Jobs

Last week the Harvard Institute of Politics (PDF) announced that only 1/3 of young voters are following the OWS movement and that less (21 percent) align themselves with the beliefs and attitudes of the protesters and 44 percent aren't sure.

"One-third (33%) not supportive and 46% either unsure or refused to answer."

What seems to have gotten a little lost in the idea that 2/3 of young people aren't paying attention to the OWS movement - is the way the question was worded is "How closely have you been following Occupy Wall Street" and 2/3 of 18-29 year olds said "not closely" where as 1/3 said "not at all." Which means that the reality is that 2/3 are actually following it - just 1/3 of them aren't following it that closely.

This is interesting given the latest Pew survey that shows two-thirds of Americans believe there are "very strong" or "strong" conflicts between the wealthy and the poor. That number is up 19 percent from 2010.

According to Slate

"While the Occupy movement dominated headlines in recent months, a wealth of reporting and data on the issue of economic inequality also brought the topic front and center for many Americans. The AP explains: "In recent weeks, a slew of recent census data have illustrated a widening divide, including the share of overall U.S. wealth held by the top 10 percent of the population that increased from 49 percent in 2005 to 56 percent in 2009."

So it looks like we're not alone after all.

Via the White House

Today, the White House announced Summer Jobs+, a new call to action for businesses, non-profits, and government to work together to provide pathways to employment for low-income and disconnected youth in the summer of 2012. The President proposed $1.5 billion for high-impact summer jobs and year-round employment for low-income youth ages 16-24 in the American Jobs Act as part of the Pathways Back to Work fund. When Congress failed to act, the Federal government and private sector came together to commit to creating nearly 180,000 employment opportunities for low-income youth in the summer of 2012, with a goal of reaching 250,000 employment opportunities by the start of summer, at least 100,000 of which will be placements in paid jobs and internships. Today’s announcement is the latest in a series of executive actions the Obama Administration is taking to strengthen the economy and move the country forward because we can’t wait for Congress to act.

Our generation has been hardest hit by the recession, and its about damn time companies started thinking about the highly educated and eager workforce at their disposal.

This blog is part of the Demos/Young Invincibles blog carnival to bring awareness to the economic impact on young Americans.

DEMOS released an important study today "The State of Young America," that tells us that half of young Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 believe that a fundamental tenet of the American Dream is broken. We're seeing this frustration manifest itself across the country with the Occupy Wall Street protests.

A recent article in Business Week remarks that Occupy Wall Street protests are filled with signs about a crushing student debt load. In a widely repeated USA Today report, the total amount of outstanding student loans will reach $1 trillion this year. It isn’t hard to see why so many in our generation might believe the American Dream is no longer attainable.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics shows a clear correlation between high unemployment and education. Those who don’t graduate from high school have a greater likelihood of being unemployed than those who graduate from college. The assumption is that, if you want to get a job, you must go to college. But to go to college, all but the wealthiest students have to take out loans. To make matters worse there’s a widening gap in the hours worked vs. hours paid.

So what do our lives look like? We’ve got to go to school to get a good job but the cost is so high we have to take out loans to pay for it, and the wages are too low to survive and pay back the loans even though we have to work twice as hard.

President Obama recently announced a kind of "student bailout" that will provide forgiveness for loans, provided students work in some form of public service job following graduation. This solution is an important step in acknowledging that education is necessary in today's world of job seeking, but that the costs are out of whack with affordability.

Unfortunately, this is merely a band-aid on the gash that is our economic problems. Our problems persist while our government continues to give tax cuts to the wealthy. Something is broken with the priorities of our policy makers and our business community. How can we succeed as a country when the wealthiest Americans control a policy agenda hellbent on benefiting their bottom lines and not ours?

This is what the death of the American Dream looks like, and those of us who are occupying cities across the country are the idealists who refuse to let it die. As we look forward we must consider that we're a different country than we were 50 years ago, and the solutions that worked then won't necessarily work now. A student bailout is a great quick fix, but we must look for long term solutions to fix the system that is now working against those who just want a shot at making a decent life.

This Sunday's Meet the Press was themed "The Politics of the Economy: What's Holding America Back?" which featured a discussion between an uncharacteristically wide variety of thinkers across the political spectrum. It is, in part, a discussion we desperately need as we're thrown into this political turmoil between the Tea Party Republicans and the rest of the country. We are struggling at this crossroads to decide what kind of country we want to be.

In the past, I've had many disagreements with Thomas Friedman about the role he believes my generation should play as we begin to take over the country. But today, much like that fabled broken clock, I found myself in much agreement as Friedman spoke about the differences between the Greatest Generation and the Baby Boom Generation. He argues this problem began not in 2008, instead it began after the Cold War ended in 1980:

"We had a generational shift. We went from the Greatest Generation which the philosophy basically was "save and invest" and we are still living off of their saving and investing. To the Baby Boom Generation whose philosophy turned out to be "borrow and spend." And we've really shifted from a generation born in The Depression, World War 2, and the Cold War, these were serious people. They wouldn't think of shutting down the government for a minute, ok. To a generation basically that is much less serious. We've gone from basically the values of the Greatest Generation, which my friend philosopher Doug Simon calls "sustainable values." Values that sustain. To a Baby Boom Generation whose values are situational values. Do whatever the situation allows. You put them all together and I think you really account for a lot of the hole we're in right now structurally."

Friedman goes on to say, that instead of being the drivers of innovation and a world leader that, we spent the 2000's "chasing the losers of globalization instead of the winners," referring to our wars across the Middle East.

Friedman discusses the "Five Pillars" which enabled us to grow and thrive as a country and as a government for 200 years.

"We didn't get here by accident. As a great country. We actually won at every historical turn. How did we win in every historical turn? Because we had a formula for success. That you can actually date back to Hamilton but you certainly see it in Lincoln. It was five pillars: basically educate our people up to and beyond whatever the level of technology is. Whether it's the cotton gin or the supercomputer. Immigration: attract the world's most talented and energetic people. Third, infrastructure. Have the world's best infrastructure. Fourth, have the right rules for enchanting capital formation and risk taking and preventing recklessness. And last, government-funded research. Put those together, stir, bake for 200 years and you get the United States of America.

If you take all five of those, David, and you look at the last decade, which we call 'the terrible 2's,' possibly the worst if not the worst decades in American History. Education (makes a downward gesture). Infrastructure (makes a downward gesture). Immigration (makes a downward gesture). Rules for Capital Investment, how'd you like that sub-prime crisis? (makes a downward gesture) Research and Development (makes a downward gesture). So all five of our pillars of success have been weakened. That's the underlying theme here. And that's what we've got to be looking; that's what the President has got to be out there defending."

Earlier in the program, Friedman said that he believes there are two types of countries: HIEs and LIEs. In Friedman vernacular, that means high imagination enabling countries and low imagination enabling countries and details the ease of building a product and bringing it to market.

"Forget developing and developed. . . . what isn't a commodity is this (Friedman says snapping his fingers meaning ideas). If you look at the countries that are thriving today, look at Israel - start-up nation. We're not going to bail our way out of this crisis. We're not going to stimulate our way out of this crisis. We're ultimately going to educate, imagine, and invent our way out of this crisis."

Unfortunately, it appears that the Friedman is putting the cart before the horse. While the solution is no doubt going to be innovation, with the weakening of those five pillars consistently by conservative politics, where will these educated, imaginative and inventive people going to come from?

In a totally separate portion of the program, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin and her son, Lt. Joseph K. Goodwin, talked about being part of the generation that began after the Cold War and the impact 9/11 had on what is now termed the Millennial Generation. He believes 9/11 presented a unique opportunity that was missed by leaders. After Pearl Harbor, our country was thrown into a great war in which the entire country was invested. Women immediately took over the work force as every man in the country became a soldier. Children collected rubber bands to be melted down; women drew "seams" on the back of their legs so that silk production could be redirected to parachutes instead of hose; food, gas and even clothing was rationed. In short, everyone sacrificed and contributed towards the war effort.

After 9/11, America was never asked to sacrifice or contribute anything. Lt. Goodwin says this is the reason that he feels we're have so much debt and financial troubles now, because we charged the wars on our credit card. As Friedman would say we allowed the situational values of our leaders enact a policy that cost us so much that our entire country stands on the brink of both an economic and even identity crash. Lt. Goodwin believes if we as a country had been asked to sacrifice as much as they were in WWII that maybe we wouldn't be here.

If Lt. Goodwin believes that 9/11 won't be what defines a generation, perhaps the Millennials can decide to define themselves as the "Ideas Generation" that Friedman says is so needed to build us back into a stable economy and a world leader. In a recent piece by Mike Hais and Morley Winograd, authors of Millennial Makeover and the new book Millennial Momentum, the two authors argue that indeed this generation -- which will comprise more than 1 in 3 adults by the end of the decade -- can be the drivers of this economy if given the tools and authority to do so. Instead of the "taking to the street" philosophy that Friedman has advocated in the past, perhaps he can get on board with more of an innovative bandwagon.

Crossposted from CrooksAndLiars.com

On the heels of my post yesterday asking if younger Millennials were "lost" amid economic turmoil, here's one proposed solution: embrace Millennial entrepreneurship.

"You have 77 million Gen Y-ers out there," said 27-year-old Scott Gerber, the founder of The Young Entrepreneur Council. "The reality is if you don't want a lost generation, you need to start thinking about the future."

[...]

Gerber and others like him think the traditional route to employment has failed their generation. "It's a scary moment we're in, but entrepreneurship can get us out," he said.

Forty percent of those in Generation Y, roughly defined as Americans born from the mid-1970s to mid-1990s, envision starting their own business, and about 20 percent already have, according to a report published last month by The Affluence Collaborative, a research partnership.

"This is a generation of serial entrepreneurs," said Donna Fenn, a journalist who wrote "Upstarts!," one of the first books identifying the Gen Y entrepreneur trend. "A lot of them start businesses in their 20s and many of them don't think that their first business will be their last. They're addicted to creating things, to the startup phase. By the time they reach their 40s, they will have started three, four or five companies."

Many Millennial entrepreneurs and activists (including Gerber's Young Entrepreneur Council) are pushing for the development of a bill--the Youth Entrepreneurship Act--that would eliminate some barriers to young entrepreneurs starting new businesses.

One element would be a program to forgive student loans and debt for young entrepreneurs, which he says would address a major hindrance to recent graduates who want to set up their own shop.

"Now more than ever, with young unemployment being so high, we have to be educating people that youth entrepreneurship is a viable career path and not some renegade choice," Gerber said.

Aaron Smith, co-founder of another young advocacy organization Young Invincibles, is also working with Gerber on the Youth Entrepreneurship Act. He acknowledges that now is a tough time to get anything passed in Congress, but contends that a bill helping young entrepreneurs would give the government a good return on investment.

"Increasingly, Congress is looking at ways to create jobs at a relatively low cost," the 29-year-old said. "One of the interesting things about young people is that their barrier to starting a business is small, in terms of the monetary amount. We're talking only a few thousand dollars."

Unfortunately, Smith is right. This Congress isn't likely to be hospitable to this legislation, even though its passage could relieve some economic strife among many young people in the short-term, while spurring the kind of economic development we need to revitalize the economy down the road.

However, while Gerber, Smith, and their organizations rally support for the bill, Matt Segal and Our Time, another organization supporting entrepreneurs under 30, are working with consumers on the other end of things.

...[Our Time] recently launched a "Buy Young" campaign. The idea is to encourage Americans to support more than 125 member businesses, including discount luxury retailer Gilt Groupe, clothing company Karmaloop and dry-erase paint company IdeaPaint, by offering exclusive discounts on their products and services.

The companies are responsible for creating more than 7,000 jobs since they were founded, Segal said. Since the campaign launched, the website has received more than 30,000 visitors.

If we are going to find our way out of this mess, we need to foster an environment supportive of the innovation needed to move us forward. Kudos to Gerber, Smith, and Segal and everyone else involved in doing this work.

NPR is up with a piece this week suggesting that today's youth, many of whom have never known anything other than an over-saturated jobs market, are "lost."

As we discuss teen unemployment numbers--at last glance, 25 percent of teenagers were jobless--it might be easy to blow it off and assume that parents will take on the added burden. One expert explains why that's a narrow and faulty assumption.

"It's tempting to look at the teen unemployment rate and sort of shrug and assume that ... the only consequence is that maybe the parents are giving [teenagers] money to go out to the movies this summer instead of the kids earning the money themselves," Saltsman says.

But working a summer job as a teen is not just about earning extra spending money. Saltsman says it's also about learning skills so you can become a good worker later in your adult life.

"The risk is that if [teenagers] miss out on [the summer job experience], they become part of this lost generation of teens who never had a chance to get a foothold to take that first step on that career ladder," Saltsman says.

While the lost paychecks are compiling every day, another, often unlooked component of this crisis is the lost opportunity for young people to create and develop a pool of skills for future employment.

As this reality sets in, teens are becoming desperate. There haven't been any riots yet, but young people are going to alarming ends to pay for college and to pay back student loans. One high school student from the District of Columbia describes what he's noticed among his peers:

Jacquan Clark, 16, would have liked a job this summer, but he says the competition among his teenage peers is brutal.

"It's like crabs in a barrel," the Washington, D.C., resident says. "We're trying to all get jobs, but we're also pulling each other back because we want the jobs."

The more I read stories like this, the more I find the notion of cutting services to be ridiculous. What will our government's inaction on behalf of today's young people cost us tomorrow? It's frightening to think about.

Jon Huntsman, in campaigning for the Republican nomination for the presidency, is encountering a rough reality five months removed from the New Hampshire primary: voters don't know who he is. And if general voters don't know who he is, I'm guessing young voters aren't well aware of the former governor-turned presidential candidate either.

While Huntsman has some work to do with the general electorate, And maybe some his daughters are attempting to do their part in reaching out to young voters through Twitter.

On July 28, Huntsman's three oldest daughters started their own Twitter account. At the outset, the Twitter account was created based on the daughters' desire to share where they are and what they are doing with friends. But then they thought about other uses.

Abby Huntsman, 25, said she and her sisters came up with the idea on their own as a way to keep friends informed.

'All our friends are like, "Where are you? You’re always in different places and doing interesting things!"

'And we thought, "This is a great way to reach out to, not only our friends, but to the youth and to anybody interested in following the campaign",' she said.

[...]

Abby Huntsman said she’s not sure what role the @Jon2012girls account will play in the upcoming election, but she believes she and her sisters have a basic duty to their dad.

'I think our involvement is pretty simple. It’s just getting out there, getting people excited and getting them to know a little bit about my dad,' she said.

I'm not one to knock efforts to appeal to young voters or engage in social media, so kudos to the Huntsmans.

However, I think we need to remember that technology in 2008 campaigns and technology in 2012 campaigns are entirely different phenomena. So while simply "getting a Twitter or Facebook" might have been able to pass as some kind of appeal to youth in 2008 (even that is highly doubtful), doing that alone definitely won't work in 2012.

If the Huntsman daughters legitimately want to appeal to young voters, maybe they need to tell their dad to campaign and advocate for true pro-growth policies, strategies that create jobs and increase government revenues. That's what we want and need. That he definitely wouldn't get out of the GOP primary after spreading this message shows you just how far the Republican Party is from young voters' priorities.

Over the last few years, publications like Mother Jones and the New York Times magazine both have exposed us to the sugar daddy/baby phenomenon. Wealthy older men -- some married, some not -- plop their money down to entice young women to spend time with them, often with expectations of sexual activity.

However, as our economy has spiraled even further out of control, this activity is picking up steam. This past week we learned from the Huffington Post that the phenomenon has overlapped with the student debt crisis. The story describes several relationships borne out of economic strife and the desperation that accompanies the racking up of large amounts of debt to finance one's education. It also reveals that the increasing popularity of matchmaking sites like seekingarrangement.com have aided the sugar daddy/baby boom.

The Huffington Post piece spurred Bill Maher and his panel to discuss the issue last night.

The first thing that strikes me about this conversation is that it happened. We are so often saturated with positive portrayals of capitalism and what that economic system does for us (that whole American Dream thing) that when we hear personal accounts of the desperation it's wrought, our society -- particularly the establishment -- acts like it's some curious, extraordinary event. Now that the street economy is impacting elite college students, it's suddenly real and they are taken aback.

The second thing I am thinking about is the whole notion that American youth -- and Bourdain specifically mentions this at 5:15 -- just don't want to do jobs that they perceive as being below them. This narrative has been around a while, and it might be true of a certain demographic. But we're forgetting that most youth are in such a poor economic position right now that they simply can't live or survive on these jobs because they don't pay enough. And when there is a small number of other, barely better-paying jobs with benefits that are available, youth will hold out for those, even if they appear as a mirage on the horizon. And especially if they have the student debt that is simply no match for the low wage, no-health care jobs.

So, actually, the question Bourdain poses is unfair. "Why won't young people take jobs that are below them," should be rephrased: "Why won't young people take jobs that don't pay them enough?"

The question answers itself.

The sugar daddy/sugar baby phenomenon goes back to the need for (and absence of) well-paying jobs for young people. Imagine that.

Erica Williams is a social and political commentator and serves as the Senior Strategist at the Citizen Engagement Lab, a non-profit, non-partisan organization that uses digital media and technology to amplify the voices of underrepresented constituencies. This piece was crossposted with permission from Erica and was originally published at the Huffington Post.

Watching the debt insanity these past few weeks, I've had one question ringing over and over again in my head: What do we do? Not what kind of short-term lobbying and marches and calls will save our economy. The question for me has been about the longer term: What do you do when your government can't govern?

As a Gen Y-er, a product of hip hop culture and a young person in this economy, I've been conditioned to determine my own destiny, and, for all intents and purposes, hustle. So the answer is simple: When your government can't govern, you govern yourselves.

I'm no longer electing representatives to create a vision and run the country on my behalf, since it appears that on average, they can't. No, instead I'm dreaming my own vision and electing people to work for me, doing what I tell them to do. That shift in outlook and on our role as master not servant in the political process, is a change both in the theory and in practice of our engagement. Fundamentally, it shifts how we view the election and what we do after.

It makes me confident that if I have a vision for a country -- maybe one in which education is affordable, people earn a living wage, health care is free, people pays their fair share of taxes, the economy works for everyone, etc. -- I have effectively written a job description that I now have the power, with my friends, family, community, and generation to hire for. And it is then our responsibility to be the boss and ensure that the job gets done.

That is the admirable confidence of the tea party. They shouted loudly and proudly "We want our country back!" And as frightening and divisive as their rhetoric has been, their belief that they have a stake in the future of this country and therefore a right to help determine its direction is dead on. 

Unfortunately their swag is unmatched on our side. Most progressive leaders don't effectively represent the constituents that will soon make up the majority of this country: young and/or of color. And conservatives know that when we do rise up and take our place as leaders, our sheer numbers, if put behind a bold progressive vision, can cause a true revolution.

That's why over the past year as Democratic pundits, operatives, intellectuals and organizations ran around fretting about Obama's approval ratings and whether or not they had been invited to the White House, Republicans were plotting out a 2012 strategy that has nothing to do with the issues. Instead of trying to win the young, black, and brown votes they focused on making it harder for us to vote at all. A "war on voting" is well underway, with Voter ID laws that cost the taxpayers millions of dollars, disenfranchise huge numbers of people of color, the young and the elderly, popping up in states across the country. Republicans unleashed a targeted and deliberate strategy to chip away at a person's ability to vote, bit by bit. Why?

Because they understand that a vote is more than a show of support for someone or something. They get that a vote is more than a moment to claim your identity, raise your voice, make yourself heard, or any of the other corny, clichéd slogans that we hear around election time. They understand that a vote can be an indication that we're hiring who we need... to do the job that we want... for the country that we deserve.

Knowing that what's at stake in this election isn't the possibility of another year with a black president but instead the opportunity to make government work for the rest of us, should be enough to get us to push past all of the hurdles, help folks get their IDs, mobilize, turn out and do what we should have been doing all along: governing our nation. 



The past two years, especially the debt ceiling debate, should have taught us a valuable lesson: Doing the work to hire someone -- knocking on doors, going to concerts, wearing t-shirts, making viral videos, and checking a box -- is a complete waste of time if you don't stick around long enough to train them, give them their marching orders, and monitor them.

So for me, Election 2012 -- and every single day afterwards -- is about taking back my power to move my country and my community in the right direction. "Hope" comes from my faith, not my politics, and I'm exhausted with the idea of "change." No more slogans, no more buzzwords. I'm tired of looking for "leaders" -- new crowned princes and princesses who are able to bundle Democratic dollars, make rich people love them, talk about young people and black folks and poor folks, and then do the same old same old. We ARE the leaders. And it's pretty simple: our vote is a powerful statement that from now on, we run this, in spite of every effort that's been made to prevent us from doing so. So let's gear up to do just that.

Follow Erica Williams on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ericawilliamsdc

Crossposted with permission by Cryn Johannsen from All Education Matters

Investors are jittery about D.C.'s inability to raise the debt ceiling, so they are seeking alternatives to U.S. bonds. AEM has been discussing the ramifications of not raising the debt ceiling and interest rates on student loans over the past week, and interviewed several experts who painted a grim picture of what will happen to indentured educated citizens if the U.S. loses its AAA rating.

As already stated, there is a likelihood that the U.S.'s credit rating will be downgraded to AA status. That means that variable rates on student loans could increase, and borrowers seeking loans will have a harder time obtaining them. Just to be clear, I do not believe people should have to take out loans to finance their education - as I have stated countless times. In fact, I am so "radical" that I believe higher education ought to be free. But neoliberalism has triumphed, and turned higher education into a market, and one that has been highly lucrative for people like Albert Lord and [insert for-profit President's name here]. But I digress.

The Nation has written a great piece about the situation. It's called, "Shut Up. Raise The Ceiling."

Call your representatives in D.C. and politely tell the ones who are refusing to act on this simple, procedural mater immediately. Send them tweets asking them to raise the debt ceiling. Tell them you don't care if they signed a promise to not raise taxes. Tell them you are tired of them working against the interests of the American people. Tell them that, if they have been opposed to raising the debt ceiling, they are economic terrorists and victimizing millions of people in the U.S.

Some quick facts on the debt ceiling. Right-wing "wonks" are conflating it with raising taxes. Anyone who understands the difference knows that's crap. The debt ceiling was raised under Bush seven times. It was raised under Reagan eighteen times.

As a struggling, underemployed freelance writer and activist, the needless focus on the debt ceiling infuriates me. I blame both parties, too. Moreover, most of these clowns make no mention joblessness anymore. This shows the level of dysfunction and corruption in D.C. While I am looking forward to reconnecting with my contacts on the Hill, and meeting new folks there, I am discouraged by our leaders' inability to actively solve problems.