What causes unemployment?

[HVC]

They should bring back the 65 mandatory retirement age. I was told that when I entered the job market it would be a prime time as all the boomers would be retiring. Damn old people not saving for their retirement

[Malthus]

No, there are a lot of young people who are not priviledged enough to be able to obtain post secondary educations.  My heart does go out to them.  I think they do have it very tough.

I think that young people who are educated have it much better and yes they should expect to have lower paying jobs as they work their way up.  Since when has a university degree automatically guarranteed someone to a high paying job.  That is the overly developed sense of entitlement I am talking about.

I think the problem is that, when society is in one of its periods of decline, even quite reasonable expectations based on what had been common experience do not meet reality. Things are I think genuinely getting more competitive and people are noticing.

Dunno if I would characterize that as an "overdeveloped sense of entitlement".

As you well know, for professional-type jobs obtaining that first few years of employment is really important - someone with a few years of litigation experience isn't going to suffer too much (unless they get disbarred), they can easily get some sort of work, even if at a lower level then they are used to.

To a large extent, getting that first few years is down to market conditions and luck. If the market sucks, the first thing cut is those "foothold" type positons, making it really hard if you happen to have the bad luck of graduating at that time.

Now, that being said, there are other things one can do. But I don't blame anyone graduating to find the firms aren't hiring for being a trifle unhappy about it.

[crazy canuck]

They should bring back the 65 mandatory retirement age. I was told that when I entered the job market it would be a prime time as all the boomers would be retiring. Damn old people not saving for their retirement

You can thank the market melt down for that.  Remember all those freedom 55 commercials during the boom years?

[crazy canuck]

Dunno if I would characterize that as an "overdeveloped sense of entitlement".

As you well know, for professional-type jobs obtaining that first few years of employment is really important - someone with a few years of litigation experience isn't going to suffer too much (unless they get disbarred), they can easily get some sort of work, even if at a lower level then they are used to.

Our profession is a good example of the sense of entitlement.

Have you hired a junior lawyer in the last few years?  Their salary expectations are way out of proportion to their actual value.  To some extent the big firms are to blame for inflating first year salaries during the boom times but that was a long time ago now.  I would have thought that exptectations would have come back into line with reality.  But not so much.

In addition to large salaries there is also an expectation of working fewer hours.

You are not that much younger than me.  When I started off my salary was low and I worked long hours.  The joke used to be that we wished we were making minimum wage.  I recognize that I did not want to treat my juniors they way I was treated.  But that does not explain the sense of entitlement I see.

And it is not just in our field.  Many of our clients report the same phenomenon.  The trend is becoming the subject of acedemic study.

[HisMajestyBOB]

In normal economy you would be right, but in this recession time, that's retarded beyond belief. A lot of employers, even those who did not go under during the crisis, simply stopped hiring (they saw it as preferable to firing people). This means there is now a huge group of young, educated people who simply cannot find jobs - and blaming them for that is just stupid. What's worse, some companies appear to view these people as a "lost generation" and prefer to hire now people fresh out of school than those who were unemployed for 2 years or so.

I am not sure if this thread is meant as a troll or as a legitimate question.

Why can't it be both? 
Originally I was inspired to post this thread because of CC's arguments and the statement from Cain. But after thinking about it, I realized it's a pretty interesting question, and I'm honestly interested in hearing serious answers.

No, there are a lot of young people who are not priviledged enough to be able to obtain post secondary educations.  My heart does go out to them.  I think they do have it very tough.

I think that young people who are educated have it much better and yes they should expect to have lower paying jobs as they work their way up.  Since when has a university degree automatically guarranteed someone to a high paying job.  That is the overly developed sense of entitlement I am talking about.

I have a degree from a decent state school, 3.49 GPA, Honors Program, 6 months studying abroad, internship experience, 2 years working as an English teacher abroad, and conversational skills in German and Korean. I've applied to government jobs, contractor jobs, admin assistant, secretarial, and landscaping jobs, and gotten none of them. Tell me what job I should apply for, since I apparently feel "entitled" to those jobs and don't deserve them. And I'm not alone in my position.

I think the subset of youth that are entitled as you feel is much, much smaller than you think.
Furthermore, you say college grads should aim low and work their way up. Why should they start at McDonalds or another low-paying job when they've spent the time, money, and effort to be qualified for better jobs? Most college kids already work low-paying jobs while in school - they didn't study to go back to working those jobs. Worse, with the recession, entry-level jobs are few, and McDonalds and other low-wage jobs are more likely to higher those without a college degree, since college grads are going to leave as soon as they get a better offer. This leaves recent college grads unable to start a career because of lack of jobs (especially any where they're competing with more experienced people who were just laid off), and struggling to get even low-wage jobs.

[Jacob]

The answer is to go back ~30 years and get a job on that sod farm CC worked at during high school.

[HisMajestyBOB]

The answer is to go back ~30 years and get a job on that sod farm CC worked at during high school.

I'll be sure to graduate well before 2008, too.

[Ideologue]

I have a degree from a decent state school, 3.49 GPA, Honors Program, 6 months studying abroad, internship experience, 2 years working as an English teacher abroad, and conversational skills in German and Korean. I've applied to government jobs, contractor jobs, admin assistant, secretarial, and landscaping jobs, and gotten none of them. Tell me what job I should apply for, since I apparently feel "entitled" to those jobs and don't deserve them. And I'm not alone in my position.

Stop whining!  Work harder!  THE SOD MUST FLOW.

[Jacob]

I think the subset of youth that are entitled as you feel is much, much smaller than you think.

Perhaps the entitled youngsters CC run into feel that way because they're close enough to the top in a competitive market (due to their work, connections, luck and/or any other contributing factors), and thus feel they're the cream of the crop (which they evidently are, getting the jobs)?

Or perhaps they've learned that it's best to ask for the world. After all, you're not going to get something by sticking around and working hard quietly in a corner; you're more likely to get it if you ask for it and act as if it's your due. Perhaps that sense of entitlement is a prerequisite for getting a job in the current economy, so the people CC meet are in fact entitled brats because the system selects for them.

[Malthus]

Our profession is a good example of the sense of entitlement.

Have you hired a junior lawyer in the last few years?  Their salary expectations are way out of proportion to their actual value.  To some extent the big firms are to blame for inflating first year salaries during the boom times but that was a long time ago now.  I would have thought that exptectations would have come back into line with reality.  But not so much.

In addition to large salaries there is also an expectation of working fewer hours.

You are not that much younger than me.  When I started off my salary was low and I worked long hours.  The joke used to be that we wished we were making minimum wage.  I recognize that I did not want to treat my juniors they way I was treated.  But that does not explain the sense of entitlement I see.

And it is not just in our field.  Many of our clients report the same phenomenon.  The trend is becoming the subject of acedemic study.

Well, the actual value of a truly junior lawyer (say, a couple of years out) is generally going to be close to negligible.  One hires for the future.

The hours and lifestyle expectations of our profession on juniors are frankly inhuman and do not really permit much of a private life and it is no wonder no-one wants to accept that. In my day everyone bitched about it, and there were all sorts of learned committees going on about how lawyering had to structure itself differently but to no avail.

Maybe it is just Toronto but when I started out I was delighted at the amount of cash they gave, even as an articling student ... but then I was used to having nothing, much.  The students I see now are scared shitless and willing to work like dogs, for fear of not being hired back in this economy - much as we were in our day. I dunno if they grouse about the pay, I'm not privy to that, my guess would be not.

[Ideologue]

So would you like to hire a junior lawyer/articler?  I can totally get a visa.  Quebec told me so.  I'm also sure getting a call to the Ontario bar would be no prob, and fwiw I actually probably know more Canadian law than most American law grads because of my association with you dudes and a blog that's mainly about comics I read, but is run by a Canuck lawyer who talks about Canuck law from time to time (I'd be willing to bet I'm one of the few lawyers in my cohort who has a strong opinion about, e.g., R. v. J.A.).

It's all about connections, I hear.

I promise I won't say anything about $2000 strollers, or how you betrayed us in Iraq.  Although, if you think about it, you owe America, collectively... and individually. Heal the wounds of the past.

[Habbaku]

The underlying cause is the disappearance of living wage jobs for average humans.  Until this is recognized, and dealt with in a mature fashion, we're only seeing the tip of the iceberg.  Since politicians bafflingly want to hang on to a 1950s-style conception of the value and necessity of human labor--40 hour work weeks, the absence of a negative income tax, the unshakeable belief that nearly everyone is actually capable of meaningfully contributing to the economy, etc--I predict 30-40% unemployment by 2020.

I'll bet you $1,000 dollars that it will be below 30% in 2020.   

[Ideologue]

The underlying cause is the disappearance of living wage jobs for average humans.  Until this is recognized, and dealt with in a mature fashion, we're only seeing the tip of the iceberg.  Since politicians bafflingly want to hang on to a 1950s-style conception of the value and necessity of human labor--40 hour work weeks, the absence of a negative income tax, the unshakeable belief that nearly everyone is actually capable of meaningfully contributing to the economy, etc--I predict 30-40% unemployment by 2020.

I'll bet you $1,000 dollars that it will be below 30% in 2020.   

Hmmm, you could be right, because by that point they'll have figured out how to use the statistics to make it seem like able-bodied, able-minded potential workers are not actually unemployed.

[MadImmortalMan]

Hmmm, you could be right, because by that point they'll have figured out how to use the statistics to make it seem like able-bodied, able-minded potential workers are not actually unemployed.

If they continue like they have down that road, we'll have -20% unemployment by then. 

[Ideologue]

Hmmm, you could be right, because by that point they'll have figured out how to use the statistics to make it seem like able-bodied, able-minded potential workers are not actually unemployed.

If they continue like they have down that road, we'll have -20% unemployment by then. 

Yeah, isn't labor participation--even when you factor out the old, infirm, and children--actually still pretty low?  Like not close to 100%?