Millennials and Generation Z Hit Hard
- In 2020 Millennials were 24 to 39 years old.
- In 2020 Generation Z 8-23 years old.
- In 2020 Generation X was 40 to 55 years old.
- In 2020 Boomers were 56-74 years old.
Unemployment by Age Group 2000-Present
Millennials Hit Hard in Great Recession
- In 2009 Millennials were 13 to 28 years old.
- In 2009 Generation X was 29 to 44 years old.
- In 2009 Boomers were 45-63 years old.
This is the second time in about 10 years that millennials were hard hit by recessions.
Mish
Great to hear positive anecdotal stories about retraining, and I agree this is the mindset that those that have lost jobs should have. I am skeptical that this will address the larger problem however. There are too many that will not succeed on their own at navigating a challenging job market, or will be forced economically to work at jobs they are unhappy with.
I attribute Trump’s rise to similar long-term environment after the GFC where many were unhappy with their economic outlook. Continuing to tell people to retrain will not go over well. What is needed is a significant boost in the supply of jobs beyond what the private sector currently has capacity to deliver.
I actually have very hard-working millennial children, all of who have masters degrees in some field that fits their talents and interests. Some of them were successful making a living in the gig economy before COVID. That took a huge hit.
The youngest, who lives in NYC and was hit hardest by the lockdowns when the restaurants and bars closed, has turned to entrepreneurship. She is making heirloom quality hand-made cards…real works of art with hand-written calligraphy….. made me think of Steve Jobs.
My daughter-in-law, a glass-blower (MFA from SCIA) has her own website and a waiting list to get her art.
The teacher is working….working so hard….schools here are being forced to be open for people who want to be there in person…..but teachers are doubly tasked with teaching those online who don’t want to attend in person. It’s incredibly onerous.
My son is traveling on a photo shoot to create the spring catalog for a major niche retailer whose name you know…..online and brick-and-mortar presence.
One is working for me while she is applying to med school…in her mid 30’s….when I lose her I’ll be scrambling……I’ve come to depend on her a lot. In addition to my practice, I have a small side business I built……what my friend Michael Phillips used to call a “briar patch business”…she is running that, and helping my practice. She is also an acupuncturist with a masters in Chinese Medicine.
I’m not sure who these lazy, over-indulged millennials and Gen Zer’s are that you geezers talk about. They aren’t in my family.
This story hits home. The kid graduated with a STEM degree right into the teeth of the epidemic. Not one interview even by phone. Doesn’t count as unemployed either. What few few employers are looking for new hires all want the magic five years of experience.
Another ‘donut day’ in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan, and Vietnam:
Wouldn’t our economic future be brighter if that were closer to the case here?
Well, it’s nice that, for the first time, Gen X isn’t getting boned.
Cadillac Dealers are also silent on the video proof of suitcases of ballots being counted in Georgia without poll watchers being present after ballot counting was supposedly stopped for the night.
My geezer rant on this…
First of all, when the parents tell their children that they can be whatever they want to be, that is not true for the great majority of the kids out there. A rationality as to desires as opposed to opportunities post-graduation needs to occur.
Second, there is no consideration of the return for effort and money in pursuing a degree (the guy in Taibbi story has some hazy plan starting out with philosophy, and ends up with a 28K job).
Third, college is for many a rolling party bus for 5 years while living in a newer apartment at exorbident rates where that spending is rolled into student debt.
Fourth, there is an extreme, distainful reluctance for some parents of students and students to actually do a job anytime prior to leaving college, so work life and its pitfalls is not experienced by a big proportion of college students.
Fifth, especially astounding, is how many students never take internship opportunities in ther desired field to see what working in that situation would actually be.
Sixth, if there are no internship opportunities in your chosen field, this should be big clue that the there are not any potential employers seeking your talents and you will probably end up at the wanting end of the stick after graduation.
Seventh, new opportunities usually exist in new places. A willingness to relocate is an essential part of a better future.
Eighth, there is no shame in physical labor and some of the best paying jobs and benefits are found with jobs that require some (or a lot) of physical work of actually getting something done.
A personal anecdote or two–my son was really intereted in history and travelling and outdoors. With lots of back and forth, he surprisingly decided he wanted to go into mining engineering. He got a scholarship to the highest rated school in the field, but lost the scholarship with an unfortunate encounter with calculus 3. He then went to the 3rd rated school which was a 1/3 of the cost and finished there. He was on internships at different sites every summer for 3 years and managed to graduate in the depth of a mining recession. He had gotten a decent, but not great, offer from a large underground construction company the fall of his senior year which he accepted, and has moved from that company, to one of the companies he interned with, then to another underground construction company that is redoing mines and tunnels from the 1880’s throughout the west. So, 4 years on, he ends with travel, history and outdoors, makes about 100K a year plus per diem plus a vehicle. And is always being cold-called by head-hunters. It’s a slice of the working world that worked for him, but it also has drawbacks like sometimes not the best accomodations, working with pretty sketchy laborers, hard physical effort sometimes, and schedules like 12 hour days and 10 days on 5 days off.
One kid he roomed with was in the 3rd year, going to be an electrical engineer, but my son had to actually show him how to buy and replace a light bulb that had burned out.
There were always internships available in his field, but it was surprising how many ddn’t take advantage of it–a significant portion of the mining engineer graduates find they don’t like the underground aspects of the work–imagine that!
“(the guy in Taibbi story has some hazy plan starting out with philosophy, and ends up with a 28K job)”
who in their right mind would pay that much to a guy with a philosophy degree?
Student Loan Horror Stories: Borrowed: $79,000. Paid: $190,000. Now Owes? $236,000 https://taibbi.substack.com/p/student-loan-horror-stories-borrowed
The Jobs Report is a Mess, December Will Be Messier https://wolfstreet.com/2020/12/04/the-jobs-report-was-a-mess-december-will-be-a-bigger-mess/
economics truly is a disgrace
This is very personal post. It is my story of the retaliation I suffered immediately after my “economics is a disgrace” blog post went viral. The retaliation came from Heather Boushey–a recent Biden appointee to the Council of Economic Adviser and the President and CEO of Equitable Growth where I then worked. This is not the story I wanted to be telling (or living). Writing this post is painful. I am sorry. http://macromomblog.com/2020/12/01/economic-truly-is-a-disgrace/
I’m helping a friend fight a similar battle: Her employer refused reasonable accommodations, violating the American’s with Disabilities Act. The employer then retaliated by making the workplace toxic to force her to quit. The sad thing is her teacher’s union wouldn’t help until it was too late because contract negotiations were coming up.
Business and government leaders make up the largest population of society’s sociopaths.
Lots of people have skills but can’t find employment using them, so either are unemployed or forced to take low skill jobs. Seems like a recipe for ongoing social unrest unless more substatively addressed. Great the problem is being recognized, but what is needed are solutions. I don’t think the private sector will adequately solve our current under and unmployment issue.
Unemployment insurance is good for short term job loss when labour market is healthy, but doesn’t address longer term structural unemployment issues. Same for UBI. They both result in increased dependency.
A federal job guarantee program would get people back to work contributing meaningfully to society and earning their keep as opposed to relying on handouts.
Which skills? In a field that needs people or in something that has far too many already?
Much of the point of the above posts is that people without the right skill set must work to obtain the right skill set. If someone is ‘skilled’ in buggy whip manufacture, I’d suggest they need to ‘reskill’. That example is obviously exaggeration, but there are many ‘degrees’ (notice the quotes) that do not lead to much of a return – except to the institution offering them.
As to the cost of obtaining a degree or skills; that is an ongoing tragedy. Government should provide a legal framework/marketplace to allow the funding of education — and then should get out of the way. This will not (and now cannot) happen, so we are where we are.
Last I noticed, young people work retail and restaurants a lot.
Doing my best to read that graph:
Age 16-19: Up 25%, from 12% to 15%
Age 20-24: Up 57%, from 7% to 11%.
Age 25-34: Up 87%, from 4% to 7.5%
Age 35+: Up 100%, from 3% to 6%
Thanks. So, correcting my table, from 2/1 to 11/1:
Age 16-19, up 27.3%
Age 20-24, up 64.1%
Age 25-34, up 89.2%
Age 35-44, up 100%
Age 45-54, up 120%
Age 55+, up 123%
So, the older one is, the bigger the percentage increase in unemployment, though older people are still more apt to be employed than younger people.
Another way to look at the data: there is about a 3% increase in unemployment in all age groups.
Millennials and Z will continue to be hit hardest because we’re never going back to “normal” again, at least not as it was known pre-2008.
We’re 12 years into this grand monetary experiment of QE forever and the cracks in the facade are getting more obvious. Setting up a system designed to widen inequality and punish savers has consequences, after all!
It has people demanding equality, which means subsidy, which means socialist rationing and government involvement in all matters related. The answer to the problem is the problem, because the problem was to have the problem being the answer.
Socialism is not the problem. The problem is that CEOs and stockholders are making out like bandits while regular employees of same corporations have stagnant wages.
Notice I did not say anything about the rest of the population, whether unemployed or small business – I said REGULAR EMPLOYEES haven’t seen comparable wage increases, employees of the same companies where CEOs make 10’s of millions in regular compensation + options + RSU stock and are absolutely having the best decade in their lives.
At the same time my local elementary school district is considering issuing bonds for repairs. Those bonds are a money maker for Wall Street, and will pay 2X the initial investment over the life time of the bond. SHAMEFUL
Shameful your local school district is repairing something? Or shameful that they are contemplating paying more interest than the market will bare? One does have to wonder why they would do the latter.
“I said REGULAR EMPLOYEES haven’t seen comparable wage increases, employees of the same companies where CEOs make 10’s of millions…”
That 99.9% of the population hasn’t seen a wage increase would not be a problem if prices for higher education, housing, healthcare, and to some extent food reflected the stagnant wages. The reason the aforementioned have increased is due to government intervention in the marketplace.
So, yes, socialism (i.e., government manipulation/interference of the marketplace instead of the collective decisions of the people) is “The Problem”!
(BTW, can taxpayers get some money back for the piss poor job high school economics teachers have apparently done?)
I don’t buy this….government intervention isn’t the problem. I live in NZ and education and healthcare are much less expensive than the US due to government intervention in these markets. If the fed didn’t intervene, the US would have even greater economic disruption, which would be worse economically than the higher housing prices. Food in the US is cheap.
Some level of income/wealth inequality is good. The current level of inequality in the US far exceeds the healthy level, and will likely perpetrate ungoing poor economic performance and social dissatisfaction and unrest. I don’t see this resolving without appropriate government action.
The current level of inequality is mostly along age group lines. The younger generations have essentially been denied our third natural right of the ability to accumulate private property. They are hitting 30, still with large student loans they are trying to pay off with their barista jobs and most of their income is going to paying the rent and they can’t afford healthcare. All caused by government intervention and a banking sector that constantly changes rules so they never fail.
The government action that should have occurred back in 2009 was to:
Obama had an opportunity to be one of the greatest presidents. Instead, he turned out to be a socialist in bed with power and, well, need I say more?
Your plan for healthcare is absurd. Instead of fixing the credentialing system in the US you want to import the in folks who benefited from lax credentialing overseas.
It’s kind of like Trump’s silly plan to import drugs from Canada. A much better plan would be to find out what it is about the Canadian set up that makes drugs much cheaper there and build a similar model here rather than trying to take a free ride on their successful implementation of their drug market.
It never ceases to amaze me how many folks insist that we try wild, speculative and unproven ideas to “fix” our healthcare system when there are a plethora of proven concepts we can borrow from other wealthy countries with proven track records to provide good healthcare outcomes at a much lower cost.
Inequality is much more complex than age-based but at least we are in agreement that it is an issue. Beyond that, I don’t agree with your approach as follows:
“If banks were allowed to fail in 2008-9, the economic crisis would have been much more severe.” Yes, for the rich.
“Without student loans / aid, then education is for the wealthy, and perpetuates wealth inequality.” Markets can only charge what people can afford or are willing to spend. If most can’t afford higher education, then its price would have to come down.
“If most can’t afford higher education, then its price would have to come down”
No – they won’t price below cost except for limited scholarships. A degree from a reputable university will still be more expensive than many can afford without loans and aid. I paid $1,300/year tuition for University of California. Now tuition is $12,500 per year for california residents which is comparatively cheap – the national average annual tuition for private universities is $28k. I don’t see tuition coming down due to “äffordability” for an education from a reputable university.
Isn’t this wealth socialism? I have nothing against socialism but to bailout the wealthy? Look at all the #PPP fraud. There’s no reason a triple A rated corporations gets a bailout before someone who is making .00000000000000001% of their CEO salary and options.
socialism is indeed a monstrous problem
”socialism is indeed a monstrous problem”
Blanket statements like this do not contribute to intelligent debate and further polarize society. 100% capitalism is not the answer either. The US has social security, but that does not make the US a socialist country. NZ has socialzed healthcare and the government owns 50% of Air New Zealand, but is still a capitalist country.