> Weary of long days earning minimum wage, he quit his job in a pizzeria in June. He wants new employment but won’t take a gig he’ll hate. So for now, the Pittsburgh native and father to young children is living with his mother and training to become an emergency medical technician, hoping to get on the ladder toward a better life.
Perplexing? The opening of this article gives a pretty straightforward answer: people in that demographic aren't buying the narrative that a minimum-wage job will necessarily come with growth opportunities. So instead of getting pigeon-holed, they are trying to jump into a career with better growth opportunities. Sometimes that requires leaving immediate money on the table.
Anytime the issue of millenials and jobs comes up, I think you have to talk about what the structural differences in the economy and business world are now:
"Thirty years ago, she says, you could walk into any hotel in America and everyone in the building, from the cleaners to the security guards to the bartenders, was a direct hire, each worker on the same pay scale and enjoying the same benefits as everyone else. Today, they’re almost all indirect hires, employees of random, anonymous contracting companies: Laundry Inc., Rent-A-Guard Inc., Watery Margarita Inc. In 2015, the Government Accountability Office estimated that 40 percent of American workers were employed under some sort of “contingent” arrangement like this—from barbers to midwives to nuclear waste inspectors to symphony cellists. Since the downturn, the industry that has added the most jobs is not tech or retail or nursing. It is “temporary help services”—all the small, no-brand contractors who recruit workers and rent them out to bigger companies."
Doesn't this mean that middle-men are just being inserted who are absorbing some of the productivity (earnings) of the worker?
It seems like this would only make economic sense if the end company isn't using them on a regular basis, so overall efficiency goes up by multiplexing an employee out to multiple companies as needed. It seems implied by "Rent-A-Guard", but I'm musing out-loud. I haven't had a chance to read your article yet.
People love to talk about privilege, but being a male millenial in 2018 is anything but that. The media says you're a sexual predator. They say you're toxically masculine. That is, the very hormones imbued within you are to blame for a host of problems. If you're white they say you are constantly oppressing people of color. If you're in tech, then you're worst kind of man possible - a tech bro.
Couple the prevailing sentiment with a change in the type of available jobs. Physically demanding work is less common now, and manufacturing, long a mainstay of male occupation, was moved overseas. Office work is more about people relationships, which generally favors women. Our education system is similarly biased against men these days.
I'm at the old end of the millenial generation, but if I was 25, I don't think I'd be too motivated either. I'm not surprised when these young men favor sitting in a basement playing video games over getting a job. Or watching porn instead of going after a girlfriend. The culture has shifted. For some people it's a huge win and there are a wealth of new opportunities - but it is a zero sum game, and now we're seeing the losers.
I'm a 29 year old male. I've been trying to get a new job since March, and I've been unemployed since August. I have an MEng in Electronic Systems Engineering, and over 3 years continuous relevant work experience.
I have tried applying through Seek and TradeMe, and got no response. I tried writing custom cover letters and applying on company websites. I've rewritten my résumé several times based on contradictory advice. I updated my LinkedIn, and made a second LinkedIn profile to add strangers. I asked recruiters for help. I put side projects on the web, especially Show HN, to try to get attention. I asked friends who I worked with at Fisher & Paykel Healthcare when I was there before. I found random people on Github and offered to work for free on open-source projects just to get an introduction. I contacted computer repair shops and asked them to put up posters advertising data migration services that I could do with my old Apple II. I've contacted every Apple-certified repair person in NZ/Aus/Can to ask them for help. I've tried praying about it. I've tried spamming the companies that have emails readily available, from the accredited employers list. I posted a desperate plea on Facebook, and followed up on advice (+1 introduction) from friends. None of these methods are working. I've had only two interviews. Most companies don't even send rejections. I've lowered my standards so now I'll accept any kind of job, anywhere.
This is a cry for help. I know I'm doing something totally wrong. I just don't know how to contact companies. Please tell me what to do. Please tell me email addresses of people who care.
I looked at the résumé linked from your profile, too. I agree with ac29, plus the following suggestions:
* Remove all the logos/links. They're not helping the first impression, and they'll almost certainly confuse the systems that are used to scan/store your résumé.
* Take out the reference to military technology in your objective. If you get an interview you can ask them if they do military work and explain your reservations.
* Simplify your work history. Try to make it as sequential as possible, with as few gaps as possible. If you have a lot of work experience that is not directly relevant to the position you are seeking, consider changing the format and just list "Relevant Experience".
* Make your education section simpler. Just list your most advanced degree, or include your Bachelor's degree if it is in another field. Don't show your GPA, but include any academic honours you received while obtaining your degree.
* Remove all the icons on the second page, including the flags.
* Condense your charity work/hobbies/extra-curricular activities to a short list. Do list any directorships you held/hold. Don't list specific job titles unless they directly relate to the position you seek.
* You might consider just saying "References available upon request."
Your résumé comes across as kind of "all purpose". Maybe that's just because it's the one you include in your profile. If you aren't creating a focused résumé for each opportunity, you might want to consider doing that.
I took a look at your resume: it looks like from 2008-2014, you didn't hold any job for more than a few months, which is a bit of a red flag. Were you a student at the time? It doesnt say anywhere what years you were in school. Some jobs specifically say contract work, which explains why they are short, some don't say, which makes it unclear if you were just fired or quit after a short period of time.
Your bio also shows you lived in 12 countries in less than 10 years, and possibly worked in many of them: sounds fun, but also doesn't sound like someone who is willing to commit to a job long term.
What do you want to do as a job? What do the people who have this job have on their CVs? Have you found people on LinkedIn who hire for what you want to do?
Also recruiters are a dead end for everyone who isn't already a very close match for a job that's going. It's incredibly frustrating for everyone, but that's their incentive structure.
And what do you mean Apple II? Isn't that ancient?
There are lots of foreign companies/individuals who come to China to develop + manufacture hardware, and need help. With Chinese and electronics experience you are all set. Try hanging out in Shenzhen ('Hardware Massive' events, HAX, Troublemaker hackerspace, etc.), and ask around. Pay can be quite good, $30-$50 USD per hour.
I have spent the last ten years moving from country to country. I work on my own projects, and fortunately do ok.. I'm not sure if someone would hire me. :-)
"If you get to the point where you’re turning 30, you’ve never held a real job and you don’t have a college education, then it is very hard to recover at that point."
I've raised this point to a fair few of my friends and colleagues recently. I think it is becoming increasingly hard to contribute to society, because everything is so gosh-darn technical.
Companies _scream_ for developers - but not junior developers, or people who they can teach to program - but developers with 5+ years worth of experience.
I think this will only get WAY worse in the future. Unfortunately, I also think it will mean that people who fail to get a job after taking their degree will be worse off than people with little or no education, who has always had a job (no matter the type of job).
So if you're done with college/university (which is when you're around 25-30 y/o in Europe), and you can't get a job, and you can't put your education to use. You're pretty much shit out of luck in most cases. Of course you can always dig yourself out, but doing so would most likely mean working a min-wage job for 8-10 hours a day, and then spending all your free-time and weekends learning a useful skill, which doesn't leave much time for friends or family (or making a family).
It's not perplexing at all. People forget that the market for labor is just like other markets.
If you're selling a thing and the market price is lower than the thing is worth, then you don't sell it.
If the minimum wage kept up with the increase in worker productivity over the last 50 years, today's minimum wage would be about $19.50.
So workers who refuse to take dead-end jobs are simply rational economic actors refusing to sell a large fraction of their existence for a pittance.
If employers have job openings they can't fill, while workers are idle because they won't work so cheap, then shouldn't the market-clearing wage increase? If not, what's preventing it?
> Men -- long America’s economically privileged gender
It depends on how you look at it. Don't get me wrong, men have had lots of privileges, but they have long been expected to work. Those social expectations are rapidly disappearing, and somewhat shifting to women, and we're seeing rates of depression and suicide rise for women in roughly the same time frame. Calling it privileged is a very one-sided way of looking at it, as the "privilege" comes with lot of responsibility that quickly becomes burdensome. With affordable home appliances, online services through your phone, video games, Netflix, and PornHub, the house wife/husband is obsolete. Why take on the same burdens your fathers did when little to none of that existed?
With wages being stagnant since the 1970s, the ridiculous housing market, the materialist debt-slave culture, the decline of marriage, and the decrease in sustainable jobs, why exactly should millennial(and increasingly Gen Z) men bother working as much as their fathers? I come from a very wealthy area and only one of the dozens of men my age, with whom I grew up with, own what their fathers did when they were their age. Millennial men are rife with disenfranchisement that flies under the radar because the economy has enough shit jobs to allow them to scrape by, and the media is generally not compassionate to the issues of men. I mean, just look at this article which is clearly written as an underhanded criticism of young men.
Let me repeat the question in the last paragraph:
Why exactly should millennial men work as much as their fathers?
> Why take on the same burdens your fathers did when little to none of that existed?
I can only offer my perspective - I take on those burdens because I want what my fathers had. I want a stable family, a wife who is able to stay home and care for and teach our children, a comfortable retirement, and the ability to help both my extended family and my community at large.
Still, I don't disagree with your comment overall. It seems that I am a bit of an outlier among my peers to want those things. I don't blame people for deciding that this path in life isn't worth it to them, and that they'd prefer to walk another.
For that matter, if hadn't met my wife so early in life, I'm not sure I'd be looking to get married and start a family now. I'd probably be living a minimal existence in a van or small RV in California, working at FAANG, and putting back as much of my pay as I could. A few years of that and I'd be financially able to move back to rural America to live a comfortable life and never have to work again.
I'm looking at a $400 bill after insurance for a 15 minute doctor's visit. Nothing fancy he took my blood pressure and listened to my lungs and sent me on my way. I'm fortunate that I can easily pay this, but what if I was living paycheck to paycheck? It would crush me. When wealth is so fleeting as to be taken away by such a minuscule stroke of bad luck, why would people bother chasing it?
I'm literally going to have to "shop around" for my next appointment should I need one.
Are you arguing against white men's privilege compared to whom, exactly? Their past selves?
I think a lot of the challenges you list apply to most people, and even then white males have a big leg up on most anyone. Times are tough all over. Tougher for those more disenfranchised, already.
This article was pretty bad. "Hot" labor market huh? isn't it mostly low income service jobs and degree required jobs that are "hot"? I wouldn't know from this article, because it chooses to ask questions rather than provide info.
I weep for the one young man who is studying to be an EMT. I learned recently that that job, which is tasked often with saving lives, pays ~12 bucks an hour. The "hot" labor market is a farce.
While the article did a lot of pointing at men not working, it did little to show what the Hole in the "Hot U.S. Market" was. Maybe the people they were talking about would benefit from that information.
Some interesting things in this article. Given what appear to be changing attitudes to men ("long America’s economically privileged gender"), is this situation really surprising? When one considers diversity and inclusion goals, hiring more men seems like a lower priority.
I was also amused by the comment, “I’m very quick to get frustrated when people refuse to pay me what I’m worth.” This seems like a conversation I have at least once a quarter with someone. You're worth what the market is willing to offer you, not what you think you are worth.
The market is a two way street. If they refuse to pay enough to satisfy them to consider working then they won't get their labor in return.
They may well be able to do without but the supply will adjust accordingly. Look at mining boom towns and their crazy inflation - one could say line cooks aren't worth $35/hr but if they can get a $50/hr mining job the local market will be in a perpetual shortage because they refuse to "overpay".
You're worth the point on a graph where the line illustrating what the market is willing to offer you intersects with what you're willing to take.
If you think of the housing market as a rough example, a house may have been "worth" 500k in 2006, 350k in 2010, and 525k in 2018, but unless you sold it, the "worth" didn't matter. Likewise, the individuals you are describing are choosing to hold themselves off of the labor market due to the opportunity costs of selling their labor at a cost they consider to be below value. No idea if they're wrong or right about getting a better deal by waiting, but your worth is not market dictated until you accept employment somewhere.
The millennial generation is also the first one in history to have mass exposure to the success of others due to social media websites. This could be a reason they want to seek better opportunities than the minimum wage jobs available to them. Retraining in schools does seem like a reasonable approach to pursue such better opportunities. Don't feel like millennials are in the wrong here.
The part that made me wonder about the millennials in their job search is:
> Butcher has a high-school diploma and a resume filled with low-wage jobs from Target and Walmart to a local grocery store. He’s being selective as he searches for new work because he doesn’t want to grind out unhappy hours for unsatisfying compensation.
I believe that having a job that you love is a luxury. It is something to look at once basic needs are met.
There are jobs out there, and even jobs that train entry level in a trade. No, it may not be the job you love... but as Stephen Stills said:
> If you're down and confused
And you don't remember who you're talking to
Concentration slip away
Because your baby is so far away
> Well, there's a rose in a fisted glove
And the eagle flies with the dove
And if you can't be with the one you love, honey
Love the one you're with
...
That doesn’t mean one should love that unsatisfying job, but recognize that not everyone will have that dream job.
"So for now, the Pittsburgh native and father to young children is living with his mother" In the past that wasn't so much of an option. You had to survive. I grew up with parents working jobs like the one he eschewed. They wouldn't dare try to live with my comparatively much more wealthy grandma.
So now living with your parents into your 30s is like taking basic income. This is all fine if someone is truly doing this to invest in more education to get out of the unskilled labor market, but bad when it is just an excuse to be lazy. I too worked low wage jobs when I was a teen and in college to pay my way, I find that when people leave the upward trajectory by leaving school or their job for "something better" they end up becoming lazy and end up worse.
Don't know why you're downvoted. It's very easy for a person to rationalize sitting at home by telling himself he is holding out for a job that will "pay what I'm worth" but not doing anything concrete to make that happen.
When I was in my late teens/20s I never thought moving back home was an acceptable option. Working at McDonalds or delivering pizza and living with roomates felt more honorable than moving back in with my parents.
Is there a good explanation for the bar chart that shows labor force participation being down or flat for just about everyone other than young women and old men?
I know a bunch of beautiful, accomplished women with great jobs who can't find good men to start a family with. Young mens' failure-to-launch is becoming a big problem....
I'm going to talk about some gender differences that are true in general, and I could back up with citations if I had the time. But remember everybody is their own special case - things that are true in general for a population don't necessarily describe individuals of that population.
1) Women tend to marry up. An accomplished woman with a great job wants a man with a better job. That shrinks the pool a lot for her! A beautiful woman wants a beautiful man, or is willing to trade some beauty for other qualities like status, money, personality, etc. This shrinks the small pool even further.
2) An accomplished woman is likely in her mid thirties, she's got just a couple years to find someone and start having kids to have that family. A small pool with a tight time-frame.
3) Many of the "good men" in 35-45 age group are already married. That pool just keeps getting smaller.
I mean really she wants a 35-45 year-old hyper-successful man who's still single. Those kinds of men are probably not looking to marry 35 year old women. They're super desirable men and they can date from the pool of more desirable twenty year old women. Seems like a very tough situation to be in.
I think these beautiful accomplished women you speak of might need to try something different/hit up a new watering hole rather than blame a lack of appropriate salary-man breeding stock, as even this wrongheaded article states that these mystifying jobless millennial men (who are presumably ruining America) total only around 500,000, when the number of millennial men is healthily in the millions.
It's not a failure to launch so much as it is a reasonable choice to refuse a path that is not appealing to them. While I chose to marry and have children I in no way presume that my choice to do so is correct for all; it is entirely reasonable for others to choose differently than I.
Why should the individuals in question follow traditional paths, when there's ample adequate satisfaction and happiness to be found in life paths that carry less personal responsibility and financial burden? If having children and a life-partner does not out weigh the relevant stressors, in their subjective assessment, then I see no reason why they'd choose as I have.
I like how the reason to care about men's failure to launch is the lack of reasonable spousal options for women. Men are people too, independent of their utility to women
Well you know, if perhaps HR reviewed it's practices and didn't make discriminating against men a point of pride, then perhaps there would be less "failure-to-launch".
The laws of supply and demand apply to the marriage market. The most attractive are always in hot demand. Women generally marry up (hypergamy). Successful people pick other successful people. All of these factors shrink the pool.
I know a bunch of single men with nice engineering jobs (mostly aerospace). The notion that there just aren't good people or there on either side just seems silly to me.
Maybe men are smartening up. They don't want to be saddled with a divorce, alimony, child support, or several hundred thousand in college tuition costs down the road.
[+] [-] athenot|7 years ago|reply
Perplexing? The opening of this article gives a pretty straightforward answer: people in that demographic aren't buying the narrative that a minimum-wage job will necessarily come with growth opportunities. So instead of getting pigeon-holed, they are trying to jump into a career with better growth opportunities. Sometimes that requires leaving immediate money on the table.
[+] [-] michaelbuckbee|7 years ago|reply
"Thirty years ago, she says, you could walk into any hotel in America and everyone in the building, from the cleaners to the security guards to the bartenders, was a direct hire, each worker on the same pay scale and enjoying the same benefits as everyone else. Today, they’re almost all indirect hires, employees of random, anonymous contracting companies: Laundry Inc., Rent-A-Guard Inc., Watery Margarita Inc. In 2015, the Government Accountability Office estimated that 40 percent of American workers were employed under some sort of “contingent” arrangement like this—from barbers to midwives to nuclear waste inspectors to symphony cellists. Since the downturn, the industry that has added the most jobs is not tech or retail or nursing. It is “temporary help services”—all the small, no-brand contractors who recruit workers and rent them out to bigger companies."
From the fantastic https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/poor-millenn...
[+] [-] uep|7 years ago|reply
It seems like this would only make economic sense if the end company isn't using them on a regular basis, so overall efficiency goes up by multiplexing an employee out to multiple companies as needed. It seems implied by "Rent-A-Guard", but I'm musing out-loud. I haven't had a chance to read your article yet.
[+] [-] mdo123|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throw_millenial|7 years ago|reply
Couple the prevailing sentiment with a change in the type of available jobs. Physically demanding work is less common now, and manufacturing, long a mainstay of male occupation, was moved overseas. Office work is more about people relationships, which generally favors women. Our education system is similarly biased against men these days.
I'm at the old end of the millenial generation, but if I was 25, I don't think I'd be too motivated either. I'm not surprised when these young men favor sitting in a basement playing video games over getting a job. Or watching porn instead of going after a girlfriend. The culture has shifted. For some people it's a huge win and there are a wealth of new opportunities - but it is a zero sum game, and now we're seeing the losers.
[+] [-] peterburkimsher|7 years ago|reply
I have tried applying through Seek and TradeMe, and got no response. I tried writing custom cover letters and applying on company websites. I've rewritten my résumé several times based on contradictory advice. I updated my LinkedIn, and made a second LinkedIn profile to add strangers. I asked recruiters for help. I put side projects on the web, especially Show HN, to try to get attention. I asked friends who I worked with at Fisher & Paykel Healthcare when I was there before. I found random people on Github and offered to work for free on open-source projects just to get an introduction. I contacted computer repair shops and asked them to put up posters advertising data migration services that I could do with my old Apple II. I've contacted every Apple-certified repair person in NZ/Aus/Can to ask them for help. I've tried praying about it. I've tried spamming the companies that have emails readily available, from the accredited employers list. I posted a desperate plea on Facebook, and followed up on advice (+1 introduction) from friends. None of these methods are working. I've had only two interviews. Most companies don't even send rejections. I've lowered my standards so now I'll accept any kind of job, anywhere.
This is a cry for help. I know I'm doing something totally wrong. I just don't know how to contact companies. Please tell me what to do. Please tell me email addresses of people who care.
[+] [-] Alex63|7 years ago|reply
* Remove all the logos/links. They're not helping the first impression, and they'll almost certainly confuse the systems that are used to scan/store your résumé.
* Take out the reference to military technology in your objective. If you get an interview you can ask them if they do military work and explain your reservations.
* Simplify your work history. Try to make it as sequential as possible, with as few gaps as possible. If you have a lot of work experience that is not directly relevant to the position you are seeking, consider changing the format and just list "Relevant Experience".
* Make your education section simpler. Just list your most advanced degree, or include your Bachelor's degree if it is in another field. Don't show your GPA, but include any academic honours you received while obtaining your degree.
* Remove all the icons on the second page, including the flags.
* Condense your charity work/hobbies/extra-curricular activities to a short list. Do list any directorships you held/hold. Don't list specific job titles unless they directly relate to the position you seek.
* You might consider just saying "References available upon request."
Your résumé comes across as kind of "all purpose". Maybe that's just because it's the one you include in your profile. If you aren't creating a focused résumé for each opportunity, you might want to consider doing that.
[+] [-] ac29|7 years ago|reply
Your bio also shows you lived in 12 countries in less than 10 years, and possibly worked in many of them: sounds fun, but also doesn't sound like someone who is willing to commit to a job long term.
[+] [-] lordnacho|7 years ago|reply
Also recruiters are a dead end for everyone who isn't already a very close match for a job that's going. It's incredibly frustrating for everyone, but that's their incentive structure.
And what do you mean Apple II? Isn't that ancient?
[+] [-] davidzweig|7 years ago|reply
I have spent the last ten years moving from country to country. I work on my own projects, and fortunately do ok.. I'm not sure if someone would hire me. :-)
[+] [-] DoreenMichele|7 years ago|reply
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JfNAbUX_lN9K3MCNHO15...
[+] [-] MIKarlsen|7 years ago|reply
I've raised this point to a fair few of my friends and colleagues recently. I think it is becoming increasingly hard to contribute to society, because everything is so gosh-darn technical.
Companies _scream_ for developers - but not junior developers, or people who they can teach to program - but developers with 5+ years worth of experience.
I think this will only get WAY worse in the future. Unfortunately, I also think it will mean that people who fail to get a job after taking their degree will be worse off than people with little or no education, who has always had a job (no matter the type of job).
So if you're done with college/university (which is when you're around 25-30 y/o in Europe), and you can't get a job, and you can't put your education to use. You're pretty much shit out of luck in most cases. Of course you can always dig yourself out, but doing so would most likely mean working a min-wage job for 8-10 hours a day, and then spending all your free-time and weekends learning a useful skill, which doesn't leave much time for friends or family (or making a family).
[+] [-] roel_v|7 years ago|reply
Uh, what? You're done with university (masters) at 22-23. Late 20's when you include PhD.
[+] [-] dsajames|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] k__|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thrownthrow|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] panarky|7 years ago|reply
If you're selling a thing and the market price is lower than the thing is worth, then you don't sell it.
If the minimum wage kept up with the increase in worker productivity over the last 50 years, today's minimum wage would be about $19.50.
So workers who refuse to take dead-end jobs are simply rational economic actors refusing to sell a large fraction of their existence for a pittance.
If employers have job openings they can't fill, while workers are idle because they won't work so cheap, then shouldn't the market-clearing wage increase? If not, what's preventing it?
[+] [-] ravenstine|7 years ago|reply
It depends on how you look at it. Don't get me wrong, men have had lots of privileges, but they have long been expected to work. Those social expectations are rapidly disappearing, and somewhat shifting to women, and we're seeing rates of depression and suicide rise for women in roughly the same time frame. Calling it privileged is a very one-sided way of looking at it, as the "privilege" comes with lot of responsibility that quickly becomes burdensome. With affordable home appliances, online services through your phone, video games, Netflix, and PornHub, the house wife/husband is obsolete. Why take on the same burdens your fathers did when little to none of that existed?
With wages being stagnant since the 1970s, the ridiculous housing market, the materialist debt-slave culture, the decline of marriage, and the decrease in sustainable jobs, why exactly should millennial(and increasingly Gen Z) men bother working as much as their fathers? I come from a very wealthy area and only one of the dozens of men my age, with whom I grew up with, own what their fathers did when they were their age. Millennial men are rife with disenfranchisement that flies under the radar because the economy has enough shit jobs to allow them to scrape by, and the media is generally not compassionate to the issues of men. I mean, just look at this article which is clearly written as an underhanded criticism of young men.
Let me repeat the question in the last paragraph:
Why exactly should millennial men work as much as their fathers?
[+] [-] LyndsySimon|7 years ago|reply
I can only offer my perspective - I take on those burdens because I want what my fathers had. I want a stable family, a wife who is able to stay home and care for and teach our children, a comfortable retirement, and the ability to help both my extended family and my community at large.
Still, I don't disagree with your comment overall. It seems that I am a bit of an outlier among my peers to want those things. I don't blame people for deciding that this path in life isn't worth it to them, and that they'd prefer to walk another.
For that matter, if hadn't met my wife so early in life, I'm not sure I'd be looking to get married and start a family now. I'd probably be living a minimal existence in a van or small RV in California, working at FAANG, and putting back as much of my pay as I could. A few years of that and I'd be financially able to move back to rural America to live a comfortable life and never have to work again.
[+] [-] ben_jones|7 years ago|reply
I'm literally going to have to "shop around" for my next appointment should I need one.
[+] [-] justinator|7 years ago|reply
I think a lot of the challenges you list apply to most people, and even then white males have a big leg up on most anyone. Times are tough all over. Tougher for those more disenfranchised, already.
[+] [-] patient_zero|7 years ago|reply
I weep for the one young man who is studying to be an EMT. I learned recently that that job, which is tasked often with saving lives, pays ~12 bucks an hour. The "hot" labor market is a farce.
[+] [-] Phrodo_00|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Alex63|7 years ago|reply
I was also amused by the comment, “I’m very quick to get frustrated when people refuse to pay me what I’m worth.” This seems like a conversation I have at least once a quarter with someone. You're worth what the market is willing to offer you, not what you think you are worth.
[+] [-] Nasrudith|7 years ago|reply
They may well be able to do without but the supply will adjust accordingly. Look at mining boom towns and their crazy inflation - one could say line cooks aren't worth $35/hr but if they can get a $50/hr mining job the local market will be in a perpetual shortage because they refuse to "overpay".
[+] [-] lazerpants|7 years ago|reply
If you think of the housing market as a rough example, a house may have been "worth" 500k in 2006, 350k in 2010, and 525k in 2018, but unless you sold it, the "worth" didn't matter. Likewise, the individuals you are describing are choosing to hold themselves off of the labor market due to the opportunity costs of selling their labor at a cost they consider to be below value. No idea if they're wrong or right about getting a better deal by waiting, but your worth is not market dictated until you accept employment somewhere.
[+] [-] ehrtt|7 years ago|reply
This is an absurd statement, the market is not a god. It does not have a value system.
[+] [-] justfor1comment|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shagie|7 years ago|reply
> Butcher has a high-school diploma and a resume filled with low-wage jobs from Target and Walmart to a local grocery store. He’s being selective as he searches for new work because he doesn’t want to grind out unhappy hours for unsatisfying compensation.
I believe that having a job that you love is a luxury. It is something to look at once basic needs are met.
There are jobs out there, and even jobs that train entry level in a trade. No, it may not be the job you love... but as Stephen Stills said:
> If you're down and confused And you don't remember who you're talking to Concentration slip away Because your baby is so far away
> Well, there's a rose in a fisted glove And the eagle flies with the dove And if you can't be with the one you love, honey Love the one you're with ...
That doesn’t mean one should love that unsatisfying job, but recognize that not everyone will have that dream job.
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] specialp|7 years ago|reply
So now living with your parents into your 30s is like taking basic income. This is all fine if someone is truly doing this to invest in more education to get out of the unskilled labor market, but bad when it is just an excuse to be lazy. I too worked low wage jobs when I was a teen and in college to pay my way, I find that when people leave the upward trajectory by leaving school or their job for "something better" they end up becoming lazy and end up worse.
[+] [-] ams6110|7 years ago|reply
When I was in my late teens/20s I never thought moving back home was an acceptable option. Working at McDonalds or delivering pizza and living with roomates felt more honorable than moving back in with my parents.
[+] [-] hindsightbias|7 years ago|reply
I can grok 'lazy' or non-participation, but adding kids to the mix?
[+] [-] thrower123|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lyonsntl|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] tamaharbor|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] frgtpsswrdlame|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] sol_remmy|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eloff|7 years ago|reply
1) Women tend to marry up. An accomplished woman with a great job wants a man with a better job. That shrinks the pool a lot for her! A beautiful woman wants a beautiful man, or is willing to trade some beauty for other qualities like status, money, personality, etc. This shrinks the small pool even further.
2) An accomplished woman is likely in her mid thirties, she's got just a couple years to find someone and start having kids to have that family. A small pool with a tight time-frame.
3) Many of the "good men" in 35-45 age group are already married. That pool just keeps getting smaller.
I mean really she wants a 35-45 year-old hyper-successful man who's still single. Those kinds of men are probably not looking to marry 35 year old women. They're super desirable men and they can date from the pool of more desirable twenty year old women. Seems like a very tough situation to be in.
[+] [-] RankingMember|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dleslie|7 years ago|reply
Why should the individuals in question follow traditional paths, when there's ample adequate satisfaction and happiness to be found in life paths that carry less personal responsibility and financial burden? If having children and a life-partner does not out weigh the relevant stressors, in their subjective assessment, then I see no reason why they'd choose as I have.
[+] [-] jdhn|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] aaaaaaaaaab|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] icedchai|7 years ago|reply