Why can't millennials find jobs?

[The Comrade]

regarding professor's article, how would a boss know my ability to organize a group project, how well i write, or my interpersonal skills, without actually having me as an employee? unless my resume is full of typos and poor grammar and i stare at the floor the entire interview, they would have no idea about my capabilities in those areas.


in other words, it's a bunch of bullshit that executives give as an excuse for not hiring workers.

[Stratego]

[Indy]

[broken robot]

I've been skimming the posts in this thread, but I'd like to respond to Prof's assertion that millenials are a self-constructed category that emerged out of the perceptions and anxieties of millenials themselves. I don't think that an entire generation of people, compartmentalized from the rest of society, can retard their own future just by complaining. There are obvious structural trends in the economy and society at large that are undermining careers for the younger generation, and it isn't a matter simply of intergenerational competition. In that regard, I don't really care for "boomers suck" arguments either.

The simple fact of the matter is that in the 1950s in the US there were pretty stable jobs in industries such as automobiles, steel, electronics, etc. As the story goes this started to shift by the late 1970s and early 1980s when both the Newly Industrializing Asian Countries (NIACs) and Germany and Japan recovering from WWII and now with an industry boom started to siphoning jobs from the US manufacturing industry. Since then the US has been stuck on an employment binge in areas such as service sector work. Now, it's great if you can get a job in the tech or financial industries, but as we've seen after the dot com bubble burst and the economic crisis, even jobs in those areas are incredibly unstable. Moreover, there's no longer a belief in long-term job security. Whereas before it was expected companies would provide pensions and benefits, these are seen as "extras," just like baggage on airlines. As others have noted, there's been a shift toward volunteering, internships, subcontracting and other "free"/less stable forms of employment justified by companies as "gaining expertise." Anyone remember apprenticeships, when there was actually security and the belief you'd get a job at the end of it? This is different. The millenials are entering a situation of long-term decline in the postindustrial countries. The majors they choose have nothing to do with the overall economic situation, aside from personal strategizing.

Now, I'll admit it's pretty easy to indivdualize these things. If you get a job, great you did it! If you didn't, hm maybe you didn't try hard enough. Both these explanations are fundamentally incapable of explaining the overall system and where it's heading. Now me personally, I've felt the thrill of getting grants, fellowships, and awards. I've also felt crushed getting initially rejected by grad schools and thinking about what the hell I was going to do in a terrible economy right after the crisis where I couldn't even get a job at subway. But at the end of the day these are part of my personal experiences.

If tomorrow I get a thousand grants, I'm not going to look down on others and say, "I worked hard." Because fact of the matter is most of us deserve it. Most of us work hard. Let's just assume that for the most part, everyone fulfills a social function, serves some kind of social purpose. What we're missing here is an understanding of what is actually available, and those are constraints imposed by the system itself, not the people who are trying to find a place in it. So yes, while you may very well be creative and entrepreneurial and invent a position for yourself (laughed at ex's puncturing of this myth), it's not going to change the structure. I find more passion and inspiration in trying to change that structure, rather than just trying to get mine. And no, that's not based on misguided altruism but a simple objective evaluation of the situation and what's necessary to move forward as a society.

[The Comrade]

[exploited]

[Darkhorse]

[dontworrybehappy]

[The Comrade]

i remember bauce saying something markedly different than that

[PoS]

Lots of adamant denials by millenials but so far no posting of a news article that refutes the Time article.