Census: Recession Turning Young Adults Into Lost Generation

[marmar]

WASHINGTON -- Young adults are the recession's lost generation.

In record numbers, they're struggling to find work, shunning long-distance moves to live with mom and dad, delaying marriage and raising kids out of wedlock, if they're becoming parents at all. The unemployment rate for them is the highest since World War II, and they risk living in poverty more than others – nearly 1 in 5.

New 2010 census data released Thursday show the wrenching impact of a recession that officially ended in mid-2009. There are missed opportunities and dim prospects for a generation of mostly 20-somethings and 30-somethings coming of age in a prolonged period of joblessness.

"We have a monster jobs problem, and young people are the biggest losers," said Andrew Sum, an economist and director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University. He noted that for recent college graduates getting by on waitressing, bartending and odd jobs, they will have to compete with new graduates for entry-level career positions when the job market does improve. .........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/22/census-recession-young-adults_n_975476.html

[BeyondGeography]

1. Let's delay everyone's retirement and make things even worse

Wake the fuck up, "independents."

[Initech]

2. I'm reminded of Brad Pitt's speech from Fight Club:

Tyler Durden: Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.

[frazzled]

3. What does this recession have to do with WWI?

The term was popularized by Hemingway, and referred to the generation that came of age around World War I ... and before the Great Depression. Hemingway used it specifically to paint a picture of the expatriate generation after the war in The Sun Also Rises. It was a picture of a generation broken by the war and dispirited, decadent and unproductive in their lives. It wasn't about unemployment. It was about cynicism and loss of ideals.

http://www.historyguide.org/europe/lost-gen.html

[marmar]

4. Umm, I think you're reading too much into the intent of the headline writer, n'est-ce pas?

nt

[Edweird]

5. What an odd post.

[frazzled]

6. Well, not really

I'm very dissatisfied with the use of language lately--hyperbolic language meant to induce fear or panic or depression.

You know, like when anyone compares anything to "Nazi" this or that. It's just never appropriate, and never descriptive of the situation. I think we have a minor case of the same here. While unemployment is high among the young (but nothing like the Depression era), I'm not seeing young people wandering listlessly in the streets and giving up all hope. Not like they've just seen their best friends die of mustard gas poisoning. Maybe I've missed something. But I do sort of get around a little.

I think times are very difficult, and especially for young people, but to suggest that they are becoming a "lost generation" is both over-the-top and also not a way to help things.