Census Report Finds Millennials Having Difficulty Becoming Adults
“That is a product of a shrinking blue-collar economy”
You’ll be shocked to learn that Millennials are having a tough time growing up. They’re struggling with the economy and putting off major life decisions. Mind you, this is the same generation which helped put Obama in the White House. Twice.
NBC News reports:
Most Millennials Are Finding It Hard to Transition Into Adulthood: Report
By his twenties, Kyle Kaylor imagined he would be living on his own, nearing a college degree, and on his way to a job that fulfilled him.
Instead, at 21, he found himself out of school, living with his parents, and “stuck” working as a manager at a fast food restaurant scraping to make hand-to-mouth.
Launching into adulthood has been tricky, he said.
“It became too difficult financially to be in school and not working,” says Kaylor, who dropped out of Lincoln Christian University, in Illinois, after one semester because of a money crunch. “And without schooling, you can’t get a job that you can survive on, so I had to move back home,” he said.
It’s a scenario that has become far too common, according to a new census report out Wednesday that reveals staggering statistics on millennials and their journey to independence.
For one, the report shows young men like Kaylor, who makes less than $22,000, have fallen by the wayside when it comes to income.
“In 1975, only 25 percent of men aged 25 to 34 had incomes of less than $30,000 per year. By 2016, that share rose to 41 percent of young men,” according to the report.
“That is a product of a shrinking blue-collar economy,” said Anthony Carnevale, director of the Center on Education and the Workforce, a non-profit institute at Georgetown University.
Read the full census report here.
Here’s a thought. Maybe we need less people enrolled in gender studies programs and more people enrolled at trade schools. It’s a point that’s been made by Mike Rowe and others many times.
Actor John Ratzenberger, who you’ll remember as “Cliff” on the TV series “Cheers” made a similar point on the FOX Business Network this week:
Actor John Ratzenberger: Blue Collar Workers Should be Called ‘Essential Workers’
Actor John Ratzenberger said Wednesday he believes parents should be more supportive of their children going to a vocational school, instead of a liberal arts college.
“They [parents] think if their child goes on to be a brick layer or a welder that somehow they’re not as intelligent as the kid that went on to a four-year liberal arts college,” he told FOX Business’ Stuart Varney.
Ratzenberger said the path for an apprentice plumber, electrician or carpenter, for example, is more difficult than a four-year college, but the reward is greater.
“At the end of the day, you’re going to be making a lot more money too,” he said.
Watch the video:
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Comments
Training people is one of the few things that private unions do that justify their existence.
They aren’t necessary to that function, but they have and some still do provide genuine value to their members in that arena.
I don’t know about the truth of the idea that there’s a shortage of trade schools in the U.S. If that were true, you’d expect it would be hard to get in one, and the market would respond with more of them. I know of many in the Houston area.
Our local technical college is closing it’s printing program due to an ongoing lack of enrollment. This is a program modeled on current industry technology and enthusiastically supported by industry vendors and regional print employers. They turn out easily placed, employable graduates. We have more than a few of them. Some of the enrollment in recent years has been unemployed adults engaged in career changes, which can be a gem of a hire if you can hook one of them, but the flow of kids coming right out of high school has slowed to a trickle. The jobs are there… their interest in actually training for one is not.
Trade school graduates have been treated as low class since the 60s. This is the problem and result of the college indoctrination programs pushed by the commie left.
A reasonably competent tradesman will end up with more total earnings than most college graduates who graduate with a bachelors degree in any of the STEM programs.
Workers who come home with dirt under their fingernails are looked down upon by the elites and wanta-be elites.
To OldNuc:
This is so true. Denigrating legal employment of any kind is counterproductive.
thanks to outsourcing… Making India greater than a garbage ridden toxic hell hole at some point!
Plumbers, electricians, carpenters, welders, etc. all have to deliver results–quality results–every day. They cannot hide incompetence or sloppy workmanship. Yet many of the college educated elites who look down on these skilled essential workers deliver only BS, stupidity, and social and economic damage.
Great message, Aleister.
Yet many of the college educated elites who look down on these skilled essential workers…
… suddenly change their tune when their roof leaks or their hot water stops flowing.
Just sayin’. 🙂
No, they still look down on them and treat them like a subspecies, one that is distasteful to be around and certainly of a much lower social level, one that has to be tolerated infrequently and gotten out of the house as quickly as possible.
The self-appointed elites would be shocked if they found out how these “undesirables” feel about them!
I got my first job when I turned sixteen. It was for less than minimum wage, and less than full time. It was fine for a high school student. It was great experience.
My oldest son got a job as a lifeguard while still in high school, again for less than minimum wage and less than full time. It was great experience.
Despite a great deal of effort (and starting 13 years later) my two younger sons were unable to find any kind of work until after graduating from high school. All of this has to do with the hiking of the minimum wage.
In the case of the youngest, he went to work for CVS as a grunt. He worked part time only, and he was the ONLY person on the entire crew that was not a college graduate.
In my opinion, it is a sin to have an economy where CVS stocking clerks and cashiers are college graduates. Surely we can do better than this.
Those CVS shelves aren’t going to stock themselves.
Perhaps they can take a note from Clarence Thomas and put a 15 cent price tag on the true value of their college education. I’d argue half the degrees being earned today have exactly that value.
Gone are the days when we laud the Mike Rowe millionaires who never went to college.
No such thing as bad kid, only bad parents.
A generation prior begot this crop of basement dwellers. Yes- the generation who couldn’t live in less than a 3000 sq ft 30 year ARM, and in turn brought us the mortgage crisis, the generation that didn’t believe in spanking their kids and chauffeured these brats to 10 million sporting events in their tweens and teens but never forced them to get an after school or summer job and to fill out a 1040 EZ or to save a nickel for a rainy day. A generation didn’t force these kids to buy their own car and car insurance. A generation failed these kids by telling them student loans were a good investment, so good in fact that many co-signed for them. They are the product of something- and stop blaming teachers unions, because they have always been there.
That ship has sailed.
Stop fretting about the wayward millennial malaise and start fretting about what happens as a result of these waifs reproducing and the style of parenting they will embrace.
And, like my student son, they like to drink fancy beers that they can’t afford. Stone IPA? Drink Genesee like I used to.
Millenials will end up being known as the “Lost Generation”. Stuck in childishness and delusion.
I graduated from a Vo-tech in Mass with a sheet metal degree. My Jr and Sr year I spent one week at work in the schools co-op program ($16/hr) and one week taking classes. Getting up and getting ready for work on my own to catch a ride from coworkers at 6 AM was a great learning experience. It got me ready for the real world after graduation. I had a scholarship offer from RPI to play soccer for them but I had plans and they didn’t include college at the time. But I didn’t go out into the real world after high school I went to Parris Island instead. Never went back to doing sheet metal but that skill was always there if I didn’t find a job after I got a degree in electronics.
I have plenty of options on what I can do if certain job markets dry up. These kids, they’re screwed and have limited themselves because they were brainwashed into thinking college is the only way to get a good paying job.
Yes they will be the lost generation, plenty of piercings, tattoos, highly educated, under qualified and afraid of taking charge of a situation because of a fear of saying the wrong thing and being called some sort of ‘ist.
It’s funny how much you can learn standing in some yellow footprints.
Learn a life time of lessons in those 30 seconds. Semper Fi
It’s called put down the video game controller and man the hell up. Learn a skill, get a job, find a woman, put a ring on her finger, and make some damn babies that will grow up with two parents, learn the value of work and pay taxes. Being a man child your whole life hurts all Americans; the next generation most of all.
I keep telling my son to seriously consider not going to college. Get a job before graduating high school, think about taking an apprenticeship under one of the many contractors we know (general, electrical, plumbing — whatever you feel like), learn a skill. Look at trade schools and not just four-year universities.
Heck, look at self-paced study certifications in technology (MCSE, A++, Cisco Security, etc.). ESPECIALLY the security ones; those unsecured and easily-pwnable “Internet of Things” devices aren’t going to patch themselves, and better than half the manufacturers aren’t feeling enough market pressure (yet) to care. Plenty of employers will take the specialized real-world skills these certifications represent over the general knowledge a four-year degree represents.
You can make a great living without college, but you have to learn the skills and be available and willing to work.
Here’s a phrase they and their parents most likely have never heard.
“Let us sit down and count the cost.”
IIRC WalMart truck drivers get around 60K, with benefits.
Most lawyers I know earn that in a good year (or collect that in a good year) with no benefits.
The current CEO of Walmart started out his career during HS by unloading trucks in a Walmart warehouse.
Only making about $22 million a year now at age 50.
Slacker.