Posted on 02/02/2014 6:52:57 AM PST by Hojczyk
Turning 30 used to mean hitting your stride as an official adult. But for many of the country’s millennials, it feels like being stuck in perpetual late adolescence.
Marriage eludes many. Children? Not anytime soon. Most millennials have some sort of job, but for many a career seems unobtainable. A home of their own? Lots of them have had to move back in with mom and dad or shack up with roommates. That’s not the place where many millennials expected or wanted to be as they enter their thirties.
What happened? One major culprit, say many millennials: The lousy economy
“It’s kind of a disillusionment that we’re facing,” Trowell said. “We were told that you can be anything you want, and now here we are and you can’t find a job.”
About 74 percent of the oldest millennials — those who are currently ages 25 to 32 — were employed in 2013, according to an analysis of government data prepared by Pew Research Center. That’s down from 79 percent who were employed in 2007.
Millennials also are getting married later. In 2013, the median age of a first marriage was 29 for men and 26.6 for women, according to Pew data. That’s up significantly from just 18 years ago, when the median age of first marriage was 26.9 years old for men and 24.5 years old for women.
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...
What do you expect? College costs have skyrocketed to $200k for a four-year degree. The economy sucks. There is lettle to no private construction projects. Those that did have things going in the right direction as recently as 2007 had the value of their homes and investments cut in half. Now with Obamcare, companies have cancelled health insurance policies and cut their hours back to less than 30. Right now they’re living off the wealth of the Greatest Generation and Baby Boomers, and what happens when that’s gone? My kids are 26, 31 and 32 and all are now on their own - through hard work and sacrafice, but it has not been easy for any of them. Conditions out there suck, and its my generation's fault for allowing it to happen.
As were entire factories and tooling, not to mention intellectual property. We'd have to get that back as well, or re-build it. As for IP, once it's gone, it's GONE.
I joined the army at 18 while some in my graduating class decided to take ayear to “find themselves”.
Last I heard of them, they were living with their parents, smoking pot ans still looking ....
what did “Ben and “Eliza” think would happen? “Graphic design” sounds suspiciously like the kid who used to paint the top of his skateboard a different color every couple of weeks.
RLTW
No it is not gone.
The problem is, China is aggressively playing us.
China keeps things. China keeps jobs. China keeps money. China is always looking out, for China.
America needs to look out for America.
Stop looking out for China. China is doing that, just fine. We need to look out for our own country now.
Stop manufacturing things in China, to be sold in America.
Bring back American manufacturing.
There is more to our trade problems, than just manufacturing, but our trade deficit is a big, big problem.
Bring back US jobs.
” Right now they’re living off the wealth of the Greatest Generation and Baby Boomers———”
You missed an entire generation that was born between both of the ones you mentioned.
.
Yep, all the ones I know having trouble... it’s THEM
They either have completely worthless college degrees or none at all.
They show up for job interviews and/or work (if they show up at all) doped up and covered with tattoes and piercings to the point of looking scarier than a monster from old horror flicks.
Well, yeah?
But they arent something to pack up and transport from China like some sort of product. China and India are offering a much more lucrative market than we are. Like it or not.
Want jobs? Well then you are going to have to create them. You are going to have to create something that people want, go through all of the government tape to get it started and then be able to pay people enough while keeping the cost of the product low enough so people will buy it.
Stomping you feet and demanding someone do something isnt going to do squat. No company is required to be in the US just because. If they cant compete, then they go under, and that job wont get “shipped” to China, it will just vanish.
America’s need from trade tariffs is LONG overdue.
We need to protect America.
We need to straighten out our trade imbalance with China.
China is becoming a global competitor to America.
China now exports more than we do. Yet we sit by, idly, while our stores are filled with Chinese imports.
You may or may not agree with trade tariffs, but I say we need to act.
Stop selling out America.
They don’t have to chase the girls, the girls today are all like Sandra Fluke and are ready and willing as long as the government is paying for the birth control.
I have one millennial friend I work with. Sadly, at 31, she is already divorced. The big thing now is to shack up with someone, which she is doing, even buy a home and spend every waking minute with them, yet not “commit” to marriage ...
I don’t get it. If I was not to commit, I’d just date, have fun and forget about it.
You are 100% correct. Both political parties sold out the American worker for campaign funds from Wall Street and the multinationals. Our 25 year experiment with one-sided free trade has been a disaster for the economy, for the American worker, and for our national security.
Now they are sending American agriculture overseas. At a time when chickens grown in China are infected with bird flu and not fit for human consumption, agribusiness and the administration have conspired to begin sending US chickens to China for processing and then sent back to a supermarket near you. At the same time the Department of Agriculture is cutting back the number of food inspectors and allowing food processors to self police while permitting them to speed up the lines. Apparently it occurs to no one in government or industry the Chinese might cheat, diverting the American chickens to Chinese tables while sending the infected birds to the US.
At US food processors, immigrants provide most of the labor. When those jobs go overseas what will these immigrants do for jobs? They’ll stand in line with the millenials
For most of its history the US had high tariffs and we built the strongest economy in the world. During the 19th century the federal government was funded primarily with tariffs and fees. Why should American companies pay a corporate tax rate of 30% for goods they produce at home when foreign factories are not taxed at all for free access to the largest consumer market in the world? This is not free trade.
Free trade to the founders did not mean no tariffs or duties. Free trade meant American merchants were free to trade with any nation, not that imports were free from duties and fees.
The evidence is in. High tariffs in the 1800’s allowed the United States to build the strongest industrial infrastructure in the world and the most prosperous middle class. The elimination of tariffs and quotas since 1990 has resulted in the great American manufacturing engine being dismantled, a shrinking middle class job opportunities, declining household incomes for the first time in our history, and the explosion of the welfare state. The prescription is clear. Raise tariffs, lower taxes and regulation on businesses manufacturing products in the US and you’ll see factories and jobs return.
I’m 32, I was married at age 23. I make a decent living in IT, but I’ve had to job hop a lot due to layoffs and outsourcing.
My own daughter is 26, has a fantastic job and future, but she’s loaded down with a TON of school loan debt. It really messes with her idea of marriage and getting down to business with buying a home, etc.
These kids can’t win ...but it doesn’t seem to matter to them ... they don’t seem to think a year beyond the future, ever.
Yes, I believe it was from the Dept of Labor. I think you are mixing up job exports, with buying foreign, and logistical/global competitiveness.
Global competetiveness: Long ago, Budweiser would ship its beer oversees. However, it got to the point that it could not compete with foreign local brews, so it built a plant in Wales. As a result, it did not need the US capacity previously utilized for its exports - and jobs were reduced. I assume you would say those jobs were exported, but in reality they wold have been lost regardless.
As far as buying foreign goods versus made in the USA - that has resulted in job reductions here, and increases in jobs abroad. That is not the same as companies "exporting" jobs. They simply lost market share.
Additionally, think of all the foreign companies that make their goods here. Take the car industry, for example. Saturn? Honda? Toyota? Don't they all have plants down south, using USA labor? Many of the labor problems we experienced over the years were due to not changing with the times. Unions for factory workers have outlived their usefull lives, but in the meantime, competition made companies paying $35-40/hour to turn bolts obsolete.
Lastly, automation has taken its toll on human jobs. ATMs vs bank tellers; Self-checkouts at stores vs cashiers; robotics vs autoworkers, bottlers, and a whole host of other manufacturing jobs. There is no bigger example than farming. In 1900, 38% of the work force were agricultural. Today, we produce far more food today, yet only 1% of the work force is in agriculture.
There are so many more examples of improvements causing the loss of jobs here; far more than companies simply exporting jobs such as technical support and customer service phone operators.
Thank you!
But with tariffs you get counter-tariffs. China can easily slam the market shut for American products. That’s billions of dollars in lost business that foreign companies will eat up with no reservations.
And what American company is going to side with us when their manufacturing base is in China, and the growing consumer culture of SSE Asia is offering far greater profits? Close their shop in Guangzhou to open it in Akron? That’s not going to happen. Jobs aren’t gifts, they are products of necessity that arises from a balance between cost and profit/reward. If it costs more to be in the US then why be here?
The only way that anything will come here is when the government regulations fall way down, Americans get used to the idea of making less, taxes drop greatly, and people are hell-bent on buying only stuff made in the U.S. and doing it frequently enough to offset the tariffs that will be put on our exports.
There are so many more examples of improvements causing the loss of jobs here; far more than companies simply exporting jobs such as technical support and customer service phone operators. “
you can thank the minimum wage for that.
Every time the minimum wage is raised, it becomes more and more cost effective to just find a way to replace people with a machine.
Business will ALWAYS choose the cheapest option. If the minimum wage were eliminated and it then became cheaper to pay people $1 an hour or whatever to pick corn than it is to buy and maintain an expensive machine, millions of people would suddenly find jobs in agriculture again.
Yes, I agree with you.
I am speaking specifically about America’s trade deficit.
Not as in American companies, but rather our actual trade. “American” trade as in, trade manufactured by American companies anywhere in the world, is no doubt still healthy.
What I am talking about is America’s trade deficit.
America is in big, big trouble in this regards. We really need to bring back jobs, right here to America.
Stop importing everything.
Sure he isn't "batting for the other team?"
Regards,
Really.
Need never got anyone anything, unless it meant they got off their butts and made it happen...or voted for a politician to force someone else to make it happen for them.
What are you doing to create and provide those "good jobs?"
Details, please. Show us how it's done.
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