
Youth unemployment: The outsiders - shrikant
http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/07/youth-unemployment?fsrc=scn/tw/te/dc/theoutsiders
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groby_b
Time to once more point out that we are simply running out of unskilled/low-
skilled labor. And even in the high-skills environment, there's only so much.

That is not the only problem, for sure - the economy certainly is _bad_. But
at some point, we will need to acknowledge that there is simply not enough
work to keep everybody gainfully employed 40+ hours a week. And the lower the
skill level, the less work there is that can't be automated.

This is a problem that's looming for a long time - at least since Drucker
talked about the Knowledge Economy (in 1966!) the writing has been on the
wall.

We've been failing to acknowledge that ever since, since it's considered
classist/elitist to point out the problem.

~~~
pg
_at some point, we will need to acknowledge that there is simply not enough
work to keep everybody gainfully employed 40+ hours a week._

Seems unlikely. We've been eliminating jobs with labor-saving devices for
centuries. In the past they've always created as many jobs as they destroyed.
What are the odds that this moment is the point when that finally stops
happening?

~~~
cameldrv
The problem now is this: If you are a low skilled worker at this point in the
U.S., you're likely to be either not conscientious, or dumb.

For very low skilled jobs, automation can do the job better than a poor
quality worker, because it is predictable and consistent. For jobs that still
can't be automated, many of them can be done remotely, and are now done in
lower labor cost countries by ambitious, conscientious workers. Jobs that
can't be done remotely are being filled by illegal immigrants who are also
ambitious, conscientious workers.

If you are at the bottom of the American labor heap, you have never faced
competition from machines, globalization, and immigration like you have now.
The problem is not just that the alternatives to low-end domestic labor are
cheaper, but that they are higher quality, and therefore push the price of low
quality domestic labor to near zero.

In the long-term, as machines become able to do more jobs better than humans,
people will simply not be willing to pay any price for an error-prone human to
do a worse job than a cheap machine. Then, low skilled humans will only be
employed in jobs that can only be performed by humans, such as prostitution.

~~~
paulcedars
What happens when machines and outsourcing eliminate the need for most
American doctors, lawyers, drivers, teachers, and other skilled professions.
We can't have a prostitution-based economy.

~~~
iaskwhy
It might take a long time to reach that possibility since public facing
automations usually require a human near the robot for the comfort of the
other humans using the service. Think: pilots on airplanes (mostly not
necessary), trains drivers (not necessary at all), human ticket dispensers
(not necessary at all). Just thinking out loud.

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killerswan
This age range, 15-24, is really diverse, but here we have college graduates,
college students, high school graduates, high school students, and younger
dropouts, all mixed into the same statistic.

What percentage of college grads are unemployed? What percentage of high
school dropouts are unemployed? Several decades ago, when the 55+ crowd was
under 24, what were their employment rates? What are these trends across
gender?

Given how few sectors feature competition between 55- and 15-year-olds for the
same work, the given comparison is far less interesting...

~~~
T-R
There was a somewhat related discussion a while back; you might find it
interesting if you missed it. Granted, it's for a different demographic (25+
US citizens), and doesn't cover the gender aspect, just education level.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2525621>

There was also another discussion earlier today on youth unemployment in the
US:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2730268>

which argued that youth unemployment is related to the 55+ demographic
retiring later (as opposed to minimum wage laws).

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latch
I wonder how big a part looking down at trade workers is playing in this.

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mstoehr
Employers are probably unconvinced that younger applicants will be able to
make them more profits. This is caused in part by the uselessness (for
businesses) of the work students do in high-school and college--this is a
group of people whose life has primarily consisted in consuming profits.
Employers are also probably more risk-averse because the recession means that
profit margins are tighter (if existent at all).

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aristidb
Germany is not affected, interesting. Maybe the fact that there is no minimum
wage, and the labor market liberalizations of ~2000 help.

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delackner
Odd outlier in that graph is that Turkey appears completely unchanged.
Possible but not at all likely.

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etaty
Please read this : <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_guarantee>

This is the only way to change the world economy and stop the race to the
bottom.

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jpr
I think part of the problem is that most industrialized nations have pushed
for high percentage of the population to have a college/university degree,
while not considering whether the degrees are needed for the jobs that are
going to be available. This means that there is a discrepancy between the
supply and demand of workers and jobs and their education levels. People go to
college to study something for which there is absolutely no demand, and end up
unemployed, having used years of their life for something that didn't do them
much good, and wasted a load of their own or tax payers' money.

~~~
natnat
In the US, the unemployment rate for people with at least a bachelor's degree
is only a little above 4%. This includes journalism, history, and interpretive
dance majors.

Would unemployment be lower if these people got healthcare and engineering
degrees instead? Of course. But I really don't think people with less
practical degrees are nearly as big of a problem as people with no education
at all are/

