Unemployed Chinese Graduates Say No Thanks To Factory Jobs 366
hackingbear writes "While people and politicians are pitching for more education and reviving manufacturing in this country, jobs go begging in factories while many college educated young workers, which now number 11 times more than in 1989, are unemployed or underemployed in China. A national survey of urban residents, released this winter by a Chinese university, showed that among people in their early 20s, those with a college degree were four times as likely to be unemployed as those with only an elementary school education. Yet, it is not about the pay. Many factories are desperate for workers, despite offering double-digit annual pay increases and improved benefits, while an office job would initially pay as little as a third of factory wages. The glut of college graduates is eroding wages even for those with more marketable majors, like computer science. Vocational schools and training programs are unpopular because they suffer from a low status [or are seen as] for people from unsuccessful, poor, or peasant backgrounds. 'The more educated people are, the less they want to work in a factory,' said an unemployed graduate. If we do succeed bringing back factory jobs, are there enough people who want them?"
It's the stigma (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's the stigma (Score:5, Insightful)
True, but you also dont spend years educating yourself in order to work on a factory line. Even bad office work is a start to an employment history and could lead to better opportunities down the road. Factory jobs just lead to more of the same.*
*That said I can't even pretend I have any full grasp of how employment works in China.
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Menial jobs in China are basically indentured servitude with few opportunities for advancement or even opportunities to find out what else is out there. Skipping these jobs, for an educated worker, is totally understandable.
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seriously? factory job == menial job? did you read about how factory workers can go work in different factories easily?
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you do realize 20 years ago america looked just like china.
WE got an EPA with teeth that businesses cry over as now they can't dump their toxic waste into the drinking water, and have to filter the exhaust stacks of the chemical factories.
It wasn't factory jobs. It was forcing companies to clean up after themselves. Also if we can't find people to do menial work in america now(why else to illegal immgrants come work the farms. why do people think we will flock to menial factory jobs? Hell right now if yo
Re:It's the stigma (Score:5, Insightful)
you do realize 20 years ago america looked just like china.
This is the dumbest thing I've read today.
Are you even twenty years old? Have you ever been to China?
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He meant forty years ago. He's just old and his Alzheimer's kicked in.
Re:It's the stigma (Score:4, Interesting)
OK, here: http://imgur.com/dPB4LmA [imgur.com] is a picture from the park next to (north of) the Forbidden City in Beijing. Beyond 1.5km it's impossible to see anything, not even the shape of the buildings.
The photo is from October 2012. Can you see anything like that for an American city in 1990?
Also, it's like that much of the time in many Chinese cities. It's even worse when the weather doesn't cooperate (where it might cause smog for a day or two in present-day LA).
Re:It's the stigma (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know about 1990, but we definitely had some pretty nasty air pollution about 40-60 years ago. When I was < 10 and growing up in Ohio circa 1980, I remember that air pollution was pretty much everywhere, even in smaller cities, like the Warren-Youngstown-Sharon area roughly halfway between Cleveland and Pittsburgh. My first "omg" memory of Florida was looking up during recess one day about a month after we moved there, and freaking out because I could see the full moon in broad daylight. That was something you never, EVER saw in Ohio. Or at least something *I* had no memory of ever seeing.
Hell, I spent July 5, 1994 in New York, and remember BARELY being able to see the Twin Towers from Midtown. The whole city smelled like a burning log in a fireplace. Likewise, I spent a week in Los Angeles sometime in August 1996, and remember driving into L.A. on LaCienega drive... I made it over the mountain, and saw the famous vista with LA (well, OK, I guess it was actually Beverly Hills) spread out in front of me... except you couldn't actually see anything except faint rooftops a mile or two away, and a sea of opaque smog. In LA's defense, though, its smog didn't really have any particular odor. It was opaque to a degree I'd never seen in my life, but other than obscuring most of the views, it didn't really bother me.
Anyway, onto the pics:
Pittsburgh, 1948... during the DAY: http://bike-pgh.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/smog1.jpg [bike-pgh.org]
Cleveland, 1973: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/CLEVELAND_SKYLINE_IN_THE_SMOG_OF_JULY_20%2C_1973%2C_DAY_OF_POLLUTION_ALERT_-_NARA_-_550190.jpg [wikimedia.org]
New York, 1972: http://earth911.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Smog-1970s.jpg [earth911.com]
Los Angeles, 1948: http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/jamesfallows/los-angeles-smog_53499058.jpg [theatlantic.com]
Manhattan, 1966: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wavz13/4083896787/ [flickr.com]
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Actually, it was closer to 120 years ago, not 20. That minor quibble aside, you do have a point.
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Only difference is that these factory jobs pay up to 3X of what a college grad can get out of school.
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That's not true. My first holiday job while at college was on a factory floor (in Scotland). They did quite regularly recruit for their production engineers and so on off the factory floor.
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And this is why we all know and praise Scottish engineering.
Re:It's the stigma (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to mention if the choice is between "bad office work" and Foxconn... I think the choice is clear.
It sounds like Chinese workers want the same thing that American workers want: better working conditions. If the pay isn't sufficient to draw adequate quantity of talent then you need to start upping your incentives. Reduce quotas and hours (after all more than 40 hours a week is a waste of money since you're just paying overtime for someone to do the same amount of work), improve working conditions (maybe mix up positions throughout the day to prevent repetitive injuries and strain) etc.
Re:It's the stigma (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was a kid China was still suffering the last of Mao's self-induced famines, I'm pretty sure most workers in China look at today's job market as a blessing rather than a problem because at the end of the day, finding and retaining workers is a rich man's problem and a common man's opportunity.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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There is absolutely no office or executive position my uneducated self could not preform 120% better then most self entitled pushover bitches. Because I'm a problem solver.
You're a problem solver, eh? Do you understand that's corporate-speak for, "can't actually do anything-but-want-to-sound-impressive?" If you had skills you'd actually list them. If you don't, then you solve problems.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:It's the stigma (Score:5, Funny)
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Good luck paying the bills on a factory wage these days - especially given the amount of money students have to spend getting their education
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In the past in the USA, american corporations had career paths where someone could start as a mail-room worker and move all the way up to CEO (working in the mail-room would have given someone insider knowledge of all the important departments, who spent the most time talking to who).
In the UK, manufacturing companies had or have inhouse training programs to allow employees to migrate up from junior positions to R&D and/or management positions.
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People that started in the mail-room and made it to CEO were almost always the former CEO's/Chairman's son.
They didn't stay in the mail-room long.
Re:It's the stigma (Score:4, Insightful)
Your example of a rare outlier does not invalidate the general rule: These positions tend to not be positions you work your way into--they tend to be positions you are born into.
Re:It's the stigma (Score:5, Interesting)
We have become so deeply ingrained with the idea that easier work should pay more, that we simply can't imagine it any other way.
My first job was planting gladiola bulbs. I might have made $30 over the summer (granted not a huge number of hours). Then delivering newspapers, then milk, then cashier, and so on, through computer support, web development, jr. programmer... today I have an office job as a researcher making over 20 times as much per hour as I made as a cashier. I would not pick fruit for the same pay, let alone 20% the pay.
Without exception, every job has been easier and paid better than the last.
Re:It's the stigma (Score:5, Insightful)
Those jobs haven't been easier and paid better. Those jobs have been less physically demanding and paid better, which isn't the same thing.
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Or that can be rephrased like this. Is physically demanding work less valuable. In todays economy I would say yes. Especially now that machines can do most of the physically demanding work.
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There's two variables that I think you're conflating: skill, and energy.
Research is a high-skill, low-energy job. Gladiola bulb planting is (I imagine) a low-skill, high-energy job. The amount a job pays is basically proportional to how many people are willing and able to do it. A low-skill, low-energy job is basically the bottom of the barrel. A low-skill, high-energy job is the next step up - there are fewer people willing to put up with the physical demands of the job, so they'll get a slightly higher pa
It's also the danger of Chinese factories (Score:3)
In the book "The China Price", a factory worker is discussed who had his hand mangled in an injection molder. He was left to fend for himself with a tiny bit of "compensation" from the factory. No wonder smart people in China want to avoid factory jobs -- they are not like factory jobs in the USA. See:
"The China Price: The True Cost of Chinese Competitive Advantage" by Alexandra Harney
http://www.amazon.com/The-China-Price-Competitive-Advantage/dp/0143114867 [amazon.com]
"In this landmark work of investigative reporting,
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Yes, but the idea for 'prospects' smacks of playing the lottery. True, an office job might give you the theoretical chance to rise to be the CEO, but what is the chance of it actually happening? People need to consider the average salaries through their lifetime, not one in a million chances to get a million bucks a month.
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But do you have to make CEO to win the lottery?
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A factory worker in China can make up to as much as a pilot. A unionized pilot in USA for one of the big airlines makes $250k to $500k.
If you gave me that to work in a factory, I'd go.
Guess what happens in China? They save up their money, and in 3-5 years go back to their home town rich, and start their own business.
And why should they? (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's be honest, college in China is no where near the difficulty as in the U.S. It's even harder than Japan if folks who've been to both countries are to be belived. You work hard for an education, you deserve something better than being a semi-automoton.
Now we get on our graduates' cases when they complain about doing menial jobs. It's a tough first year (or 5) right after school, but in places like China where you're competing against literally millions in the same line, what are your odds of personal advancement without connections?
Re:And why should they? (Score:5, Informative)
"wrote memorization"
IT IS "ROTE," NOT "WROTE."
This is the second usage in this thread so far. Good grief.
If you are going to criticize the current education system, then use the correct terms.
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If you are going to criticize the current education system, then use the correct terms.
Have sympathy on them, they are the object lesson.
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And yes, it was a joke.
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middle easter language
Wouldn't you have too much candy in your mouth to speak properly?
Re:And why should they? (Score:5, Insightful)
The headlines you see about the horrible education system in U.S. are referring to K-12. (student age 6 - 17). When it comes to universities, U.S. is still the envy of much of the world. (else you wouldn't see the flood of Chinese and Korean students coming to American colleges)
In East Asian countries, kids are expected to study 20 hours a day to prepare themselves for the university entrance exam, which is extremely competitive. Getting into a top university sets you up for life. But once you actually get INTO a university, you don't need to study much at all. It's the exact opposite of U.S. where everything prior to college is a breeze, but you actually have to study and learn stuff to get your degree (at least if you're a STEM major)
I have a co-worker who graduated from a S. Korean university in 1997. He regales us with stories of how he drank and chased girls in college. Once he woke up on the day of a final exam with a hangover, realized he knew absolutely nothing about the topic, so he wrote a personal essay involving himself, the professor, national ethics, and how wants to thank the professor for his hard work which is benefiting mankind. He ended up getting a C and passed the course.
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I was a college student both in China and the U.S. (transfered over in my 3rd year).
The difficulty level of college is about the same in both countries. Some of the hard math/science courses are more advanced in China, because a lot of materials considered college level in the U.S. are taught in high school in China. But on the other hand, courses in China are strictly major-focused, while in the U.S. you need to go through all the "core courses" that cover a wide range of topic and have nothing to do wit
Slashdot suffers from a low statue of editing (Score:3)
From the summary:
Can anyone tell me what this sentence means?
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It's marginally clearer if one reads "status" for "statue", and if one uses a comma instead of the nonsensical "of":
Vocational schools and training programs are unpopular because they suffer from a low status, for people from unsuccessful, poor, or peasant backgrounds.
Still not great, but at least it's gone from "gibberish" to "barely comprehensible".
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My guess:
Vocational schools and training programs are unpopular because they suffer from a low statue of four people from unsuccessful, poor, or peasant backgrounds.
That darn statue! Quit making those schools suffer, you, you...oooooh!
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What I understood from this summary is that chinese graduates are accusing Steve Jobs about factory conditions.
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It isn't just China (Score:5, Insightful)
We've all heard the ancient urban myths about PhD's flipping burgers, but here in the States there seems to be a social stigma among younger graduates attached to manufacturing jobs that sometimes clouds one's financial judgement. Holding out for a cool-sounding title and a comfy chair over a steady job that pays considerably more, just because a lot of rednecks or minorities work there too, just doesn't make sense. You can still pursue your dream job while you earn a living, and you can do your laughing at the other people on payday.
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Ah ... yes. Who could forget about the Grecian tale of the Red Dragon who descended upon Plato, forced him to educate him, and then was banished through a wormhole, where was forced to flip burgers at the entrance to a popular vomitorium.
Germany and well paid manufacturing jobs (Score:4, Interesting)
Here in Germany, there are some factory jobs that can compete with the salary one would get as an engineer, but not many.
And they tend to be skilled jobs, so it is not just a matter of "oh, I feel like doing manufacturing for a change", you usually have to show that you've successfully completed some form of vocational training. So the graduate who has never worked in a factory before might not be accepted for these jobs.
He could try for an unskilled job instead but the pay is much lower then. The Chinese situation seems pretty unique.
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Engineer is often a factory job. I'm sure many Chinese Engineering graduates are taking 'factory jobs', same as everywhere.
But I don't think they are talking about engineers, mold and die makers or even machinists.
These people are turning down butt basic assembly line jobs. I guess Chinese liberal arts students don't say 'do you want fries with that' they say, nothing. They are too busy screwing together iPhones.
Education isn't what it used to be (Score:2)
but here in the States there seems to be a social stigma among younger graduates attached to manufacturing jobs that sometimes clouds one's financial judgement.
From the article, writing about China:
"Students themselves have not adjusted to the concept of mass education, so students are accustomed to seeing themselves as becoming part of an elite when they enter college" ...
China has a millenniums-old Confucian tradition in which educated people do not engage in manual labor.
The US used to be more about manufacturing, and there was no disgrace to being an engineer in a factory. There was a certain contempt for "college men" as impractical and lazy. That lasted through WWII and into the 1950s. Then came the post-war education boom, a vast number of college graduates, and, for a while, jobs for them. Then came information technology, and a huge cutback in paper-pushing.
China is going into their education boom with the paper-pushing era al
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Engineer is still 'king of the factory' in the same sense that a doctor is 'king of the hospital'.
And Engineers (the kind in factories as opposed to locomotives) were almost always 'college men'. What was held in contempt was 'useless' education. Navel gazing etc.
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College graduates tend to stay away from factories usually because they're afraid of becoming too comfortable.
I doubt one in ten college graduates has this fear much less that expectation of comfortable jobs anywhere near a factory. In the case you mention, I suspect the real reason you didn't see a lot of college graduates is because this employer didn't hire them.
College graduates can always move on and do something else, if they don't like what they're doing. That's pretty much what you did. This employer most likely wants people without such options.
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College graduates tend to stay away from factories usually because they're afraid of becoming too comfortable.
Do they have the luxury of choice? I know a couple of graduates who I think are a bit comfortable doing menial office work, but that's at least better than being too comfortable living on benefits (which is not too difficult here).
I live in London, where there is relatively very little manufacturing (see category [wikipedia.org], the little there is is mostly food), I don't know anyone who works in a factory, skilled or not.
(I found the figures. In London in 2005, out of 4.5M working people, only 200k were employed in ma
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You can still pursue your dream job while you earn a living, and you can do your laughing at the other people on payday.
That's just it though -- you can't realistically do this very well. You can't exactly tell your factory foreman, "sorry, can't work this afternoon, I have a job interview." And that is after the fact that one is not likely to have much energy for finding a job after working all day. (Yes, I realize this is the time to suck it up and work a full day and then come home and work on your
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On the contrary. The barrier to entry will increase, as more and more people become college educated and refuse to take manufacturing jobs.
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That would be the most reasonable explanation. I was job hunting in the UK some time ago. The cost of living had risen so much that 20K was the minimum salary that would allow anyone to just exist (pay rent, energy bills and council tax and buy food). Many employers were offering considerably less than that for employment as a software engineer (15K or less). In many cases, graduates were expected to pay for intern experience.
In other countries, there are vocational training program where you have to attend
Re:It isn't just China (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, for many students graduating nowadays, the crushing expense of student debt almost guarantees that the "learned it on the streets" employee will do better than they do. For example, if you're a law student(*), your prospects are so dismal that the opportunity cost will hurt more over time than simply having worked a "regular" job. It's 4 years of your life you could have been investing for, but instead you were accruing debt for.
Consider how much money you would have, after interest, if you were to save just $10 a day (that's only one hour's pay after tax) in your $35,000 a year job (yes, you might think it's high, but that's the average starting wage for a trades helper--it goes up from there--I know know, I did that job) you would have amassed almost $20,000 in banked cash assuming you chose wise investments. You'd also be earning $50,000+ a year once the university grad graduates because you'd now be a journeyman.
The fresh college grad is getting themselves a nice $35,000 a year pay to start off, just like you, but they have to put $10 a day towards student debt for the next 10+ years (don't forget the debt accrues interest the day you step out of college). In 10 years, the journeyman has now banked over $100,000 (assuming they up their daily savings with their increase in pay). While I don't doubt there's a point the college grad will beat the journeyman in salary, and eventually after-debt income, I have to wonder--how close to retirement is that point now? We're already at 32 years old and the journeyman has $100,000 cash, and the college grad $0 (but no debt!). Perhaps 10 years after that they might be equal in savings? By age 42 your children have likely left home--do you need money so desperately anymore?
Or, more importantly, one has to ask themselves what is more rewarding. Pushing papers around the legal system, or building brick walls? You might be surprised at the answer, if you consider the question honestly.
(*) - Or any of the other popular ones, history, geographic, librarian, teacher
Everyone makes their own choices, and I don't envy anyone's decision, not do I deride it--except if your decision is to be a lazy good for nothing slob. :) But there's plenty of pride that comes from factory work (or any sort of manual labour job). I may be a sysadmin now, but I take no less pride in the time I spent as an electrician.
and in the us Factorys are saying ther skills gaps (Score:3)
and in the us Factorys are saying there are skills gaps with people and they are pushing advanced manufacturing programs from community colleges
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-06-26/news/ct-met-new-harper-college-jobs-program-20120627_1_manufacturing-summit-harper-college-production-workers [chicagotribune.com]
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The problem is the pay, if the manufacturing job pays $12.50 an hr why bother? If they won't raise pay to get more people there isn't a real shortage.
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Terrible editing (Score:2)
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Supply and demand (Score:2)
Jobs are not just an excuse to hand people wages. You hire workers for the product they create. So there must be enough demand for whatever educated people do if they are to make a living. And the more they are the smaller the part each one gets of the pie.
So people just blindly assuming that being educated in a university will automatically make them richer needs to stop. It might be true, but it's not automatic! The more people enroll in university the less true it becomes.
I can see both sides of this (Score:5, Insightful)
As a holder of a graduate degree who can currently only get work as unskilled labor, I can see both sides of this. I work on the ramp at the airport, and while the job isn't really all that bad, intellectually it is unstimulating and rather boring; obviously I am also greatly overqualified for it. The thing is, turns out there are a lot of people there with college degrees, including in things like law or engineering. And, once you get a few years in, you can actually make decent money: one guy I know who has been there 7-8 years makes about 70k a year with overtime. You actually end up working with some pretty good people, and there is opportunity to move up, especially if you have an advanced degree and the ability/desire to advance. In any case, its a whole lot better than sitting at home drawing unemployment. Not everyone is going to get to work their dream job, and eventually you have to make a decision on whats more important: waiting around for year for a tiny shot at getting a job in the field you studied for, or taking a job with pretty decent pay that will let you pay off your education debt and provide for yourself/your family.
In this specific case, it seems like a no-brainer. If you are in fact skilled and intelligent, take that factory job. In a few years you'll probably end up a foreman, supervisor, or manager. Again, as someone in a similar situation, it comes down to this: job>no job.
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But, when your working life is over, what have you really accomplished besides earning a wage? Why attend university at all?
I see this with my father. He just retired after 31 years of hard manual labor where he could earn 90k/year with overtime. It's great that he had that option and he took advantage of it as much as possible. Now at 63, he doesn't have any hobbies and shuns intellectual stimulation because his brain has been dulled beyond repair.
Thanks, but, no thanks! Hold out for the desired position a
Re:I can see both sides of this (Score:4, Informative)
Now at 63, he doesn't have any hobbies and shuns intellectual stimulation because his brain has been dulled beyond repair.
That was his choice, not a product of the job. If you truly want to develop a hobby or have intellectual stimulation, you find a way to do so. If he was working so much OT that he was making 90k a year, work a little less over time, make 80k or 75k a year, and have time to travel, or build a car in your garage, or whatever hobby you want. Just like with any other job you find, you have to have to find that balance between making enough money to support your desired quality of life and the time to enjoy that life. At work I can talk about things like sports, or guns (surprising number of people their are pro firearm ownership) with my coworkers. If I want more stimulating conversation, I go hang out with my grad school friends who are getting their Master's/PhDs, and we can talk about politics, or science, or, again, even sports. Or I can stay at home and read books that are generally relegated to being used as textbooks but I read for fun because I enjoy the subject material. We only stop learning and thinking when we want to.
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Re:I can see both sides of this (Score:4, Insightful)
How about not living at home with your parents and being a loser no woman would want to be a mile away from? Isn't that worth getting up and going to work for?
Disclaimer, I did something stupid when the great recession hit. I graduated in 2009 and worked a few jobs before that. When times got hard I took any job I could get and my wife left me for a man with a steadier future who was not all pissed off about it.
I had to move back home with my parents. Insulting as i am in my 30s. I turned down jobs that paid 10/hr because I am worth more. I am educated and made more in the past right? Guess what.
Over a year has gone bye and the only look I had were 2 temp jobs in my field. Well, I lost my car, lost my posessions, and now employers feel I am lazy and not even worth $10/hr. My past references are gone and working for other people, and now I have a whole on my resume so big you can drive a truck through it!
If I could start over I would be happy to make $12/hr an hour with the other CS grads in my area working for IBM at their call center and not telling the headhunter to fuck himself when he offered $24,000 a year. I told him "Are you crazy! I owe $40,000 in student loans .."Now I am aiming for $16,000 a year. $7.25/hr with 40 hours a week lands you $16,500 a year. Can you believe that?
I will probably never retire of find another woman again as I thought I was too good to take any job. So I know I am going to be bashed and insulted here saying "I brought this on my self or I am an idiot". But my lesson for any reader is if you are offered a position take it! Do it, and after a year quit or be promoted. Not everyone gets to make $40k a year out of school. It is 2013. THere are hundreds of H1B1 visa works happy to do it for less with +8 years experience!
Go whine at the situation all you want but at the end of the day you are responsible for your upkeeping or your families. I hope I can make $38,000 again some day but right now I really need to earn it. You need that experience and a very good trackrecord for that salary.
Outside of Silcon Valley I know of no one making $80k a year (read your other post). Wages are and have been going down for many years. It is a fact of life and I applaud the grandparent as I am sure he made the right move and will get rewarded quicker than from what I did.
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I only have 2 references and have no money. I will accept a lower wage position and be happy I have a job or change fields. If I study I can become a teacher. I do not speak German anyway.
Thanks for the advice.
My point is sometimes we live in an employers market. Sometimes we live in an employees market. The employer has the strings and the 1950s - 1990s were an extrodinary time frame. Those opportunites are not there anymore or are there but to a lesser extent. I think working entry level and sucking it up
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In any case, its a whole lot better than sitting at home drawing unemployment.
Yes. Being productive feels good.
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Unless everyone else also has advanced degrees, in which case you're back to where you started. While this will be an unpopular opinion, it seems to me this is a side effect of overpopulation as well. Whereas there was a much smaller pool of humans 100 years ago, exponential growth has led to problems of scale we have otherwise never encountered in our history as the dominant species on the planet.
I don't think it's overpopulation, it's oversaturation. 100 years ago, there weren't as many people, yes. But there were also fewer educated people. The equivalent of today's high school education could land you a really good, high paying job. 50-75 years ago you had a lot of people, but most people stopped after high school. For those that went to college, they got the science/research/management jobs, while those with high school education or less got everything else. Following WWII and the GI Bill,
also the college system is teaching skills it was (Score:2)
also the college system is teaching skills it was not really build for some stuff 4+ years is over kill and others it can rush stuff.
I say MORE 2 year degrees and some kind of badges systems with skills that have there own time frames and settings.
4 years is to much theory.
We need more hands on learning and tech schools (Score:2)
We need more hands on learning and tech schools also not all jobs need a 4+ year degrees.
And the older degree system is not really build for lot's of jobs maybe high level CS but not other parts of IT that need the tech school parts and real work place setting.
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After all, if all else were equal, you'd need twice as many people to support twice as many people.
All else isn't equal. Productivity increases in the last few decades completely put the lie to this, with productivity increasing the most during labor gluts (after all, if the boss comes to you and tells you to do twice the work or they'll find someone else in all those twice as many people, what are you going to do?)
Re:I can see both sides of this (Score:4, Interesting)
we have no such problem, the percentage of world's poor is shrinking
http://www.economist.com/node/21548963 [economist.com]
technology and economic growth, bitch
vocational secondary schools and training programs (Score:2)
that have virtually no chance of moving on to a four-year university and They also suffer from a stigma. Is a big issue and we have that in us right now.
WE NEED TO BACK OFF this idea of needing 4 year universitys.
Americans won't go back to that (Score:2)
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It's about status (Score:5, Interesting)
apprenticeships and trades schools get no respect (Score:2)
apprenticeships and trades schools get no respect now days and that was lead us down the route of college for all with lot's worthless degrees and other degrees that trun out people with big skills gaps. Look at tech / IT to much CS degrees (that is not sever / networking / desktop) and lots of tech / trades schools out that get passed over.
More places need the German system two tier system (Score:3, Interesting)
More places need the German system two tier system or at least some like where apprenticeships and trades schools are not kicked to the side.
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+1 ... the apprenticeship system is great.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apprenticeship#Germany
from a low statue of for people from (Score:2)
It's a pity so many of these bright people remain underemployed, with such a low bar to entry in advanced economies.
Over education (Score:2)
This is the classic over education problem. Just because they are a collage graduate doesn't mean they are worth hiring for anything. They may not even be qualified to do ditch digging or accounting. However, they are probably eminently qualified to become politicians.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Faster than I expected... (Score:4, Interesting)
While this phenomenon is to be expected, it happened much faster than I expected. And I consider it a good thing. We need people to move people out of low-level manufacturing.
The problem with manual labor is that sooner or later, automation will cause a majority of the workforce to become unemployed. Irrespective of wage cuts, cramped spaces, etc. A machine can almost always do it better than a human can (and for cheaper given a large enough scale). If there is a fixed algorithm/procedure to follow with very little dynamic decision making, you don't need humans to do it.
We should be educating people more and more and give them the skills that won't be automated in 5-10 years. Otherwise, you are just pushing the problem a few years down the line - "iPhone manufacturing is now automated? Fine, I'll join an iTeleport manufacturing plant". Which is why when I hate it when a politician talk about how they are going to "bring back manufacturing from China" - they aren't addressing the problem. Those low-skill manufacturing jobs aren't coming back. Either they will be automated, or you are competing against an extremely cheap labor force and will never win out.
Desperation (Score:4, Insightful)
Any factory that is really "desperate for workers" would improve their pay, benefits, and working conditions until they were no longer desperate for workers. (Note that opportunities for advancement are factored in--if your job has fewer opportunities for advancement than other jobs, you need to improve the other factors enough to compensate.) If the industry is not dead (and this one clearly isn't), they will get enough workers before they make themselves unprofitable.
In the H1B context in America, "desperate for workers" means "desperate with workers who will work for what little we have to offer". Interesting to see that it works the same way in a different industry, different country, and different circumstances as well.
eh I work at a factory (Score:3)
In the USA though so it may be totally different in other places... I recently heard some girl call into a radio show with "I have a college degree, I am not going to work at a factory", which I took offense to, "why not" I shouted out.
factory's can be very interesting places, you dont just take a army of drones, stick them in a building and say make me shit. No, there's mechanics, machinist, IT and communications staff, computer programmers, designers, engineers, sales staff, accounting, HR, wearhousing, logistics and more, often in the same facilities.
Its a rare hornets nest of activity and creativity that takes an idea produced out of thin air into a product you can make and sell thousands of in a day, and it takes a huge skill set over teams of people to make all those cogs line up perfectly.
Quote Judge Smails properly (Score:2)
The economic point here is that, when we let government sodomize markets, mis-allocation of resources occurs.
Cranking out graduates with degrees in Recreational Whining is fine for grievance-group-based politics, but suck-tacular in general. See Instapundit [google.com]
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.... a Milton Friedman quote. Brilliant.
Especially since it is unlikely Milton ever said it. The attribution is third hand, and the quote has also been attributed to other people about other places.
If a backhoe does as much work as twenty men with shovels, it still makes sense to use the shovels if the cost of a laborer is less than 1/20th of the cost of the backhoe, which would often be the case in poor countries. Even more so if the laborers would otherwise be unemployed and on the dole. Using spoons would never make sense. So it is a poor
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