The Idled Young Americans

As someone who is in his 20s (for another year!) and dating of the same age, my belief is because the current generation has a real lack of motivation.<p>I think it is something those of us on sites like this one, and in our field in general do not notice, we tend to surround ourselves with highly driven and motivated people, but we really are the exception to the rule.<p>Roughly 60% of the young women I have dated (generally aged 22 and up, college graduates) had no real future focus. They weren't looking forward to or striving for any sort of goal. They were just sort of existing.<p>Switching tracks a bit, I remember having a conversation with a man about my age, he had an undergraduate degree in psychology and a masters in a related field. He was talking about how poorly developed the social skills of many young adults in this area is (true, Puget Sound is a tech haven and a lack of social skills go along with that) and how much he would love to start up a program to teach social skills to engineers. And hey, I agreed, that is a great idea, there is a large market for that in the area, he would have customers lining up around the block!<p>So I asked him why he hadn't done it yet. "Because the government has cut funding to social programs and there is no way I could get money for it."<p>He then proceeded to spend the next 20 or so minutes complaining about how it was the governments fault that he couldn't achieve his dream.<p>When I recommended a small business loan, or even writing up a business proposal and seeking private funding, he brushed my suggestions aside and went back to complaining about how he needed government help to get his idea up off the ground.<p>Everyone on this site knows that if he really had aspirations, he would find a way to make them happen. He's living in an area surrounded by people with 6 figure income and plenty of 7 figure incomes a few miles away, private fund raising alone would easily pay for his minimal expenses to get started.<p>But he wasn't passionate enough to actually do anything, and he is one of the few people I have encountered who have any passion at all.<p>I have had friends (my age group) tell me that I need to stop being so aggressive, stop being so perfectionist, stop working so hard. "Why do you try to do such a good job at everything you do? There is no need for that."<p>Then I walk over to my friends who are in the tech sector. We strive for the best, we talk about what we want to happen in the future, what our dreams our, what we are working towards, what house we want to buy (if any), what projects we want to work on.<p>And we are the lazy ones who don't have enough initiative to found our own start up! (And we all feel guilty about it, we damn well know we should)<p>Then of course there is the Y Combinator crowd, who are fueled by nothing but drive and passion.<p>So, going back to the beginning.<p>A lot of the young adults who have "given up hope" never had any hope to begin with. They sort of wanted a job somewhere, but they didn't want it more than anything else. They didn't desire it, they didn't need it, and they sure as heck didn't make a plan of how exactly to get it.

I'm always perplexed by the (possibly rhetorical) surprised tone of these kinds of articles. As if it wasn't glaringly obvious that young people are getting screwed because of their lack of employment histories combined with an ultra-competitive job market (for most industries).<p>The discussion then usually turns to how young people have useless degrees or are lazy or entitled, or some other monday morning quarterback commentary. The reality is that prior generations goofed off and made blind decisions just like this one. They just had more of cushion to rebound from.<p>I'm steadily employed in a fantastic job but have been on the other side of the fence as well. One thing is obvious: most white-collar, educated people who already had jobs before 2008 are doing just fine, haven't noticed a thing, and don't give a neuron to thinking about unemployed people.<p>This is just another indication to me that there is a growing class divide and there will be plenty of losers (and no, the rising tide doesn't help undeveloped, inexperienced college grads with nondischargable debt). The means of production are now more abstract than owning factories -- they're owning the information networks. We have yet to see anything close to the sufficient political will or desire in DC to bust up these modern day trusts (like Teddy Roosevelt did with the industrialists a century ago). By design, they're harder to identify and harder to educate the public about. And with mass media stomping out thoughtful journalism due to basic economics and a civically uninterested public, where's the opposition going to come from?<p>If you happen to be in a line of work that helps those in power (like most programmers), you'll probably thrive. If you don't, you're going to have a tough road ahead: our public institutions are behaving more and more like results-driven board-run corporations. They're misappropriating improved efficiency to matters that benefit more from longer-term strategies ("Instant Dashboards! Metrics! Data-Driven Decisions!"). I fear most the speed at which the consolidation of power could take place (aided by the speed of technological progress).<p>Have a great weekend :)

I know from personal experience much of the last 5 years worth of work for me (software / algorithm design) has been building automation. Helping companies that were struggling push forward by replacing human workers with software.<p>Perhaps in the recent down years companies were pressured to become more efficient and now that the economy is picking up they are reluctant to go back to hiring people versus paying for software and automation.<p>/completeSpeculation<p>I can think of two companies I've consulted with since 2008 where the CEO's told me they were picking up a new contract(s) that would represent massive growth (200-300%) but that they wanted to keep their same labor force without having to hire.

Because too many of them are busy looking for other people to give them employment (which has been difficult for employers to do), instead of figuring out how to create wealth on their own. If more created their own businesses, they would probably be able to hire the rest — you know, the ones working in coffee shops and retail. See <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/magazine/what-the-fate-of-one-class-of-2011-says-about-the-job-market.html?pagewanted=all" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/magazine/what-the-fate-of-...</a>, for example.

Because the U.S. economy hasn't yet recovered from the 2008 recession.<p>Low demand on the consumer side has meant that businesses don't need to expand and hire people.

&#62; The official unemployment rate for 25- to 34-year-old college graduates remains just 3.3 percent.<p>So this article should be titled: "Why are Uneducated Young Americans Jobless."

Buzz words like "entitled" in 3...2...1...<p>Anyway.<p>&#62;Average wages are no longer trailing inflation.<p>And wages as a whole have diverged from productivity since the 70s. That we're happy that wages are once again keeping pace with inflation --another way of saying "well, at least we're no longer losing money"-- is depressing in this context.<p>&#62;What might help? Easing the parts of the regulatory thicket without societal benefits. Providing public financing for the sorts of early-stage scientific research and physical infrastructure that the private sector often finds unprofitable. Long term, nothing is likely to matter more than improving educational attainment, from preschool through college (which may have started already).<p>So... we socialize the substantial costs of doing business (infrastructure and research), cut back on "the parts of the regulatory thicket without societal benefits," --whatever that means-- and just keep pumping people through college. Has Leonhardt being paying attention at all?<p>We already subsidize infrastructure and research costs. Hell, it's become standard policy that no corporation shall break ground anywhere unless the host promises it special favors and decreased (or absolutely no) taxes. Regulations are more industry specific. The big ticket ones however typically revolve around finance and environment. Perhaps we should ask --well, damn near anyone-- how the year 2009 was for them financially. Perhaps we should ask the Chinese just how "without societal benefits" all of those environmental regulations are. And college? We're putting more students through than ever before. And they are predictably finding that, as the number of people with degrees rises, the value placed on their own degree decreases. And what does the hiring company look for? Experience.<p>&#62;Many business executives and economists also point to immigration policy. Done right, an overhaul could make a difference, many say, by allowing more highly skilled immigrants to enter the country and by making life easier for those immigrants already here. Historically, immigrants have started more than their share of new companies.<p>AND we need more H-1B's? This guy's a real piece of work. We already have the ability to bring in extraordinary talent. We don't need 50,000 more outsource firm slots.<p>==========<p>Here's the thing: businesses will hire exactly as many employees as they need. No more. Perhaps less, if they can get away with it. And if they run the remaining folks at break-neck pace long enough, that level will become the new "need" level. No amount of policy or regulatory finagling is going to make a lick of difference. By bending over for Corporate America, all you're doing is throwing taxpayer money at them with the vague and unsubstantiated hope that they'll take on a few more employees. This is beyond stupid. As business becomes more automated --not mechanized, automated, as in no human required-- you can expect fewer jobs to remain and for the employment rates to level off or decline.

As a 23 year old working in tech, I can say that much of my graduating class had no immediate plans to start a career and even more had no desire to relocate to a place that jobs were more plentiful. How do we fix this? We stop telling everyone that they are gifted and things will work out from an early age. We get far more out of constructive feedback as to why our project wasn't the best or why we lost than being told we're great in the face of defeat, getting a trophy, and going home with no fuel to better ourselves.

Like many people here, I work for a software company. We develop business automation software. Perhaps unlike most though, I'm closer to the bottom line (Sales Engineer), and are more closely tuned in to the types of business conversations our customers have when they are thinking about whether to buy our software.<p>Often times, the conversation revolves around the fact that the software we sell makes the average worker so ridiculously productive that often times they start being able to do the work of two people. They no longer have to spend time searching for important documents or worry about replacing lost/damaged ones, or pushing paper documents from one department to the other, or waiting for a certain supervisor to come back from a business trip so that they can sign off on stuff. For most knowledge workers this translates to at least a couple of hours of productivity gains everyday, if not more.<p>What do businesses do with these productivity gains? From what we have seen, the overwhelming majority use the opportunity to lay off workers they no longer need. The reason is simple: their company addresses a certain amount of customer demand, and if they can meet that demand with half the workforce then why not lay off the rest and become more profitable?<p>Over the years, this phenomenon has led me to the conclusion that the main problem with the economy is lack of consumer demand. If consumer demand was increasing, then companies would hire more employees <i>despite</i> the efficiency gains they get from automation. Or, at the very least, they would be less prone to lay people off, because their existing workforce would be more able to handle the demand by becoming more productive.<p>Traditionally, the main source of consumer demand in America has been the middle-class. If we find a way to bring that back, everybody wins.

Because most Human Resource workers are a..h...s, im speaking from the experience. Not surprised by those results.