Posted on 07/23/2024 8:58:59 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
The other day, I was tooling around at the grocery store and, in line to check out, I noticed a clothes hamper in the shopping cart in front of me. I thought it was pretty nice. I said so to the person pushing the cart.
Yes, I know it is awkward to strike up such conversations but I’m glad I did. I quickly found that the shopper was not buying for himself but for a customer of Instacart, an online ordering service. He was working and shopping as a customer himself.
Intrigued, I asked other questions. He has a university degree, recently earned, another full-time job, and just does this to put money in the bank and pay the rent. Casually digging around further, it turns out that this person is deeply grateful for this second job because otherwise he would be bankrupt and have to move home across the country to live with his parents.
This whole scene struck me as odd, so the next time, I began to wonder about other shoppers and tried the same line of inquiry. As it turns out, several more people there were working for various online shopping companies, Instacart among others. They all had similar stories of hustling as much as possible in the evening hours to pay the bills.
Truly, I had no idea that many people in our grocery stores today are not there buying for their families but for other businesses. They are gig workers. It’s their second and third jobs. I feel silly not to have known this but I’m not among those who have used such services. But plenty of people do. And that results in jobs for which people are deeply grateful because they have to pay their bills.
My friends, this is not normal. It has a Weimar vibe: wild economic activity and opportunity amidst a scramble to maintain one’s standard of living. It’s a hamster wheel with just enough payoff to keep it turning. Young people should not be doing this, particularly not those with high-level college training and expectations of the good life just right around the corner.
A story in the Wall Street Journal has gripped me. It’s about a kid who attended a very fancy school, Loyola University in Chicago. A degree there costs about $280,000 plus four years of lost job experience. You pay it because the credential is great and opens up a world of opportunities. The young person the story chronicled obtained a degree in English literature and imagined a future of working for a major publisher, perhaps advising the next F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Upon graduation, he started sending out resumes. Ten. Then a hundred. Then several hundred. Then a thousand. Months went by. He heard nothing from any of the companies. Despairing, he started writing to local newspapers. Nothing. Then he tried writing and marketing his material. Nothing. After nearly a year and facing utter bankruptcy, he finally landed a job: a part-time cook but mostly dishwasher at a local diner. For that he is grateful.
Indeed. Please understand: this person came from a wealthy family and went to the highest-end school. He got excellent grades throughout school. He graduated with honors. He had a network. But when actually going out there and trying to find gainful employment, he had come up with absolutely nothing. It took him a long time but he finally realized that there is nothing wrong with dishwashing. Any job is a respectable job. And all kudos to him for being willing to tell a reporter his story.
It’s hardly unique. It’s the experience of a whole generation. These days, sending out thousands of applications and hearing nothing is considered normal. A person of my generation cannot imagine this but it is true.
The WSJ says:
“The white-collar labor market is entering a more uncertain phase after cooling for more than a year. Job insecurity is climbing and fewer professionals feel emboldened to change their employment. The lack of turnover is stalling hiring even more as companies rethink their talent needs after pandemic-hiring sprees.”
That much is very obvious.
The hiring boom was always fragile and sketchy.
Now it is ending as the financial squeeze from inflation eats away at corporate profits and payrolls shrink across the entire white-collar world. A whole generation has been caught off guard. They followed all the rules. They went into massive debt. They did what they were supposed to do, on the promise that all will work out in the end.
Sadly, nothing is working out after all. Not even the restaurant and hospitality sector is offering gainful employment. This is a huge change from just one year ago, when at least young people had the option of serving tables. That is no longer true. Those who have such jobs are deeply fortunate. And they know it.
It’s all the more frustrating for people under 30 to realize that the system that has robbed them of opportunity and income—buying a home is out of the question but not even owning a car is possible—is being run by people with massive retirement accounts who are over the age of 70.
This is the old exploiting the young, not intentionally but in effect.
The post-pandemic and actual pandemic economy always had the feeling of unreality about it. It was funded by fake money and debt plus subsidies. Most people had the confidence that all would work out because it always had. But this supposition runs headlong into the reality of accounting. Nothing really added up.
Inflation is simply not going away and it has eaten into living standards. It is far higher than the government is reporting. Everyone knows this now. Quite simply: the government numbers exclude interest, shrinkflation, added fees, and a realistic accounting of housing prices and insurance. It doesn’t matter how many Nobel Laureates say that all is well. American citizens know it is not.
For a while, people believed that the magic of technological innovation would once again save us. Artificial intelligence stocks soared and the companies that seized on this new shiny object seemed to be the darlings of Wall Street. But in the last week, that too has changed as major institutional investors are asking old-fashioned questions about price-earnings (P/E) ratios and underlying values. Wall Street says this is merely “rotation.” Rotation is to stocks as “transitory” is to inflation.
The post-lockdown jobs boom was always artificial, a product of miscounting and misreporting. But whatever strength appeared to be there is now melting away, leaving dislocation and stagnation, even in sectors like hospitality that were reliable only 10 months ago.
(Data: Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED), St. Louis Fed; Chart: Jeffrey A. Tucker)
Hard times are coming and most people get this. It’s going to be difficult for the new presidential administration. There is no magic solution, as much as we might want one. All budgets, including government budgets, must be cut severely. We have no choice but austerity. It is going to come whether we want it or not.
The flight to value will continue. The new fashion will be for real jobs, real balance sheets, real assets, and real lives. It’s about time. Nothing in the political theater of our times will change this. These are extremely uncertain days, ripe for all sorts of possibilities. Let us all hope that we will choose freedom and sound money as the only real alternative to stagnation and collapse.
$280K English Lit degree and you can’t find a real job? Who could’ve imagined such a thing......
“Learn to code.”
Say, maybe there is a future for English Lit majors.
Want a career?, then concentrate in Science, Techical skills, Engineering, Mechanical skills. The rest is just unemployable fluff.
So a guy sends out 1000 resumes and no job... That says it all as to what’s wrong with the guy.
When I was in school (Accounting major), it was a routine thing to have liberal arts majors address me in an accusatory tone of not getting a “real” education but only “vocational training”. My standard reply was to appear to consider their statements and then respond that they were absolutely correct ... I wanted a good job with a future upon graduation.
Yup. The old thinking was that simple automation would replace workers on the assembly line -- robots are better. And fast-food job? Machines can flip burgers, right? Machines would take jobs from low-skill workers, but no one really cares about them, right?
Well, AI can do most cubicle work. Simple, repetitive, logical tasks. Fill out the spreadsheets, file the reports, crunch the numbers. Machines do that better than people. Insurance, Banking, Accounting, Lawyers, etc. Lots of white collar jobs held by smart people who got good college degrees -- those jobs are going away.
And for young people -- the entry-level jobs of burger flipping or mail room clerk? There aren't really entry-level jobs anymore. But if you get your foot in the door, can you move up? No. We got rid of Middle Management, remember? Those were wasteful jobs, so we don't have Managers running teams of 5 or 10. We have Managers running teams of 100-200. Good luck moving up to that position -- 100 people on the team want to become the new boss. Only 1 will make it. Odds are 99% against you.
Physical trades are a good bet for young people. But the country doesn't need 300 million plumbers, so that's not a complete solution.
I think a VERY large percentage of the population will find that it as no useful labor to contribute to society. This is bad.
“liberal arts majors address me in an accusatory tone of not getting a “real” education but only “vocational training”.”
That is a reasonable attitude to have if you have a trust fund waiting for you upon graduation.
Lol.
It is much worse for white male graduates.
Paying $280,000 for a degree in English literature? Hopefully they have a career in forgery lined up. First editions and author’s notes go for a lot at auction.
Especially when labor jobs are being reserved for the illegal aliens, #ell even crime is being farmed out to them.
I was lucky. After graduating from high school I got a job in a production machine shop which paid about twice minimum wage. I had never even seen a machine tool up until then, but I learned on the job. There were occasional, temporary layoffs when business become slow but I hung on and eventually became a journeyman machinist.
After working 14 years in that business, my boss offered me a foreman position in a new machine shop he was starting. I took it.
Five years later, a major company bought the shop and offered me a salaried position as a ‘manufacturing specialist’, so I took that. I worked there for another 32 years and finally retired.
Lucky, to have continuous employment from October 1971 to September 2022.
I got a foolish degree 50 years ago in English and Philosophy 50 years ago.
Realizing it was foolish I got some voc-tech training and was successful after that.
Young people need to look to what other skill set they may have besides the liberal arts degree they got in college. I have used Instacart delivery people and they are generally well groomed and polite. They are strong enough to handle heavy groceries and could easily learn to be nurses’ aides. Some of the Lyft drivers with whom I have engaged in conversation were studying to be nursing assistants.\
A little thinking outside the box is required, especially nowdays.
He'll even lose that job to a 'migrant soon enough.
Leave the country and change your identity. That debt will never go away, so you have to.
“Half the people you know are below average.” — Steven Wright
A hundred years ago, there was more work for people of limited intelligence. Men could become dock workers, ditch diggers, chimney sweeps, farm hands, etc. Women could work as maids, seamstresses, cooks, cleaning ladies, etc.
Most jobs like that are gone now, but we still have a significant percentage of people with limited capabilities and they all need food and shelter. On top of that, millions of foreigners have flooded into the country and those who want to work have taken any jobs they could get.
Also you have the DEI movement, where lesser qualified People Of Color are hired ahead of white males.
I don’t have much hope for things getting better, at least during my children’s lifetimes. It could easily get worse if nothing changes.
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