This article would be a lot more amusing if they took the opposite angle: "Times of economic growth obscure the fact that a large percentage of Americans graduate with no practical skills, and still get decent paying jobs."
Curse is a really strong and almost sensationalistic word to use. If making less money because you happen to graduate during a recession in the US is a curse, what's left to those born in the poorest parts of the world.
While there may be a lot not to like about the US, it's still one of the best places to be if you want to make money.
"For a typical worker, that would mean earning $100,000 less over the 18-year period."
The biggest purchase the typical worker will make is a house purchase. Assuming "typical" means median, and assuming (big assumption) that the median worker buys a median house on a married two-income household, the median household is losing around $200,000. The median house price in the United States is $220,000.
The median college graduate family for the class of 2009, when they hit their forties, will be behind their expectations by about a house. Ouch.
No, they won't. If _everyone_ is making less money, housing prices will adjust accordingly. What the article doesn't mention is that the 80s were an excellent time to buy a house.
Just to rephrase (Class of '83 here). You will make less, work harder, and have less opportunities, entirely because of the year you graduated university.
I wonder about the change in marriage dynamics here.
Suppose you have a decade of fellows who, due to bad luck, are on a low-earning streak compared to those in the preceding years. Would this add incentive for the women of the right age, from the current decade, to marry men from the preceding "block"?
Alternatively, suppose all earnings are down, which means that relatively everybody is still about the same, within the current decade "block". Then women won't have much incentive to marry the older men.
But I think the previous case is more likely. Then we will have some kind of a gap in M/F distributions among the age groups. How would the current decade block's males adapt? When the women of the subsequent decade block enter the workforce, the males from the current block will have to compete with the males in the next block as well, but won't have much advantage from greater salary.
So it looks like a slow correction, a loss, to me, i.e. there will simply be an increased number of bachelors in this block.
In a downturn economy, everybody is either looking for a way to cut their operating costs or increase revenue with no additional cost. Startups that improve efficiency are riding this wave.
This article gives the impression that the class of '09 is actually entitled to have wonderful, high-paying jobs. It's a job market, no one is entitled to anything. It sucks, but the faster these gen-Y'ers face the harsh reality, the better. There's nothing to gain in whining and denial.
It sucks, but the faster these baby boomers face the harsh reality (of the mess they've created), the better. There's nothing to gain in whining and denial.
Generationalism is just like every other -ism. Not that you are being explicitly generationalist, you just give that impression.
I was born in 1980. Which generation am I officially a part of? I honestly don't know, and I truly don't care...
I didn't mean to be a generationalist, but after having taught these kids in grad school, I don't have the highest opinion of them, to be frank. And, indeed, the baby-boomers f*cked up big time... and it sucks that everyone has to pay for the mistakes of a few.
That seems to be how it always goes, though. Each "generation" thinks the previous one is incapable, incompetent, or over-privileged. The young attack the old who they feel don't understand. They rebel. Again and again.
I'm just saying that the argument is tired and over-general. "Generations" or semi-birth-year-based orderings (class of '09) have only the slightest commonalities.
