Aging population and no jobs for the young

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-not-working-92-million-people-workforce.html

Isn't it interesting that America has an aging population and so many younger workers who cannot find jobs?

Wasn't the "conventional" wisdom that more young workers were needed to take care of the aging population? Well they can't take care of the aging population if there's no jobs.
Or maybe it's because so many of these old people simply cannot afford care? I think this clearly demonstrates that where there's a "need", jobs don't necessarily follow. In economics speak, "need" is not the same thing as "demand" (i.e. there are no "shortages" of food if the poor can't afford it).

This all seems very strange. So many people getting old who cannot work anymore. So why are those jobs not available to all the unemployed workers? Or is it because the old are not retiring?

Didn't policy makers 15 years ago tell us we needed a bigger population of young workers to balance everything out? Well now there's an imbalance.
Many of those young workers are now stuck in low wage part-time jobs and mooching off their parents.

from one concerned mother:

from another concerned mother:

The cheated generation: lack of good jobs for young adults is creating a crisis


The question can be asked: If all these young adults cannot find jobs now, will they ever find decent jobs?
Is it just a matter of time before the older workers die off ? Meanwhile, car purchases, home ownership, marriage, and starting families are all going to be put on indefinite hold.

 

Why Are So Many Young Adults Not Looking for Jobs?
Stephen Moore June 21, 2014

Economists are scratching their heads trying to figure out a puzzle in this recovery: Why are young people not working? People retiring at age 60 or even 55 in a weak economy is easy to understand. But at 25?

The percentage of adult Americans who are working or looking for work now stands at 62.8%, a 36-year low and down more than 3 percentage points since late 2007, according to the Labor Department’s May employment report.

This is fairly well-known. What isn’t so well-known is that a major reason for the decline is that fewer and fewer young people are holding jobs. This exit from the workforce by the young is counter to the conventional wisdom or the Obama administration’s official line.

The White House claims the workforce is contracting because more baby boomers are retiring. There’s some truth to that. About 10,000 boomers retire every day of the workweek, so that’s clearly depressing the labor market. Since 2009, 7 million Americans have reached official retirement age. The problem will get worse in the years to come as nearly 80 million boomers hit age 65.

But that trend tells only part of the story. The largest decline in workforce participation has been those under 25.


Idle Youth

The percentage of young Americans earning a paycheck or looking for work has fallen by 4 percentage points over the course of the recovery, and those between 16 and 25 have experienced the largest decline.

Those over 65, by the way, are more likely to be working today than five years ago. This shift has cushioned the blow of young people not working.

Why is this trend so troubling? Studies show that teens who start working at a job at a young age have higher earnings later in life. One study found that those who work as teenagers have earnings that are about 10% higher at age 27 than those who did not work.

“When we hold young Americans out of jobs,” explains Michael Saltsman of the Employment Policies Institute, “that makes it more difficult for them to get higher-paying jobs later.”

The federal minimum-wage hikes that started in 2007 didn’t help. Teens were priced out of the job market. The overall teen jobless rate skyrocketed. For black males, it topped 40%.

The teen unemployment rate remains at 19.2% — even with the participation rate down sharply — so it would be hard to imagine a worse time to raise the minimum wage again.

High teen unemployment is a big problem in Europe, where wage floors are very high. In nations such as France and Spain, the young delay their entry into the workforce until their mid- or even late 20s. These workers’ wages rarely catch up to those who start working earlier. Europe has traditionally had a much smaller share of young adults in jobs.

“Where have the workers been going in the U.S.?” asks Louis Woodhill, an economist in Houston. “They have been fleeing into the arms of the welfare state.” Since 2007, 2 million more Americans have started receiving Social Security disability payments, and food-stamp rolls have increased by 20 million. This has substituted for jobs.


http://dailysignal.com/2014/06/21/number-employed-young-americans-drops/

 

There is also the problem of young people becoming homeless when they do not have any relatives willing to provide help:
http://www.invw.org/generation-homeless/young-homeless-on-seattle-streets

 

The baby boom generation is peaking retirement age so that ratio will begin to fall again.

Younger people have been fallaciously taught that just getting a degree guaranties you starting out making 70K plus and living on easy street.

Degrees in many areas get you nothing inspire of those expectations.

But hopefully they will learn that government is not the answer, government giving you things or enticing you into huge debt is not a recipe for success.

 

This is a revealing (and depressing) thread I came across in another forum:
http://www.indeed.com/forum/job/carpenter/Ive-Lost-Everything-1-am-supposed-do-Help-Me/t109636

Looks like things in the U.S. are as bad as they are in Spain.

 

Recent College graduates struggle to afford being able to live in the major cities:

New Grads Can't Really Afford To Live Anywhere, Report Finds

 

There is a labor shortage in the trades. Unfortunately, not many young people want to learn a trade and strap on a tool belt. If they did, there are jobs and plenty of them. But they want to sit behind a desk and not get their hands dirty.

 

As a millenial, I will tell you that the price of school is a big stopping block; many parents can no longer afford to help kids pay for school, and there aren't enough part-time jobs hiring for the hours that would be permissive for college. There's also the whole 'where do I live while going to school?' issue--not everyone can live with their parents--and then figuring out how to stay employed while looking for a job in your actual degree area. Most of my friends aren't employed in the field of their degree; heck, I'm not employed in the field of my degree either. (I had to make a shift in career, and I'm very lucky that I was able to pick it up so quickly.) Loans are easy to come by, but being in debt for decades really blunts your enthusiasm (not to mention your ability to put away money into savings). Grants are much less easy than they used to be--sequestration and lack of funding appear to have dried up a few sources for grants. There's also more people asking for fewer resources when it comes to tuition breaks.

If you can fix the cost of school, it will help my generation with jobs. I'm not going to go into the 'millenials are all getting those f**king liberal arts degrees, then becoming leeches on society. A pox on them all.' thing. This isn't just about where the degrees are. And a previous post was right; we are generally told that having a degree is the key to a much better job opportunity. I think we need to change that in schools--many employers no longer care about what your degree is in, just that you have one; they care if you know what you're doing and if you have experience. Thus, I think increasing intern opportunities--hand in hand with private industry--in high school and college would really help too. If you could earn an automotive certification by interning at the same time you're finishing up your elective classes for an associates' degree, so much the better.

 

My advice...Figure out what your passion is, find out how to make a living at it and pursue it with a laser-beam like focus. What you do in between is just the means. Stop blaming outside factors.

 

tax foreign outsourcing... that is where the jobs are going

 

I think the teen unemployment thing is legit and starts them off on the wrong foot. It's too bad if those jobs are being elminated. That said I keep hearing about unpaid internships and such, so you'd think there would be some way around the minimum wage law. Perhaps if there was some strong skill learning component?

Otherwise I'll note that while the situation is rougher than other times, particularly compared to post WWII and Vietnam timeframes where being alive and physically and mentally intact was enough to earn a good living, a significant majority of recent grads ARE getting jobs. And I won't call a pox on those who have decided to live in their parent basement until their art or social mission is appreciated, but I hope everyone involved knew the risks. And hey, maybe things will pan out for them eventually? Even the "bad" degrees like fine arts, anthropology, and history have had an 80%+ employment rate in recent years.

 

Those mothers and fathers need to know about the post at the link at the bottom.

Look to NAFTA and GATT to find the reason for this problem. Look to our corrupt political systems an oligarchy to find the guilty parties.

Look at a threat which promises to make it permanently worse if we do not unify in defense of the constitution.

http://www.politicalforum.com/polit...nstitutional-threat-thread-real-defenses.html

Each and every parent in the nation needs to work towards effective unity for execution of that plan.

 

ABSOLUTELY NO; That's like charging people, many of which are having financial problems, for unnecessary cost of production. I'm not going over it again...but just to get necessary permits, for a new business for adding to an existing one is, more than it would cost to be in operation in many other Countries. Regulations from local to the Federal level, have made hiring one person, almost impossible and what do we want....$15.00 minimum wage, which to the business means about 23.00/Hr, to cover required regulations. There are people on this planet TODAY, working and don't make near that amount in a week.

 

Yes the COST, the PRICE of a higher education is absurd. And THAT is what needs to be addressed. Not how to FUND it, but cut the COST. All the leftist/progressive/Democrats talk about is pouring more and more money into the problem as if that will fix it. More grants, easier loans, more subsidies. And all the colleges and universities just rub their hands together and raise their prices just as the automobile companies would if the government suddenly decided everyone needs a better car and started handing out grants and government backed loans.

The first thing is to stop this spiraling influx of money and tell these brains running these schools to use all their knowledge and expertise to CUT THEIR COST and provide a better education at a lower price.

- - - Updated - - -

Then don't live in major cities and when people don't the price to live in those cities will drop.

 

This has also been addressed in multiple threads. The student loan system is what allows the schools to ratchet up tuition to ridiculous levels. Cut off the free money supply, the demand will go down, and the schools will be forced to contain tuition.

 

Yet you will not hear this administration nor the leftist/progressives address it from this angle. All they can cry for is more and more and more money.

 

Agreed.

That is the big government, bureaucratic way of managing a population for corporate profits rather than seeing they are able to be more and more independent.

Corporate media is keeping the populations ignorant making it so they appear to need to be controlled so government can pretend they need to charge us to manage our needed activities.

The only long term, comprehensive way to deal with this is to have a lawful and peaceful revolution as we have the right to do.

 

What? The more people are independent of government and able to make their own good living the more profits a corporation can make supplying them goods and services. The more corporations make profits the more you can increase you wealth and retirement funds.

Some perhaps but then there is some that keeps trying to education the populace that only they can improve their lot and sitting around with specious whining about corporations and waiting for government to come and provide for you is NOT the way to a nice middle class living.

OK how exactly would this revolution manifest itself and how would things be different afterwards?

 

The way things are now it appears most of the big corporations (the ones with the good jobs) are government contractors, in one way or another. The government has taken over so much of the economy, that's really where the money is at. Whether you think that seems like a healthy thing for the economy is another question.

 

Then don't live in the major cities. It reminds me of my nephew. He insists on living in a city because that is the lifestyle he wants. However, he cannot afford it, meanwhile turning down good job opportunities in smaller population areas. Instead, he expects his mother, and his grandparents, and anybody else who has busted their asses their whole lives to subsidize his lifestyle.

 

Why should they work for it? They will get it the same way the top 1% do--they will inherit it. Moms and Pops won't live forever.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhKUBE67-TM

No School, No Job, No Future, 15 percent of young people doing nothing, by Philip Elliott

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/sunday-review/the-idled-young-americans.html?_r=0

Gen Y: No jobs, lots of loans, grim future

No Jobs But Crappy Jobs: The Next Big Political Issue?

The new underclass, Why a generation of well-educated, ambitious, smart young Canadians has no future, by Chris Sorensen

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-04-20/in-new-millennium-no-jobs-for-millennials

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine...ew-jobless-era-will-transform-america/307919/

 

Pretty much a global phenomenon in the developed world and quite frankly not much can be done about it, except retirees being self supporting.

 

No jobs or fewer jobs for the young and minimum wage workers? Why? Because older people are applying and getting these minimum wage jobs. These are high school educated individuals without college degrees that might have normally been working manufacturing or other blue collar jobs before they were sent over seas.

 

It's not just that these jobs are being eliminated. The country has experienced a huge surge of immigration in the last three decades. Many of the lower level service jobs that used to be done by teenagers and young adults are now being done by older adult immigrants. Mowing lawns, bagging groceries, convenience store clerk, construction laborers, farm jobs, waitresses, valet parking, hotel maids, paper delivery—just to name a few.

In many cases these were not really "careers", but they were good jobs for young people to get started in and be able to provide for themselves. Now there are very few types of jobs available to a young person just starting out, and what is available is at the very bottom of the ladder.