This month LinkedIn launched a new app that’s being called “Tinder for graduates” to match students with employers. While this may sound funny, it reflects the pretty depressing state of affairs for new graduates looking for employment. According to an article in The Atlantic, 53% recent graduates are either jobless or employed in a position that does not require a Bachelor’s Degree. Unemployment and underemployment are both causing new graduates a lot of stress, and with rising tuition rates, students need to start work pretty quickly in order to pay off tens of thousands of dollars in student debt.
This is what I’m looking forward to starting this week. After five years, I am finally done my undergraduate degree, but looking for employment has proven to be more stressful than even the exams and finals I completed just last week. Will my cat and I be homeless soon? Stay tuned!
I’ve worked really hard to earn my degree in political science, but the jobs that are available out there aren’t in my field of expertise. I’ve applied to retail stores, restaurants, and warehouses, none of which require any post-secondary education. They do, however, require “two years of dishwashing experience” in order to even be considered for an interview, which I don’t have (unless washing my own dishes counts). Many require that you have your own car in order to get the job, but I can’t afford a car without a job. Some have even required a photograph of myself, because apparently you must be attractive to work at a restaurant or a gym these days.
According to a study by the AP, recent graduates are more likely to work as “waiters, waitresses, bartenders and food-service helpers than as engineers, physicists, chemists and mathematicians combined.” The other problem with underemployment is that if a person with a degree is working at McDonalds, that often displaces people with high school diplomas and puts them out of work. In fact, only one-fifth of students aged 16-19 are employed at all.
The job hunt itself has become even harder, with many employers moving to online databases to collect and review resumes. The number of times I have walked into an establishment in dress pants and a freshly printed resume only to be briskly told to apply online is maddening. Applying online doesn’t give job hunters the chance to make a personal impression on an employer, instead making the job hunt all about what’s on your resume (which is probably very little, since it’s so damn hard to get a job, any job, in the first place). And according to Forbes, over 80% of open positions aren’t even posted online, meaning that unemployed job hunters are often fighting over only 20% of available jobs.
After the ruthless job hunt leads to a job that’s likely not in our field of expertise, recent graduates are often underpaid or unpaid. According to Pew Research, the number of new grads making less than $25,000 a year has spiked in recent years. And that’s if you’re actually getting paid! Many graduates find themselves applying for entry-level internships that don’t pay anything at all. According to manager Amir Epstein of Epstein Management (a music agency), he offers unpaid internships to people looking to enter the field because, “The last thing I need is to be paying someone who is completely incapable.”
So was getting a degree really worth time and money? A close friend of mine dropped out of university after realizing that it wasn’t really for her. She’s worked as a barista at an independent cafe since then, and is now on track to become a business partner and manager of multiple new locations of the expanding company. She’s worked really hard, and she deserves it! But it makes me question my education and career choices.
And I’m not the only one questioning my decision. According to Pew Research, while 89% of Baby Boomers believe a college education was worth the time and money, only 62% of Millennials feel the same way.
Life is a little like the board game of the same name. In The Game of Life, right at the beginning you decide whether or not you want to go to College or start a Career. If you go to College, you take a big loan out from the Bank, but you hope it’ll pay off later when you’re able to pick a Career card like a Doctor who makes a lot of money. But when you start a Career without going to College, you have no loan to pay back, and sometimes you luck out and pick the Entertainer card, making more money than any other player. Is finding a job simply about the luck of the draw?
And how has this changed the lives of Millennials coming out of post-secondary institutions? According to Forbes, there has been a major shift in how we live our lives. We are much more likely to take public transit than to purchase our own vehicles after we get out of school because we simply can’t afford it. This limits the jobs we can apply to, as many jobs require a commute or require that you have your own vehicle. We’re also more likely to continue to rent homes for years rather than purchasing our own. Millennials have been dubbed “The Cheapest Generation,” but can you blame us?
The blame game isn’t fun to read. Most people who aren’t Millennials seem to blame us for our problems. The comment sections on most articles about the job crisis are particularly nasty — one reads, “4 or 5 years smoking dope, drinking and just having fun. Now it’s time to pay the piper.” But the job crisis for new graduates isn’t linked to our supposed “dope smoking.” With the Great Recession of 2008, Baby Boomers have been holding on to their jobs instead of retiring due to financial instability, which means fewer positions are opening up for newcomers. Technological advances have also made many jobs in manufacturing, tech, journalism, and other fields obsolete. According to Faith Popcorn, author and CEO of BrainReserve, 1 in 3 workers in the U.S. will be replaced by robots or other forms of technology by 2025.
With all of this working against me, what does my education mean? How do I rationalize all the time, effort, and money I put into my post-secondary degree? Why was I told that education was the key to success growing up?
Here, I have to actively repress my Millennial cynicism about my prospects and the future and remember what an education actually means. It means I had the opportunity to grow and learn. It means I had the opportunity to broaden my mind and my horizons. It means I had the opportunity to understand other perspectives and explore a field I love. Simply put, it means I had the opportunity, which is a lot more than many people (especially girls and women) get in other parts of the world. An education is worth so much more than the job you get and the money you earn because you have one. I have to value that, especially as I refill someone’s coffee in a dive restaurant this summer.
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