> <i>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.</i><p>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:<p>"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."<p>From the fantastic <a href="https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/poor-millennials/" rel="nofollow">https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/poor-millenn...</a>
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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>"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><p>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.<p>Companies _scream_ for developers - but not junior developers, or people who they can teach to program - but developers with 5+ years worth of experience.<p>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).<p>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.<p>If you're selling a thing and the market price is lower than the thing is worth, then you don't sell it.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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<p>It depends on how you look at it. Don't get me wrong, men have had lots of privileges, but they have long been <i>expected</i> 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?<p>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.<p>Let me repeat the question in the last paragraph:<p><i>Why exactly should millennial men work as much as their fathers?</i>
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.<p>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.<p>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 <i>you</i> think you are worth.
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:<p>> 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.<p>I believe that having a job that you love is a luxury. It is something to look at once basic needs are met.<p>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:<p>> 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<p>> 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
...<p>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.<p>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.
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....