The party's over (in Canada)

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Reality is starting to take hold.

 

The Conference Board in Canada (an economic think tank) says that younger people cannot expect to achieve the wealth levels of their parents.  This is probably true is most countries in the world today.

 

A lot of money was made by people in the recovery after WW II, and that party is now over.  What do these twenty-somethings expect when automation has done away with so many entry level jobs?  Even the most elementary positions like a receptionist to answer phones has been replaced by a computerized answering system.

 

A university degree isn't much use unless you are going into a profession that's hiring.  Many would be better off in a trade.  Plumbers make more money than many office workers.

[AcmeSigns 97]

Mike Rowe (he of 'Dirty Jobs' fame) has been espousing this for years now. The trades were ignored in the 'work smarter, not harder' school of thought. 'You've got to have a degree' was pushed over all else. But with the trades workers retiring (most of them are 'baby boomers') there isn't anyone, in the numbers that are needed, to take their place. Perhaps not too soon a plumber will be making $300 an hour. If you can find a plumber.

 

http://profoundlydisconnected.com/

[Sabretooth78 808]

I've been saying for a while now that the generation born since around 2000 is going to be the first in American (and probably Canadian as well?) history to not be at least as well off as the generation that preceded it.  I think it's finally waking people up to the fact that our federal government is choking us to death, but we haven't reached that watershed moment yet.  I'm still trying to think what that's going to be (something on the order of a restriction in interstate travel?), and if it'll happen before said government all but implodes.  We're quite a comfortable lot; we fought a war for independence over far less than we deal with now.

 

This brings to mind a few quotes:

 

"It's called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it." - George Carlin

 

"Every child had a pretty good shot

To get at least as far as their old man got

But something happened on the way to that place

They threw an American flag in our face" - Billy Joel...

 

...32 years ago.  Yeah this is nothing new and as long as we keep blaming the current president or a false dichotomy in our single state politicians' union (aka political party), nothing is going to improve.

[SteveMSim 275]

How are young people supposed to find jobs when most job listings require either previous work experience or a listed skills set that can be obtained only by working but not from a classroom?  Also, many people have the notion that young people are lazy and spoiled, which hinders their job search.  There are workplaces that have practically nobody under the ages of 30-35.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

It has been happening for many years.  The H.R. people in any business have never worked in that business, so they set employment standards by hearsay.  Their requirements on posted job are often like age between 20 and 30 with a doctorate and 10 years experience.

 

Has anyone ever told them that the canonical age for a doctorate is somewhere between 28 and 32?  How do you get ten year experience while spending 25 years in school?

 

What good is a university degree if there are no jobs in your field of study?  That and a buck or so might get you a cup of coffee.

 

All this emphasis on must go to college is killing the trades.  There was a time when the schools streamed people into three areas: further academics, business, and trades.  Whatever happened to that?

[AcmeSigns 97]

'Get a degree, get a better job'. That has long been the canon. Way back in the early 1970's I was working for the Postal Service. One day a bunch of us were sitting around at break time discussing what we did when we didn't work there. One of us had a Master's Degree in Structural Engineering. Know what his degree, and probably the attendant student debt, got him? The same pay as the rest of us. That was 40+ years ago. I'm sure things have gotten better since then (<sarcasm).

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

My son discovered that his degree in honours Philosophy was only good for entrance into grad programs.  He spent another three years at a trade college to get a certificate in science laboratory technology (management).  Far as I know, that's what he's working at.  He also learned how to think but otherwise this baccalaureate was a bit of a waste.

 

I never got a complete degree, but lots of credits in various things.  Over the years I got what amounted to a doctorate, however, from good old HKU (Hard Knocks University) and wound up teaching computer science in a college with a title of Professor.  I don't think that is possible any more because the academics have closed that door very efficiently by insisting on a post-grad degree to teach anything other than basket weaving any more.  I am all for letting them rot in their own juice.

 

I strongly recommend young people consider a trade.  Apprenticeships are not that hard to get, are often subsidized on the employer side, and apprentices get paid while learning on the job.  No student debt.  Sometime, ask a trade master what he did to get his mastery and what he thinks of adding people to the trade.

 

The last time I looked, about 10 years ago, you had to have a Master Electrician certificate to open your own Electrical Contracting business in Ontario.  Master Auto-mechanics usually drag in about $90/hr.  If they put in a 40 hour week that's $180K per annum (2000 working hours in a year with 2 weeks off).  At my best job, I never made more than about half of that.

[MandelSoft 2,769]

I, as a 22 year old student, don't think that we will live better lives than our parents when we reach the age that they are now. There are a few things that I think cause this:

• Environmental issues and shortage of resources. We cannot live on endless consumption anymore. We have to adapt or else we collapse. This may mean a more sober lifestyle.
• Mass-automation of "intelligent" work. As explained in this quite thoughtful video (thanks, C.G.P. Grey!), it seems to be quite inevitable that at some point quite some jobs will be replaced by computers and robots. The problem is that we don't have an idea how to deal with all those people losing their jobs due to this automation. This could trigger a crisis of a magnitude we have never seen before.

However, right now, I don't have any problem in the near future when it comes to jobs. I'm fortunately doing a bèta-study direction of which there is still a lot of demand for employees. And fortunately, studying at a university in the Netherlands is not as expensive as studying in e.g. the United Kingdom or the USA ($2500 instead of $12500 a year). At this rate, I think I'll be done with my study next summer with a Master's degree in Civil Engineering. If everything goes right, I'll get a challenging job I can still be passionate about...

 

Best,

Maarten

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

^ You are probably quite correct.  22 means you have to start an investment program now (you are almost too late) to have any kind of decent retirement.  Believe me, I am 77, I didn't, and I am living on my government pension below the poverty line.

[hym 358]

I'm just going to mention some general comments since using the reply function would get unwieldy:

 

• The automation of white collar employees is a vastly overblown thing.  For example, every major company I have worked for employed at least 1 receptionist for answering calls and directing visitors.  Most employed more than one.
• There has been research that suggested that, unless one expects to graduate in 4 years and immediately transition into a job paying at least $50,000 a year and no student loan debt, a trade job may be a better choice from a retirement perspective.  The college graduate could be over $1 million behind the trade worker in retirement assets by 65.
• One of the fun things that no one tells job applicants is that the list of requirements for the job is a theoretical list.  Theoretically, you will need those skills to excel at the job, but realistically, the manager in charge of that position was likely asked by HR for a skill set for the job posting, so the manager put together whatever he/she could think of that might be needed.
• At the same time, employers reasonably expect that college students have some rudimentary experience in their chosen field by the time they graduate.  Students who have no experience could simply not have been able to find an opportunity to get that experience, or they may still be unsure of their interest in the field for which they are applying, and that second possibly makes employers wary, often enough that they will turn down the candidate in favor of someone who is less of a flight risk.  Lack of previous relevant experience also raises questions as to whether the candidate is truly serious about his/her career choice, or really understands what he/she is getting into.
• A lot of companies have no recent college graduates or very few recent college graduates simply because they do not participate in university recruiting, and it is understandable why they do not.  University recruiting can be very expensive for very little reward.  It's not uncommon to collect 300+ resumes for a single position, and find less than a dozen people even worth considering past the first read of the resume.
• It is also worth noting that a lot of prospective candidates ruin their chances very early, either through things they do that they shouldn't, or things that they don't do, but should.  As many as 50-80 percent of candidates have serious spelling, grammar, structural, or information errors on their resume.  Some very clearly do not understand what their resume suggests they do.  Others clearly put no serious effort at all into their resume.  Some individuals are so arrogant that they kill their chances before they are done with the first sentence.  Others do not recognize that applying to positions is a full-time position in itself, and do not invest enough time in trying to find a broad range of opportunities.  Others do not recognize that they are applying to highly prized positions with incredibly low odds for even strong candidates, and make no effort to find more easily attained experience.  On the whole, many people are simply horrible job searchers.
• Switching gears, while trades people can get paid well, they don't make $90/hr on average (to pick an earlier number).  Many trade workers do not work a consistent 40 hour work week, so pay can fluctuate up and down.  Additionally, the billing rate is not the pay rate.  Field engineers in petrochem settings bill at $150/hr, but they are lucky if they make half that.  Field technicians bill at approximately $120/hr, and they make around a third of that.  (Both respectable salaries, but not anywhere close to their billing rates.)
• As for the retirement issue, mid-20s is still considered a good age to begin seriously saving for retirement.  Obviously, early 20s is better, but a lot of individuals can't do that, and it often doesn't make that big of a difference in the long run.  It's when people wait till their 30s that they really start getting in trouble, especially after 35.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

An astute summary.  The resume is the most abused instrument when it should be a snappy sales document.  The product is the author, and if you don't do a good, succinct selling job, the document dies aborning.  There is lots of literature on resumes, but it is probably mostly unread.

 

Funny thing is, I've never gotten a job using a resume.  All of my employment pretty much came from personal contacts, and/or just showing up in response to an ad.  I am very much afraid that times have changed and people must now contend with some rather ignorant HR people now.

[Sabretooth78 808]

This is why it's good to be a civil engineer.  I don't make the money the more "glamorous" engineering professions make (if there is such a thing), but fortunately the US (and the world in general) has deferred maintenance and otherwise ignored the amortized life-cycle costs of infrastructure (whoa...you mean we're going to have to build this again some day?) to such a point that everything is falling apart and people will be called upon to fix it.  It's either that or let it rot and descend into the 3rd world.

 

Now I just need to find some tropical island with decaying infrastructure and a demand for a P.E.

[MandelSoft 2,769]

I don't know what happens to retirement in the future. I mean, a lot can change in 50 years. Seeing how much the world has changed since 1964 (there was a documentary about this on dutch television about the common life in the Netherlands in 1963 and 2013) and witnessing the world change over the past 20 years (when I was born, we didn't own a computer; now computers are everywhere, even in watches!), I'm quite sure we will live in a vastly different world in half a century...

 

I'm from the generation after the baby boom, which means that the elderly support systems (including pensions) will be stressed out (it's already starting) and relaxed again before I get into retirement. When I reach the age of 67 (which is the dutch retirement age at the moment, but as an engineer, it's possible to postpone retirement to your 70s if you are still capable), the great peak of elderly will probably over. All of this is caused by a demographic transition.

 

But often, the mentality of people of my age is live from year to year and maybe just look a few years ahead. We have such a long life ahead of us that we don't even think about that what will happen when the time comes. Maybe because predicting the future becomes really fuzzy in the long term, so our predictions are doomed to fail...

 

So, who knows what the future brings. Only time will tell...

 

Best,

Maarten

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

The future is tomorrow and tomorrow never comes, it's always a day away.  The system is undoubtedly broken, but I don't see any real proposals for either fixing it or changing it to something else.

[hamsterTK 93]

The Canadian manufacturing economy is not competitive and becoming less so.Those high paying trades jobs as an alternative to college might not be a panacea unless they are related to resource extraction or agriculture. And global commodity prices are at all time low right now. This can be repeated for the other Commonwealth countries too. I figured if anything Toronto had more and more stuff related to finance and there was a plan to get more high value jobs in stuff like tech off the ground?

 

The US is a different story. I have slightly more hope for the future right now than I did a couple years ago. Well, at least economically. Politics put me in a grumpy mood as usual.

 

But anyways what is a trade job? Do I have to wear overalls and fix things in the mud? What about IT or CAD? Healthcare?

[AcmeSigns 97]

But anyways what is a trade job? Do I have to wear overalls and fix things in the mud? What about IT or CAD? Healthcare?

 

I've always understood a trade to be anything where you worked with your hands (and, no, typing on a keyboard for 8 hours a day doesn't qualify). I've been a sign painter for going on 45+ years now. I had enough experience to be a journeyman after 11. And fixing things in the mud isn't the worst thing you could do...at least you'd be outside.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tradesman

http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2011/10/04/six-skilled-labor-jobs/

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

A trade is an organized profession lead by a master or group of masters who work at a specific thing such as masonry, carpentry, seaman, etc.  Generally these are the the people that produce things. 

 

Rank or station in a trade is usually regulated by state governments who administer examinations for both journeymen and masters.  Sometimes apprenticeships may also be granted by examination but require a sponsor in the trade.