
New Normal: Majority Of Unemployed Attended College - samhan
http://news.investors.com/article/611887/201205171857/most-unemployed-are-college-grads-dropouts.htm
======
holdenc
For some people a college degree can lead to a crippling level of entitlement,
and unwillingness to do the kind of work they hoped to escape by attending
college. A college degree doesn't preclude someone from waiting tables,
cleaning up messes and answering phones. Though many graduates seem to be
confused about this.

For unemployed colleges grads -- here's a rudimentary formula for success.
Start a free website with Weebly and call it IWillMopItUp.com. And let people
know that you will mop up their mess for $20 and hour. Pretty crappy right?
Yes, but it epitomizes the can do attitude and whatever it takes mentality
that matters in this difficult economy. The bottom line is that very hard
working smart college grads still have opportunities, but the first step is
them getting over the fact they went to college.

~~~
ryguytilidie
You know close to 50% of new grads are unemployed right? This is millions of
kids a year who were told to get educated and now have no job waiting for them
when they do. Acting like millions of kids should just get a job mopping
floors and drop the entitlement is super ignorant and borders on dangerous.

I would put a lot of this blame on the fact that tax cuts for the rich that
were supposed to "raise demand for workers" have just transferred money from
consumers to corporations. We ignored that the lower and middle class
constitute the VAST majority of consumption (which actually does create jobs,
unlike some rich guy just having more money) and now the upper class has such
an imbalance of wealth there are millions less people who can afford to buy
their product.

Deciding that millions of new graduates aren't getting jobs because they are
lazy is one of the more ignorant and lazy arguments I've ever seen.

~~~
adyus
I think the OP's comment held a seed of wisdom, even though it wasn't properly
expressed.

The point I got from his post was that recently graduated and unemployed kids
should stop waiting to be offered jobs that obviously don't exist anymore, and
bring out the entrepreneurial spirit that made this country great (a long time
ago).

The point is not to mop floors for $20, but to create a website (essentially a
business) that solves somebody else's pain. That is the essential idea. Find a
pain, fix it, charge enough to make a profit and move on to the next pain
point that needs fixing.

~~~
georgieporgie
What's the success rate among entrepreneurs? Don't most small businesses tank
within the first three years? Does this really help if "millions of kids a
year" are entering the workforce?

That said, looking at my (much) younger cousins and their friends, it strikes
me that the latest generation of 20-somethings are already impressively
entrepreneurial. However, I don't see many of their businesses scaling enough
to support a family, much less employ scads of others.

~~~
adyus
Most successful entrepreneurs failed at least once until they made it. I can
only speak from experience, the startup founder that I worked for had three
failed attempts before he made it (relatively) big.

My other point was exactly that. Most small businesses will fail, but the ones
that succeed will be the job creators (I hate that buzzword!) and hire the
ones that didn't make it.

After having worked for a startup myself for a while, I am now ready to try it
on my own. If I fail, there's always other successful startups I could work
for. If I succeed, I'll need good employees, and someone who tried and failed
(but learned from the experience) would be a prime candidate.

~~~
v0cab
Don't most kinds of business require some capital to start?

~~~
hnal943
Less capital now than ever. Local service businesses like "Mop It Up" would
cost almost nothing to operate. The barrier to entry is simply that the work
is undesirable. This makes it valuable.

~~~
_delirium
I don't think your conclusion at the end is true. Most undesirable work is in
fact _not_ valuable, in the sense of being paid well or easy to get, because,
at least if it's also unskilled, there is a large supply of labor relative to
demand. Stuff like janitorial work does not pay well and has no shortage.
Similarly with McDonald's: they typically get many more applications than open
positions, and not because they're paying $20/hr.

~~~
adyus
There was a story (I think it was on reddit, not HN) of an entrepreneur who
bootstrapped a local cleaning business in something like three months, by
hiring his maid as his first employee. The guy does not mop up himself, but
runs an incredibly successful business with a web-based reservation system.
The rest of his job is people and asset management.

So even with janitorial work, an educated graduate can turn it into a
profitable business, without actually doing the cleaning himself.

Edit: his site is <http://www.maidsinblack.com/> and he does a great job of
documenting his startup experience step by step on reddit. If I find the
thread, I'll post it here.

~~~
v0cab
That's one guy. There are millions of unemployed people.

Anyway, this kind of business would have been possible in the past with local
newspaper ads and the Yellow Pages.

------
now_what
Pace comments that STEM majors are not part of the trend, consider this: I
started my undergrad education following the dot com bubble years and was
dissuaded to pursue compsci. I went into civil (structural) engineering
instead. Over half of my civeng classmates would go to postgrad education --
in engineering, law, whatever -- precisely because of the inability to find a
job in civil engineering. About a third of my Master's class (structural
engineering @ Berkeley, a top school in the field) couldn't find a job upon
graduation. I landed a job purely by accident (with a 3.75 GPA), where a
better qualified classmate of mine took another year to find one. I haven't
kept track of what happened to the rest.

~~~
Apocryphon
Exactly. The STEM vs. liberal arts distinction is overgeneralized and
divisive; there are definitely STEM majors out there who are having job issues
as well. Not all STEM fields have the same employment opportunities.

This problem should concern all of us.

------
sunsu
Should note that it's "attended college" but not necessarily graduated, and
that makes a huge difference.

~~~
barik
This is hugely important, and seems to have been glossed over. "attending
college" != "graduating from college". College is, for better or worse, a
binary signal. You either graduated or you didn't.

When you apply for an Engineering license, the Engineering board doesn't care
that you completed 100% of your Engineering courses but never received a
degree because you forgot to take History 101.

Because of this, it's even worse in that it's a sunk cost. Better to go ahead
and drop out earlier rather than later, because not only will you not have a
degree, you'll have wasted that many years for no measurable improvement in
hiring potential.

~~~
WalterBright
You won't have wasted "that many years" if you took courses that taught you
something useful, even if you did not graduate.

------
veyron
Education bubble is slowly deflating. Drawing analogies to housing bubble:

    
    
        People would "flip" their college education for a high-paying job
    
        Easy loans made it possible for everyone to participate
    
        Education prices inflated faster than core inflation, setting a higher hurdle for students
    
        There are fewer jobs at palatable salaries (various reasons)
    
        Now we have boatloads of students saddled with an education that they can't pay off 
    

You can be as nuanced as you wish (e.g. english major as subprime loan) but
the aforementioned discussion is sufficient. I expect to see a sharp
correction soon.

~~~
ryguytilidie
The worst part is that just like in the housing bubble, where lenders went
into strawberry fields and offered home loans for 300k houses in california to
undocumented immigrants making 10/hr and then asked for everyone else to bail
them out because they are shocked the person wasn't able to afford the loan.

Same thing applies here. You recruit a bunch of people who have no business
being at college and certainly can't afford it, convince them that they NEED
college and should take on student loans, they struggle, graduate and have no
real marketable skills. Bank that made the loan hassles the student and when
millions can't pay them back, I'm guessing we have another bailout on our
hands. Glad we learn our lesson last time!

~~~
jchrisa
If I had student debt I'd be thrilled not to pay it back. This country needs a
general debt strike or perhaps a jubilee.

~~~
gee_totes
A debt strike would be the ultimate 'hack' of our current economic system.

~~~
veyron
The right play is to short Apollo Group and Nelnet (loans) and DeVry and other
for-profit schools.

------
jiggy2011
I'm not sure how college debt works in the USA but in the UK you don't have to
payback the debt unless you are earning over a certain paycheck (£15k p/a or
so I believe). So if you end up unemployed you don't have to worry about it.

Also the debt is written off after a certain number of years and the monthly
payment is always calculated at a relatively modest amount compared to your
earnings and deducted straight from your paycheck.

It's not counted as debt for the purposes of getting a loan or mortgage
either, so essentially it's not something you really have to worry about as
you will never get getting a court summons or baliffs through your door unless
you have deliberately defrauded them.

How is it in the USA? Are you constantly chased for the debt regardless of
your circumstances?

~~~
cantankerous
_How is it in the USA? Are you constantly chased for the debt regardless of
your circumstances?_

There are some exceptions, but generally student loans are something that
you're stuck with. That's to say, you can't just shed them in bankruptcy
proceedings.

~~~
jiggy2011
I think it's the same in the UK regards bankruptcy but what happens if you
become temporarily unemployed or can only get employment that is very low
paid? Is it basically "fuck you, pay me"?

~~~
cantankerous
On paper yes, but you can't draw blood from a stone. Loans can be adjusted if
you can't make payments like any other loan, but your credit will be duly
impacted by your inability to meet your obligations. The US doesn't have
anything like what you mentioned the UK having for students in general. I
think there exist some similar setups for people in particular professions,
like teaching, for example, but even then I don't think their benefits are as
good as the ones you laid out, but I'm no expert on how all of that works.

------
Futurebot
Perhaps it needs to be made very clear, in case there are some that still are
confused about why many people (who study non-technical subjects) choose to go
to college (aside from many of the well-known ones like the promises of how it
would lead to a 1950s style middle-class lifestyle; because their parents made
them; because it's rite-of-passage; or because their friends are there), for
/whatever/ major they choose (or are able to handle): it feels like they have
to in order to even be in the running for jobs, because HR uses the _presence_
of a degree, _any_ degree as a first-line FILTERING mechanism. In down
economic times especially, when you're getting 200 resumes for a job that
could be done by someone with a 4th grade education, you need _some_ way to
cut down that pile and that is one of the easiest ways to do it.

Viewed in that light, you can see why so many people are very, very upset by
all this. Politicians, the media, their parents, their friends have all told
them "get a degree or you'll be a [metaphorical] fry cook" and now it's "get a
degree if you want to be able to even get a job as a fry cook." Rephrased,
it's "a bachelor's degree is the new high school diploma", and so it becomes
about the fact that you got the degree _at all_ that matters. If you don't,
there are 199 people (who have the same (lack of) experience you do), but do
have the degree. Theirs goes in the "scan again to filter for some other
reason" pile, yours goes in the trash.

As far as the the ones who racked up debt AND didn't finish: they've got the
worst of both worlds.

Forget about majors, forget about "putting in dues", and start thinking about
a country and society (I'm talking about the US here) that tells you that you
MUST go to college in order to get a job, forces you into debt to do so (not
everyone is grant material - the recent stats say 90% of grads take on debt)
and then tells you there aren't enough jobs for everyone (for the well known
reasons, but I'd put automation at the top of the list these days. Recent
stats say 3+ people are available for work for each job opening) and you'll
understand why these people are mortified.

It's also clear where all this leads, to the dismay of many: a guaranteed
income society. We'll be forced to accept that many, perhaps even MOST people
will not be needed for work. There will be nothing for them to do, and nothing
we can do about it. The people that do work will be the robot designers,
maintainers, politicians, managers, personal service people, and some
miscellaneous workers. Everyone else will be part of a "sports, arts, and
leisure" society. That might be 50-100 years out, but it's coming, and no one
should have any illusions about what that means. Our conception of our
societies as defined by work will need to change, and we'll need to accept
that people who do not work are not lazy, ne'er do wells or parasites, but
that they are the result of the transition to post-work (and hopefully post-
scarcity) societies. The calls for bringing back factory jobs, re-empowering
unions, etc. are short-sighted and misguided; there's no turning back the
tide, and we should adjust our thinking accordingly.

Finally, it should be clear that many right here on this site, and those that
they work with are the ones helping to create this new world. An automated
one, an easier one, and hopefully, a better one.

~~~
soup10
I used to think on similar lines, that at some point there wouldn't be enough
work to do. But it's absolutely Utopian horseshit.

There is ALWAYS useful work to do sometimes there's just of shortage of funds
or skilled workers to do it. Look at our aging infrastructure, fix our
bridges, tunnels, roads, buildings, houses, etc. Care for our old and sick,
learn art and design and make the world more beautiful, engineer spaceships,
create amazing entertainment, etc. etc.

Don't confuse market inefficiency with a lack of useful things to do.

~~~
icandoitbetter
There's always work to do exactly because there are always people looking for
work. It's not the other way around. Most jobs aren't necessary for our
survival, so people who don't want to work shouldn't be forced to work.

It's not Utopian horseshit. Please be less dismissive of ideas.

~~~
philwelch
If the whole human race sat down and wrote up a list of things we all wanted
done, it would probably be even more than we could ever accomplish. Chances
are, if you're a human being, you have something on that list, and you have
the ability to help complete a task that's on that list as well.

Most jobs aren't necessary for our survival. OK, maybe people shouldn't be
forced to work for their survival. But if they want much more than survival,
they should do their fair share. And since I want much more than survival, I'd
rather more people could pitch in and help out with that.

~~~
icandoitbetter
People would still want to work. But they'll start working on things they
actually care about, because they won't be enslaved by their fear that if they
quit their jobs they'll end up homeless or without health insurance. Right now
so few startups dare to actually imagine new things because investors must be
pleased and profit must be made. Plus, if we escaped the job-for-survival
mindset, we would actually start focusing on automation. It's a mistake to
think that automation hasn't come at the scale we expected because of
unprecedented technical challenges. It hasn't come because the government has
stopped throwing money on basic research. We need to focus on wild,
idealistic, big-scale projects. And admit that the private sector isn't good
at _radically_ innovating, because, to radically innovate, you need to have
been failing for many, many years, and have someone sustain you throughout
those years. The best the private sector can do is catch up and minimize
costs, like SpaceX does.

~~~
philwelch
It's utter first-world utopian horseshit to propose this kind of thinking, of
all things, as a response to today's unemployment problems. It's like you
don't even realize that there are third world migrant workers picking our
fruit because every single one of those unemployed college graduates is, to
put it bluntly, too spoiled and decadent to do the work. Or that the lifestyle
of those unemployed college graduates is made possible by armies of Chinese
factory workers.

I don't mean this as a personal attack on anyone. Frankly, I'm probably too
spoiled and decadent to pick fruit all day too. But I'm willing to admit
that's a weakness on my part, and I'm uncomfortable living in a world where I
have to rest my weight on the backs of those who will gladly and happily do
what I'm either incapable of or unwilling to do.

The one saving grace for us is that if we depend on people who do things we
can't or won't do, then we can climb up the value chain and make them depend
on us doing things they can't or won't do. Decadent as it may be to sit in an
air-conditioned office and make stupid iPhone games for other spoiled,
decadent first worlders to play, at least that guy living in the Foxconn
dormitory and assembling iPhones all day might be grateful to us for making
sure he still has work. I'm sure the guys who made "Angry Birds" boosted
demand just enough to buy a few weeks breakfast, lunch, and dinner for maybe a
couple thousand Chinese factory workers.

Pretending there isn't enough work out there and hence we should pay people to
do nothing is just an excuse for cultural laziness. I can't imagine any social
justice in subsidizing first-world people to contribute nothing and continue
to live off the backs of third-world workers. Once those Chinese factory
workers and Mexican fruit pickers are out of work because we can replace them
with robots, then we can talk.

~~~
zurn
I bet the migrant workers you romanticise have a different view than being
"stronger" than you and hence doing underpaid back-breaking work in bad
conditions and no health coverage...

~~~
philwelch
Romanticize? Not at all, I think they have a right to be outraged that they're
practically supporting an idle class on their backs already. Nonetheless it's
something I can't or won't do, and that's a flaw on my part.

~~~
icandoitbetter
It's not a flaw on your part. Stop being so moralistic. That kind of job is
something that NOBODY needs to do. If we really tried, we could automate those
jobs within a couple of decades or less. But we won't because those workers
are possibly even cheaper than the maintenance of a potential automation
solution, not to mention the R&D that would be needed to arrive there.

~~~
philwelch
> That kind of job is something that NOBODY needs to do. If we really tried,
> we could automate those jobs within a couple of decades or less.

OK, so let's all go without fruit for 20 years? No, that kind of job is
something that SOMEBODY needs to do for as long as a couple more decades, and
it's something that SOMEBODY has needed to do for the entire history of the
human race. If somebody needs to do it, why can't you or I? Because we're so
fucking spoiled and lazy that we get worked up over having to work in
cubicles?

I get your argument. I think any good programmer is insulted by the notion of
doing something a machine could do. And if it was between me and a machine,
I'd happily sit on my ass and not worry about it, just like I happily sit on
my ass and don't worry about calculating square roots. But it's not between me
and a machine, it's between me and another human being who was born in less
fortunate circumstances and goes out of his way for opportunities that I feel
are below me. For someone in our position to sit around blithely talking about
how automation can solve the problem "within a couple of decades", as if
that's a solution to labor rights and unemployment today, is like one of
America's founding fathers writing about the inalienable rights and freedoms
of man while owning slaves.

~~~
icandoitbetter
Stop putting words in my mouth. I never said that this is a solution for labor
rights or unemployment right now.

------
mojaam
Ugh, so depressing... go to college, rack up enormous amounts of debt, and
hope to find a job so that you can start paying off the monthly minimums for
the seemingly the rest of your life.

~~~
wyclif
I know education is a common theme here on HN, and I always read articles like
this. I still think education (esp. in US and UK) is ripe for entrepreneurial
disruption, and I enjoy seeing what investors are doing in this space. The
system is clearly broken, because incentives are out of proportion to costs.

~~~
FuzzyDunlop
I wouldn't be surprised if the system operated in the system's best interest,
and not the student's. I only have anecdotal evidence, but from my own
experience, the whole system was designed to keep you in the system for as
long as possible.

This may have been exacerbated by stupid government targets to get, say, at
least 50% of all pupils into university. And in at least some of those cases,
you're only going because you're brainwashed into it.

------
bryanlarsen
English Canadians do not understand why young Quebecois are rioting over
tuition price increases despite enjoying some of the cheapest tuitions in
North America, even after the proposed increases.

This article helps explain why young people should be upset.

------
WiseWeasel
I wonder how long before a politician promises a chicken in every pot, and a
robot in every kitchen.

------
InclinedPlane
I'll just briefly hit the major points of what I think is "wrong with the
system" since this is obviously a huge topic.

First, public educations are a crap shoot. A high school diploma is a joke, it
doesn't even guarantee basic literacy or numeracy. This is a big reason why
white collar jobs have increasingly been forced to rely on other credentials.
Despite vastly increasing per student spending over the years the quality of
education hasn't improved at all and by some measures has gotten worse.

Second, student loan debt is out of control. It's too easy for people to sign
themselves up for huge amounts of debt regardless of their future job
opportunities. This distorts the market and creates an education bubble.

Third, society has turned its back on "dirty jobs". It's becoming less and
less common for folks, especially middle and upper middle class young adults,
to aspire toward jobs that involve manual labor. There's nothing wrong with
construction, welding, automotive repair, culinary arts, etc. Trade schools
are faster and cheaper than a 4 year college, and they typically leave a
graduate with very solid prospects at gaining a fairly well paying job just
out of school. If more people made that choice unemployment would be a lot
lower.

Fourth, "vanity degrees" are far too common these days, partly for the reasons
listed above. If you need higher education to further your career then if you
pursue a degree with very shaky career prospects and you go into massive debt
to do so then quite frankly you made a very bad life choice, and all of the
people who helped you do it (your family and friends, your counselors, your
loan officers, etc.) are partly to blame as well. Yes there is value to
studying history, or English literature, but you should never for even a
single moment fool yourself into believing that you are doing anything other
than digging your own financial grave when you are indulging in those majors.

Unfortunately for a lot of middle and upper middle class 18-25 year olds there
has come to be a great deal of pressure behind taking the same "acceptable"
educational and career track. High school -> 4 year arts & science degree at a
prestigious school -> white collar job. If you are in high school or college
right now I urge you to challenge this. Look at your career prospects and
finances seriously. Consider becoming a STEM major if possible. If that's not
feasible consider switching to a trade school. And try to get yourself into
the job market early even while you are in school to build up your resume and
your skills. It's far, far easier to study history and English lit as a hobby
in your free time than it is to build a well paying career on such things.

~~~
_delirium
Unemployment rates for blue-collar workers are pretty high too, so I'm not
sure that's a good solution---or necessarily a good career bet, unless you
carefully target a subset of blue-collar work that you're pretty sure will
continue to be in high demand.

Construction jobs, for example, are pretty much none to be had at the moment,
and wages have been significantly falling in real terms for some decades. My
grandfather made a middle-class wage as a carpenter working on house
construction in the 1950s, but the crew that built my parents' recent-ish
suburban home were all making minimum wage assembling factory-cut materials
(and there's oversubscribed demand even for those jobs). Auto mechanic is not
a particularly good job market at the moment, either. Skilled welding is
indeed in demand, but it takes a substantial amount of time to build up the
level of skill that's currently in demand (with the prevalence of machine
welds, there's no longer a smooth on-the-job skills progression).

I'm not sure it's actually a better bet than getting an English BA and looking
for an office job, though. Both have high unemployment rates currently, but
blue-collar-worker unemployment rates are even higher than English-major
unemployment rates.

------
jes5199
I feel really lucky that I dropped out of college without accumulating any
debt, and that I was never unemployed during the recession. I wish that gave
me some ability to advise other people on how to escape the debt+unemployment
trap, but other than "be smart and tenacious and lucky", I don't actually know
what to say.

------
sendsoared
@Futurebot

You should get a degree if you can, period. Whether you work as a fry cook or
not. Education is worth it. It has value, to you and to society, apart from
its utility as a factor infiltering people for job positions.

No one wants to see the US become even more uneducated.If you want to get
cynical about the job market (and young people dohave a right to be cynical
about it), try thinking of it this way. Nodoubt most have heard the old adage,
"You need to sell yourself." Anotherway to think of this is that "jobs" are
really a question of convincingsomeone else (not necessarily an employer, but
maybe a client) to pay you.That is always what it comes down to. This could be
an elaborate processinvolving educational degrees, past accomplishments,
recommendations,etc. or, in today's world, it might be something like the
startupsdiscussed here on HN: You announce a bit of software and a website,and
the thundering herd starts clicking. Some of the herd is willingto pay. If
that percentage is large enough, you have a runaway success,something like
Dropbox.Those who are paying you are not asking to see your resume. The
onlypeople who cared that you graduated from MIT were the VC and their
clientswho funded you. That is, if you were funded. Don't kid yourself. The
mostimportant people you convinced to pay you werenot the investors. Theywere
the customers. In the end what mattered is whether customers wereconvinced to
pay you. How they arrived at that decision might actuallybe quite simple (and
quite arbitrary).

Now, maybe using the web as your medium you manange to become
wealthyovernight. But that does not reduce the long term value of your
degreefrom MIT. The degree is not necessarily the cause of your success(e.g.
maybe you cannot prove that it was). Wealth can be made withor without
education. (That has always been true, otherwise smallbusiness, which is the
majority of business in the US, would cease toexist.) Technology allows this
to happen now in a way never before seenin history.

But...

Education has value to you and to society because education will makeyour life
more interesting and an educated society is better than anuneducated one.These
are tough times. But things go in cycles. If you skip education,and then years
from now things get better, you may regret it. Get aneducation as early as
possible (i.e. if you have the money, do it). Itwill benefit everyone in the
long term.

Things go in cycles. It's hard to see this when you are young. This is because
you have not yet lived through an economic cycle as a person of working age.

------
EricDeb
it is not necessarily a bad thing that our general populous is more educated.
What I am appalled at is the cost of higher level education and those who
willingly choose private schools and copious amounts of debt.

------
hanibash
Wow. I can't believe it's this bad.

------
boboblong
"Ask them for work. If they deny you work, ask for bread. If they deny you
bread, take it." - Emma Goldman

I fall into the "some college" category. I have no issue with mopping floors,
unloading trucks, waiting tables, etc. What I have an issue with is the number
of applications I've filled out without getting so much as an interview.
Here's my view in a nutshell: I am not above being a dishwasher. I am,
however, above begging to be a dishwasher. You can only fill out so many
applications for employment at literally the lowest level before you start to
wonder when stealing becomes justified.

