly every stage in my life. No legitimate complaints from me whatsoever about my past. Period! But, during the past two weeks, the successor to the position my mother held was vacated, leaving that office open for appointment by the local Democratic party to finish the term. I was personally approached by nearly all of the local political dignitaries, all encouraging me to make myself available for that appointment. If i had said yes, chances are fairly (not certain) good that i would have been chosen to serve in that office until January, 2013. In order to earn that appointment, though, i was advised that i would have to make my case to the local party establishment that i was a partisan pawn, that i had an "agenda", and would fight for the party during next year's campaign season. I turned down all of the encouragement because, based on everything that my mother taught me, partisanship is the root cause of all of this country's problems. Politics is one thing. That's the manner in which compromise is reached in order to achieve what's in the public's best interest. However, pledging allegiance to the partisan aspect of that political process, i simply can't do, and will never do. If i have to obey a party platform in order to work for the public's best interests, that is an oxymoron. I'd be working for the party's best interests, not the public's. Any cursory look across the entire country will tell you that not one damned thing that's in the news is in the public's best interests. In order to be given any legitimacy, whatsoever, everything must first originate from one of the two political parties. Sorry. I'm out. I'm a public employee, fairly well known in this town, and first thing this morning, i walked into our City Clerk's office and changed my party affiliation from Democrat to unaffiliated. I refuse to pledge allegiance to any part of what's bringing this country down. I include Republicans in that condemnation, btw. The public's best interests extend much, much farther than what can be advocated exclusively by any political party. What we all face today is the direct result of how this country was built: a system of direct ideological opposition. That will be our collective demise. We've lost all sense of a civilized society.

[ian807]

People like to blame the baby boomers, but I think the arguments are bogus.

Not every baby boomer borrowed like there was no tomorrow. I've invested any spare cash I had in real estate. I put 25% down and got decent interest rates. Paying them off has never been an issue.

I put money into social security. Like most people of my generation, it looked like a forced savings account, indexed for inflation. I put money in, expecting to get it out. I never assumed that I would be taking it from anyone else.

Since the Reagan era started, congress has voted for programs not because they were popular, but because they were pushed by banks, the finance industry, et. al. Some of these were baby boomers, but I think the defining characteristic was "rich and greedy" not "born between 1950 and 1980."

Baby boomers used up all the resources. Really? At 53, I've owned a car just 20 of those years. I rented, for the most part. Materially, most of my life has been modest. The same couldn't be said of the American military, the greatest user of petroleum products on earth. The rest of the world's militaries are not much better. Militaries exist to protect the vested interest of the inhabitants of their respective countries. They are essentially tools of the local wealthy. A few of these are baby boomers. Most are just greedy.

The real criminals here are the world's wealthy regardless of age.

[Pretorian]

BS. A young fit man will always find a way to put it in. If he wants it that is. Women always picked security/status/income over male attractiveness and fitness, but once they are secured they want and they need some good seeds plowed into their fertile fields.. However with all the gene testing of today this practice is eroding itself.. which does not change women's impulses anyway, fortunately

[jedrider]

Timo:

Why didn't you register for the Green Party?? I am just wondering: Are you one of those unafiliated persons who rather be on the sidelines always, never registering to take sides, or was there something against the Greens that you did not like?

[I always wondered why the Democratic Party didn't try to embrace any of the 'ideologies' of the Green Party in order to defeat Republicans?? I just read someting about opposition to the Nazi Party, that the opposition hated each other and couldn't unite!!]

[Plantagenet]

It took obama over two and a half years to stop babbling about "green shoots" and finally "pivot" to jobs, and even then he just offered more of the same wrong-headed policies that produced the double-dip recession in the first place.

We are never going to get the economy going again unless we change policies, and that won't happen until we turf Obama out of office.

Its really wasn't a good idea for voters to elect an inexperienced and naive person like Obama as the president of the United States in 2008, no matter how good he looked on MTV dancing with Ellen DeGeneres. It would be an even worse idea to re-elect Obama in 2012 and allow him to continue the policies that have destroyed millions of jobs, driven millions into poverty, and completely failed to turn around the economy.

[Duende]

Planetagen wrote:

It would be an even worse idea to re-elect Obama in 2012 and allow him to continue the policies that have destroyed millions of jobs, driven millions into poverty, and completely failed to turn around the economy.

C'mon, son. You know that there's nothing anybody - Democratic, Republican, et al. - can do to turn this ship around. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the dilemma we face is ecological at its base; it is no longer a political question. There cannot be infinite economic growth on a finite planet.

Listen, I'm not crazy over Obama either. But don't kid yourself that a Republican is going to turn things around in 2012 - that's laughable. This conundrum we collectively face is at least 60 (and arguably thousands of) years in the making. If you think one person (a Republican no less) will swoop in to "spur economic growth" you're plain old batshit nuts. And you're too smart to deny that energy descent would prove to be economically brutal.

There are no tools big enough for this line-item on the honey do list. We're entering a whole new world which will crush conventional political and economic "solutions". Each president from here on out will suffer misplaced blame for this, regardless of their stripe. Don't get me wrong: I'm sure some policy decisions may get us all to broke more quickly than others. But make no mistake, we're all heading to poverty.

If it's any consolation however, you can trust in the knowledge that both parties get paid by the same band of bandits anyway, so distinctions between Republicans and Democrats is sort of passe. We're so past splitting hairs at this point.

[PrestonSturges]

Some day Plant should tell us what his beliefs are, because I've never seen that he has any beliefs of his own.

[Loki]

I highly recommend Don Peck's “Pinched: How the Great Recession Has Narrowed Our Futures & What We Can Do About It.” Fascinating account of the Great Recession, with an entire chapter devoted to young adults.

A whole generation of young adults is likely to see its life chances permanently diminished by this recession. Lisa Kahn, an economist at Yale, has studied the impact of recessions on the lifetime earnings of young workers....Seventeen years after graduation those who had entered the workforce during inhospitable times were still earning 10 percent less on average than those who had emerged into a more bountiful climate. Kahn says, it's as if the lucky graduates had been given a gift of about $100,000, adjusted for inflation, immediately upon graduation—or, alternatively, as if the unlucky ones had been saddled with a debt of the same size.

He ends this chapter with a rather utopian note, claiming “it's hard to believe that the nation's material standards in 2030 and 2050 won't be far higher than they are now.” Ha!

[Loki]

Pfreyre, thanks for your first post. Welcome.

I think that "contractor" is my permanent title from here on. I am a determined person, but I think the only way I can make it is if I can work for a small business that caters to basic human needs or become a farmer.

And welcome to the new job market. I've experienced the same job market for most of my “career,” though I'm a Gen Xer 13 years older than you. Partly by choice, partly by circumstance. I no longer really expect a life-time career position. It'll likely be more of the same in the future. Change is the only constant in our uncertain future.

As for becoming a farmer, it's not as simple as just throwing some seeds in the ground and selling the crop to your local Safeway. Farming is a trade that takes many long, hard years of experience to learn. If you're interested, you better start now, you need to learn not only the intricacies of crop production, but also mechanics, carpentry, bookkeeping, marketing, and small business management. Farming is far more complex than many professions, despite the stereotype of country rubes.

I'm into my second season of farming full time, and it's disabused me of any notion that I'll be farming for myself any time in the near future. The best way to make a million dollars farming is to start with two million---it's a pat saying, but it's absolutely true. Farming is a capital-intensive industry with very thin margins. Pretty much all the successful farms that I've dealt with either came from money or inherited their operation.

[The Practician]

First off, we have had a Mohamed Bouazizi here in the US. His name is Thomas Ball, and he lit himself on fire in front of the New Hampshire county courthouse a few short months ago. Where was his press coverage?

Zerohedge

I digress though... As a 25 year old who graduated from college in 2009, I am definitely one of the lost generation of the US. I left college in Chicago to return back home to Minneapolis in order to start my life. I lived with my parents for a few months, then was able to find a reasonable apartment and move out. Since March of 2010 I have had not less than 5 jobs: 1 permanent job (although I made slightly more than min. wage) and 4 contractual jobs with time periods ranging between 6 months - 1 year. I think that "contractor" is my permanent title from here on. I am a determined person, but I think the only way I can make it is if I can work for a small business that caters to basic human needs or become a farmer.

In a recent video Michael Ruppert said that his generation (the baby boomers) have screwed over everyone under 30. Well, where is my generation? Stand up all you Millennials and be heard. We must fight for our future!

Too early for fightin' son! Best to stand back for the time being... try not to get burnt. Fan the flames; don't feed the fire. You dig?

[EnergyUnlimited]

BS. A young fit man will always find a way to put it in. If he wants it that is. Women always picked security/status/income over male attractiveness and fitness, but once they are secured they want and they need some good seeds plowed into their fertile fields.. However with all the gene testing of today this practice is eroding itself.. which does not change women's impulses anyway, fortunately

To some degree you might be right, but current societal changes are definitely distorting this picture.
I observe in my area more and more very young women marrying/going to live with rather old men (say 30+ years age difference).
Kids born are also similar looking to old fathers so economic leverage is probably enforcing faithfulness and even if there are adulteries, no kids are coming out of these.

Even 5-8 years ago such behavior of young women was unheard of in Poland.
There are also plenty of miserable adverts written by young women alike "help me with my debt burden and I will... (well, you know, what she will)".
These were also unheard of several years ago.

[mlit]

I don't comment much so I may ramble to cover various thoughts trapped in my mind.

I grew up in the 80's with survivalist parents in North Idaho and eventually got a sawmill job that paid low wages for the level of work but it wasn't bad I was paying off my property and shack and other than doing work I hated I was not doing to bad.

I was always a math / computer geek and with the tech bubble growing nicely I went to one of those BS schools as I thought I'd never get a real computer job with out it.

I went / finished and have worked in computers ever since. None have asked to see a degree and nothing I learned there (I won't name the school as my level of dis respect for them would probably cause law suits if I posted it) ever proved useful. A really good programmer / computer geek is pure google / self experimentation

I now earn probably 3 to 4 times what I did (And could probably move to a larger city to earn more but f that) in the saw mill but picked up a wife and daughter and student loan payments. Sold the property to help support way through school, luckily the property bubble hadn't popped before I did that.

Now I wish I had that property and time to spend teaching that daughter what is important in life and how to best survive but I'm on the tread mill now.

As a side project I was working on a super realistic game like civilization if any have played that - researching into proper resource levels and extraction rates led me to here and have been depressed ever since. Not so much for myself as I think we have a generation left of ok times but wondering about the daughter what she will enter into after high school. Even if not quite yet peak yet the US peaked in 1970 and it has been downhill ever since except for global dollar fraud allowing us to continue to consume beyond our means.

I'm still not a complete "Doomer" as I think it will be worse than that - I think we would be better off if we fell off a complete blood letting cliff now. But instead I think we are in for a slow march down hill. Like crabs boiled in water we won't realize the scope of the problems until it is to late.

I didn't vote for Obama but I hoped he would win - I thought he was an outsider that would change our course but he's carried out the same policies that the republicrats would have - minus the socialist healthcare that probably won't be implemented.

Am I sorry I quit the sawmill and moved into computers? Not quite I do much prefer my work now but wish I had skipped the worthless school and loans. Most of the sawmills in the area I used to live our extremely downsized and wages flat for the last 10+ years.

But there are complaints about the type of work that I didn't have to deal with in the sawmill. Working in a sawmill I pulled cedar green chain and graded cants which are both hard work, but once you got home you could do what ever you wanted as long as you made it back to work in shape to do it again.

In most computer jobs I did (Usually programming) you could be on call 24/7. Not available to fix something at 11:30 pm? We'll find someone else. I had far more time with family and anything before moving into the easy life of computers. Unlike a conveyor belt full of lumber that shuts off at a certain time the 24 hour a day nature of the Internet requires constant attention. I'm salary now but even at hourly jobs late night fixes didn't show up on the pay check as it would cost to much.

Now beyond doing the work required for computers you have to keep your skills up to par by spending you 'free time' learning and updating skills. I'd consider unionization if it weren't for the current pay / ability to drink on the job type of benefits.

Ok enough rambling - writing especially on forums has never been my strength