There is a solution, one that worked well for Greenhouse's generation of the '70s. Vote for the Printing Press!

Young people are supposed to be in debt. A lifetime of earnings pays off that debt and results in the late acquisition of assets. Whether one comes out well or poorly depends upon whether or not one pays off the debt with depreciated currency.

Inflate Young People! You have nothing to lose but your debts.

"Nowadays the unspoken message is that you have to bust your butt and perform well to make sure your employer keeps you. You also have to earn your pay increases because automatic raises are increasingly a thing of the past. As one business school professor put it, 'It's an, 'If you give, you'll get' model,'"

Must have been a slip of the tongue on the part of that professor. I think what that business school professor meant to say is this:

"If you give, the CEO will get. You, on the other hand, will get little reward for your hard work. So if you are really smart, you will work to change the way things work in your country to ensure that people who work hard are rewarded. To start, you might want to get the money out of elections, because then your representatives will be working for you and your interests."

After reading your piece and thinking about recent policies and trends, I think we are likely to end up with a generation of people who work LESS hard because they have little to lose and no incentive.

And when the notion of a strong work ethic loses all meaning for workers, the majority of corporations and investors will lose, too. Karma for greed, I guess. Just another great way to lower productivity and ruin an economy.

i am a young worker and i feel the pressure to get an advanced degree. good jobs are hard to come by if you don't have one. I have a decent one now but there's almost zero chance for me to move up unless i have a masters or a law degree or even a phd, and i don't feel comfortable settling down without some chance to move up. and from what i hear, you don't even really pick up new skills by getting these degrees! they're a total farce!

Perhaps Steven covers this in his book, but another challenge for the young worker or the unskilled worker is the difficulty in finding permanent jobs. Typically, young workers are hired on a part-time basis or an on-call basis. Companies would rather hire 2 part-timers than one full-timer because they save on benefits. I see this as little more than a scam - we'll give you a job, but it won't have any benefits or hope of becoming a full-time permanent position.

There are many parents like Steven who see what's happening and worry not only for their kids, but for themselves because parents are providing many of their kids, struggling towards independence, with housing and/or financial aid at a time parents are trying to prepare for their own retirement.

Over the last 20 years we've slipped from being the financial dynamo of OUR parents to an economy that resembles post-war England.

I dunno. I'm 37, so I'm right around the age of what you're looking at. I don't think it's that hard to reach whatever level you aspire to. Most kids get too hung up on irreconcileable personal goals when it comes to work/family/lifestyle. They impose a lot of this debt on themselves tilting at windmills. I always provide whatever advice I can to my younger coworkers, and I think most of them appreciate it. (The college career center won't tell them the truth.) It's always better to work in or around a prospering company/industry/region than one in decline. You can *always* find one. I tell them bounce around early--every six months if you have to--until you find a career field/position you like. Liking your job is the key to long-term satisfaction. After that, be competent, ethical, and diligent. Your first six months will define you within the company. Never say no to the first special project (big or small) you're offered. Knock it out of the park, and you'll be promoted at your first annual review, if not sooner. If not, put the experience on your resume while it's still fresh and walk. You've spent too many years honing your skills and cultivating your interests to be insulted. Sell them to someone who will appreciate your worth...and someone will.

One of the big mistakes the unions are making by accepting two-tier scales is that you have a group that feels screwed over right from the get go.

In a decade, those same young workers will be able to vote on getting rid of health benefits for retirees in exchange for a raise for themselves.

Moreover, today's young Americans are entering a workplace in which the job security that my parents' generation largely took for granted has all but evaporated. Nowadays the unspoken message is that you have to bust your butt and perform well to make sure your employer keeps you. You also have to earn your pay increases because automatic raises are increasingly a thing of the past.

This is one major reason why so many young people are opting out of hierarchical employment tracks, either trying to start businesses early or choosing lower-paying careers with more work-life balance. Ironically, in the minds of far too many employers, this attitude is labeled "lazy" and/or "entitled."

Even the highly skilled, high-paying professions (like law) have huge downsides exactly because of this new "constant competition" mentality. New lawyers work far more hours than entry level lawyers did 30 years ago. The disparity between firms and government/public interest is also much higher. And while firms' starting salaries partially reflect these hours, the new lawyers accepting these jobs must effectively cede their personal lives entirely. 80 hours work weeks in-office are not uncommon, and the hours you're not working are tied to a BlackBerry. But it's what's necessary in order to hang on to that salary -- and without that salary, that huge debt you need to pay off starts to become a serious, scary issue.

I am 25 and currently in law school, and it's interesting to see the dichotomy in attitudes. A lot of people are seriously considering giving up roughly large salaries (not counting bonuses) to go to government jobs with loan repayment benefits rather than firm jobs specifically in order to secure a reasonable working life. The high-paying firms are very often seen simply as places to service debt for a few years before moving on, and they suffer HUGE (and quite expensive) attrition rates as a result. But this isn't seen as a labor issue so much as a symptom of irresponsibility.

The alternative is to try to get out of the system of large employees entirely and start your own business. Even in the best of times, that's never been easy right out of school (you have to accumulate capital, contacts, etc...). But today we also have record high health costs and virtually unaffordable private health insurance. It's hard to opt out of a hierarchical system when it can literally mean taking your life in your hands.

I'm really happy to see books tackling this issue being published because this is, in my opinion, one of the biggest gaps in generational understanding in years. We see huge institutional debt, a crushing attitude towards work, virtually no job security, and a hugely inadequate system of social support. Our bosses, remembering how it felt to be a college graduates 20-30 years ago, generally see a bunch of lazy bums asking for more than they deserve.

Great discussion and thanks for the insight into many of the scary numbers which young workers are facing in the marketplace.

Because I am young I have very little perspective on the generation which preceded my generation. But one thing seems clear, in the past there was a substantial industry of blue collar jobs for those that did not have technical degrees or college degrees. Many of those jobs had retirement plans and healthcare plans protected by union representation. We do not seem to have as many of those jobs for my generation but maybe our country has more people therefor less jobs. Also throughout my life it seems that there has been a concerted effort by the business community and the goverment to get rid of unions and union jobs, not to mention the piss-poor management of our Auto industry by the leading American companies. Another facet to this story is the way that corporate America uses and endless supply of young college educated workers to work as contract employees. Two of the companies my sister worked for in the late 90's and early 00's employed her over a 9 month period as a prospective hire/contract employee. For her work she was given no healthcare benefits nor retirement benefits until such time as her contratc expired. Obviously I can not speak for her or the company but the result in both cases was that she was let go at the end of her term and had to look to find another job. In both cases she was left the impression that both companies frequently used this tactic to hire high-ckilled entry level workers without having to give them benefits. I would guess that the ttransition for such a job was not as critical in cost analysis as saving money not paying benefits! When I graduated from grad school, I was given the opportunity to work for a leading Goverment Contractor on the same type of temporary basis. Six months later I was given the opportunity to get healthcare and a 401K. I think this is a normal business practice throughout corporate America and somthing that I believe is rather unethical on a part of corporate America. Throughout my grade school education I was told to succeed and that if you succeed opportunities will come your way. They told us that college was the way to guarentee your future but here I am and here my sister is following the steps and leadership from previous generations then getting treated like indentured servants having to pay the piper first.

Another complaint I have and my girlfriend has about corporate America that may not be unique to my generation but standard operating procedure for corporate America is business asking you to give up much of your free-time in order to succeed. I am of the school of "working to live" not "live to work". I have been educated, I have a college degree and a Master's. I understand that if a business is going to succeed that it must have worker's who go above and beyond but nonetheless I feel like much of corporate America resembles a Autocracy with its own rules meant to control the lives of the employees of the companies. I feel like I have to be proven innocent by the background checks, the drug tests and the trial employment period demanded by companies such as the one I work for. I understand that many coroporations in America do not resemble my words but I fear that this is an exception not a rule. I am angry at the previous generation, I am angry at the lack of quality fo life which corporate America only rates in relation to their bottom lines. I feel that their are many who make up my generation who have massive doubts about globalization, corporate America, the role of our goverment and its ties to coroporate America and the violations of our personal rights by this current administration and those of other administrations. It would seem that control and a lack of liability is all that many care for, I do not seek control I seek life and integrity in leading my life. There I go rambling again, Sorry! I am just extremely cynical about the lifestyle which I was told to expect as a child and the world which I see as an adult. The two are mutually exclusive but not quite exact opposites!

I'm a 63 year old who agrees with you. I think the job market is incredibly tougher for young people than it was for me when I was your age.

There has been a steady growth of corporate power and a steady erosion of union/labor power over the last 30 years, starting with Reagan's busting up the traffic controllers' union. We are where we are as a result:

- contract jobs with no benefits
- no healthcare benefits
- no pensions
- stagnant wages
- fewer manufacturing jobs
- more competition from illegal low wage labor

My parents had pensions. I won't - those jobs disappeared years ago, but I do have a 401k. I'm not saying you can't make it. I have a son who is doing very well, and another that is barely scraping by, but it's ingenuous to insist that this is the same labor market it was 30 years ago.

I ain't happy, I' m feelin glad I got sunshine in a bag I'm useless, but not for long the future (that's right) is comin' on is comin' on is comin' on is comin' on is comin' on

The essence, the basics
Without it you make it
Allow me to make this childlike in nature
Rhythm, you have it or you don't
That's a fallacy

--Gorillaz

At some corporate law firms, starting pay for twenty-five-year-olds out of top-notch law schools is $145,000 a year."

The gap between the perception of the value of having a law degree and reality is staggering. To be sure, graduates from top-15 programs do find jobs paying in the 125,000 to 160,000 range. As do a few top graduates of lesser schools. Unfortunately the vast majority of graduates leave law school saddled with staggering amounts of student loans only to find their dreams of high-paying starting salaries dashed against the reality of a entry-level job market that is highly competitive and heavily saturated with hundreds of equally qualified law school graduates.
Employers have woken up to the fact that they can offer starting salaries starting as low as $30,000 in cities like New York and Los Angeles and literally receive hundreds of job applications from well-qualified law grads desperate to get their foot in the door somewhere. Temporary jobs and part-time jobs have proliferated and offer zero security and no benefits. Add the fact that the average student debt load after graduation is $80,000 and it’s not difficult to see why so many recent graduates are working multiple jobs in addition to whatever legal work they can piece together.

Law school might have once been a guaranteed ticket into a secure stable profession, but those days are sadly long gone. Now, the only thing that graduates from top-15 law schools can count on is student debt, an uncertain job market, and zero job stability in the event that an individual is fortunate enough to find a non-contract job.

Dickey's totally right about that. And that also fuels the "live to work" mentality. Employers enjoy some pretty great leverage when you've got $100K in debt and you know of classmates only making $30K a year. Note that loan repayment benefits for people making those incomes are only available for public interest or government employees too -- a lawyer at a small firm making $45K/yr (which would be a totally decent salary if it weren't for the massive debt load) gets no help whatsoever.

And yet law is being offered as one of the only "secure" job routes left. A scary thought.

Many young people don't realize that they face a far less friendly workplace than when my generation entered the workforce in the 1970s.

Wow! The last five years of the 70's (1975 to 1979) saw monthly unemployment peak at 9.0% average 7.0% and never fall below 5.6% OTOH, last month just bumped _up_ to 5.5%.

That is far less friendly than today. The worker unfriendly end of the 70's were the BIG reason Carter was a one term President.

As long as bosses have single (hell, or married) daughters, I'll do allright!

As for Mr Greenhouse, the solution is clear: give your daughter your job!

The mid- to late 70s (when I entered the job market) were terrible. Recession, hyperinflation, the first round of jobs going elsewhere (the South and abroad). In addition, you had people from the peak baby boom years entering the job market at a time when even a more robust economy would have had trouble absorbing them. A lot of people from my cohort wound up in jobs that had not necessarily required college in the past, such as retail management. Employers took advantage of the oversupply of college graduates to change the profile of many low level managerial and technical positions. This eroded opportunity for non-grads, as well as lower the entry level possibilities for grads.

The current cohort has advantages and disadvantages that weren't present 30 years ago. With an aging population, the job market should improve over time, as boomers retire out. Given the debt load some of these people carry, the process may be slower than in past generations, but things will improve. there is no IT sector on the horizon, but the need to confront gloabl warming may create opprtunities for people with training many areas of science and technology.

After college, I worked in low level social service-type jobs, got some experience and then went back to school and got a PhD in a field with plenty of demand. This option is less possible now because of the caost of higher education and the debt that people accumulate. I left grad school with relatively modest debt and used second jobs to pay off most of the principal within 5 years. I wonder how many can do this now. I think this mitigates the value of advanced study.

BTW, many graduate degrees are a dime a dozen...education, MBAs from non-elite institutions, lawyers who don't go into big firms or corporate practice, etc.

The future for your daughter and others requires rethinking of how to fund education and the kinds of skills that will be needed. Having lived through a long, bad job market, I see reasons for hope, but I also worry that many of the avenues for advancement really have become more difficult.

the necessity of accumulating debt needs to be questionsed, but the cost of many basic things (e.g., housing in major metros, eductaion) makes it more difficult to avoid debt for people early in their professional lives.

My daughter's boyfriend, who is 26, is making $60,000 a year as a software programmer.
I am a journalist/copy editor, age 58. I was recently laid off because, well, you know, newspapers are dying. I was grossing $42,000 after 30 years in the field.

Ii>all you gotta do is two things: Stay outta debt, and control your reproduction (I said control, not eliminate!)

You forgot to add a third requirement: don't get sick! If you do, you might lose your health insurance, and then you're up sh*# creek, for sure!

"Today there are four active workers contributing taxes to Social Security for each retiree. In 2030, there are expected to be just two-and-a-half workers per retiree."

That does not sound like bad news. Look at it from a workers point of view. Right now you have four people competing for your job. In 2030 you'll only have two and a half. With labor scarce you'll get better working conditions and better pay. With labor more expensive, employers will use labor more efficiently (like the French), so productivity will rise. Some of us remember the 1960s and 1990s.

Right now, as in the late 70s and mid 30s, a large cohort is joining the workforce. (I think we had 18 year old peaks in 1978 and 2007. There was also post war baby boom during the early 1920s, but I don't have the profiles handy). That means it is hard to get a decent job and it is all the baby boomers (post WWII) fault. We suck.

I wouldn't bank on a manufacturing renaissance. That line of work has been vanishing since 1900. By the late 1950s all the talk was about the lousy economy and our vanishing manufacturing sector. It still hasn't made a comeback. From the point of view of agriculture, mining and manufacturing, we are all rich. We just need the political will to make sure everyone gets a piece of the wealth.

H1-B visas are a HUGE problem in my neck of the woods. Most of the biotech firms and universities in my state stopped hiring local grads years ago.

I can't remember whose comment it was from above about his daughter making 61K just two years out of college and he getting laid off after 30 years making just 40K! I am glad to hear your daughter is making it and sorry to hear about the loss of your job.
I believe a you do that we are seeing many traditional avenues of employment, such as in your case, dying off as an opportunity for future generations. Apparently many job sectors have been dying off here in America such as many of the blue collar (manufacturing jobs) that existed in from the early 1900's through the 70's. I understand that much of this is on account of the development throughout the rest of the world and the relationships that many of our corporations have with international businesses. So it is expected that many of our job sectors would change with the movement of the dynamic market-place. Many of us who were raised in the 80's and 90's were told by the generation in power at the time that a college education was a prudent path to follow to succeed in this changing world. They told us that it would make us more qualified in order to compete in that marketplace. And for many of us this is true. But for others, not a significant minority I believe, we are faced with the fact that our education did not ensure us the same security in the marketplace that was promised and in many cases was delivered. Many of us have a large amount of debt because throughout the 80's and 90's the government for the most part did not extend the benefits to the new generation of college students at the same rate of growth which occurred within college enrollees. Yes we were given and are given relatively low interest rates and long term pay backs to lessen the burdens of these loans. However many of the jobs that are available in the marketplace do not allow us to repay these loans before the long-term approach. As the market shifts and the cost of living goes up it places many of us near an edge of financial ruin if we are to lose a job or if we lose our health. I simply find this a bad position for our nations and the people in it. I think it places stress which could otherwise be relieved in young workers as they get older. The facts in the marketplace show us that during the same period the US sustained robust growth over the long term. The economic equality gap has grown over the last decade or so. Many of us who are getting further and further behind whether young or old are not seeing the benefits of much of this growth but we are are feeling the burden of the marketplace. Again I simply see this as a bad position for our government to take for its own safety and security and to ensure such for the future. I think it makes the marketplace less competitive both in reality and psychologically. How can we have an effective marketplace if only the very few elite are aloud to contribute to the direction of our economy and the influence of decision maker's about our future as the people of the US? Trickle-down is not really trickling down! How can it be in our best in interest to have a nation that places it's judgement and trust in the hands of a very few?