[Kristian]

This problem is becoming more aggresive as time passes..which are your plans to escape from this huge mass of youth unemployment?

I think(my personal opinión) is that entrepreneurialship/freelancing is the only way to créate wealth and scape from this mass.



The pattern repeats all over the world as you can see:

[Gmac]

I was smart and networked with all sorts of people in college. I've worked since high school and the skills and experience I gained meant I'd never be not be working. There are plenty of jobs out there, it's a matter of choice, dedication, and determination - something my generation is lacking. I think this entrepreneurial craze is great in the short run because of all the new tech out there but people need to get a better foothold on their careers because those opportunities dry up fast. The problem is that students and young graduates these days think it's okay to not have a job, and their parent's generation don't push them nearly hard enough. To make matters worse, young people will use the statistics as an excuse or a cop out not to work.

[Tex Pro]

Honestly, I think that high unemployment is probably going to the rule in the future rather than the exception. Technology and globalization are both getting rid of or outsourcing a lot of jobs in first-world countries. Right now this still is not a huge problem because young people can always live with their parents or relatives for a few years and work an odd job here and there, but as time goes on this joblessness is going to become a major issue.

Thus, I fully expect in the future for a populist politician to call for a guaranteed income for citizens of the USA. Think of a modern-day Huey Long.

[Architekt]

I'm going to go live in a SEA forrest

[AntiTrace]

From the day I graduated high school I wasn't interested in a just a job, I was focused on building a career.

I did my time doing the shit work, worked my way up, took advantage when opportunities arose. Now I hold a great position that pays well doing work that I absolutely love that gives me enough free time and disposable income to pursue business opportunities and improve my life in other areas.

I believe the disconnect lies in young graduates wanting everything right out of the gate. The entitlement issue. They sit at home and hide behind the unemployment statistics while leeching off mom and pop and brushing aside work opportunities due to the work being beneath them and their degree. They may take a barista job or something in that nature while still looking for something in their degree field, but they do the bare minimum to not get fired.

Then when they do land an entry level job in their career field they are happy with that and go on to become the average American worker, grinding out the 9-5 at the office then going home to drink beer and watch tv, never putting in the extra time required off work to increase their marketability.

A competent person that is willing to start out doing the shit work for shit pay while aggressively expressing a desire to move up within the ranks will 9 times out 10 move up.

[Dr. Howard]

I agree with AntiTrace. Younger people want it all right now and don't want to do shit work first to figure out how to network or gain skills. I remember just 15 years ago when I graduated from my program in college there was an expectation of "you have to do horrible manual labor job "A" for at least 1 season to prove that you have the balls to be in the field before someone will give you a second look at a professional position. Now graduates are flat out refusing to do that kind of work, they think its beneath them and surprise they aren't getting offers and are going home to live in their parents basements or going back to school.

The formula is pretty simple in my opinion and people are just too pussy to use it nowadays its: A) find a difficult/dangerous low wage/entry job, take an interest in it, learn about it, be on time, don't be hungover or on drugs and you are already in the top 90% of people doing that job. B) Persist in that job past the usual turnover time C) promote if you can from there or learn enough to start your own venture in it.

(07-13-2013 07:42 AM)AntiTrace Wrote:  

From the day I graduated high school I wasn't interested in a just a job, I was focused on building a career.

I did my time doing the shit work, worked my way up, took advantage when opportunities arose. Now I hold a great position that pays well doing work that I absolutely love that gives me enough free time and disposable income to pursue business opportunities and improve my life in other areas.

I believe the disconnect lies in young graduates wanting everything right out of the gate. The entitlement issue. They sit at home and hide behind the unemployment statistics while leeching off mom and pop and brushing aside work opportunities due to the work being beneath them and their degree. They may take a barista job or something in that nature while still looking for something in their degree field, but they do the bare minimum to not get fired.

Then when they do land an entry level job in their career field they are happy with that and go on to become the average American worker, grinding out the 9-5 at the office then going home to drink beer and watch tv, never putting in the extra time required off work to increase their marketability.

A competent person that is willing to start out doing the shit work for shit pay while aggressively expressing a desire to move up within the ranks will 9 times out 10 move up.

[The Beast1]

Pick an interest in a STEM field or go into IT.

I majored in a joke comm degree. Graduated and had no future prospects.

Thankfully, i didn't realize i had 4 years of desktop support under my belt that is super valuable.

1 year later, i'm making 60k in a top 10 dma market with a job supporting in house web platforms that run a company. The girlfriend is making nearly the same amount in software design (business admin major).

I have friends who are just getting by with half of my income and no benefits in huge cities like La and NYC.

I went to school and worked. I am entitled to this income. Christ, i spent so much time finding a job. 300+ resumes and 20 interviews later, boom!

When I go to parties with people my own age (early to mid 20s) everyone is either in grad school, law school, or underemployed.

It makes me uncomfortable when I tell people i'm employed, let alone how much I make. It's unheard of how blessed I am. The fact I am able to afford a car is a big enough sign of affluence.

[Neo]

My opinion is that you have to do what the other guy doesn't.

[The Beast1]

(07-13-2013 08:44 AM)Neo Wrote:  

The work never really ends as a man, while you're cruising there's someone else out there busting his ass.

Agreed, it's very easy to fall into the rut of coasting. I swear it is a never ending game of learn one new thing every day. Manhood is a never ending battle of, "Could I do this better?"

[Que enspastic]

i got a job through contacts. dream career in fact.

without the contacts i would be fucked. i am really, really lucky.

to get a grad job there's so many stages: initial application answering questions + resume > psychometric testing > more advanced psychometric testing > group interview > preliminary one-on-one interview > final interview.

i couldn't get past psychometric testing. i'd finished top 25-30% but with so many applicants they could knock back anyone outside top 10% and still have plenty left to scythe through.

[scorpion]

Most modern jobs are little more than makework bullshit. They don't actually add any real value to the economy, they simply help money change hands. This fact is slowly becoming apparent, and as more of these type of jobs are automated or simply eliminated, unemployment will get worse.

The only answer is for people to possess real, valuable skills. If your only skill is being a cog in a machine, don't be surprised if you are no longer needed when the machine becomes more efficient and requires fewer cogs.

So you have to make yourself valuable. Learn a trade: carpentry, plumbing, welding. Learn a new language. Learn computer programming. Master salesmanship and public speaking. Start a business that adds value: transportation, provide a product or service that people need, etc...

The right mindset is to stop looking for someone to give you a job, and to start acquiring skills that will enable to you become valuable.

[OSL]

-


YMG's Guide to Hacking Student Loan Debt


If you are graduating soon or have graduated recently with a degree in the humanities from a mediocre school and have 25K or under in debt, try this:

1. Get Teaching Job in Asia.

Get CELTA/TEFL/TESOL certified in Thailand/Vietnam/Taiwan/Korea


2. Set Up Debt-Hacking Budgeting System

Get a cheap apartment in whatever city you end up in and budget while teaching English abroad so that you can save 1000 USD a month and pay back your student loan debt ASAP

This is easy in second tier Korean cities. It's harder but definitely possible in Taiwan/Thailand/Vietnam.

3. Acquire Digital Nomad Skill Sets

Your regular work hours will be about 20-30 hours per week so you can either do tutoring and make more cash or you can invest in building location independent digital skillsets such as:

-Coding http://www.codecademy.com
-Wordpress https://www.udemy.com/building-custom-wo...m-scratch/
-Design https://www.udemy.com/courses/Design
-SEO http://moz.com/learn/seo
-Languages http://www.italki.com http://www.duolingo.com

4. Start Small Entrepreneurial Projects

While you teach and pay off your debt - you can simultaneously acquire these skills then actively apply them in small entrepreneurial projects of your own. Many of them will fail but some of them will start bringing in some cash here and there.

You have a timeline of 27 months to pay off your student loan debt so you have a long, low-risk, and low-pressure timeline to experiment with passion projects and see if you can get them off the ground.

During this time you need to make all of your mistakes and learn. You should see what it's like to have a business partner.

Team up on a small project like exporting a few shipments of local teak furniture back home or to Mexico.

Try creating a mobile app of some sort and work with a Bengali virtual assistant who doesn't get anything you say and the project crashes and burns but you learn important lessons about delegation and managing expectations.

Do not expect to accomplish too much in the first 6-12 months of hacking it at entrepreneurship besides learning a ton about what it is like to create wealth and value out of thing air.

At some point everything will click and you will start to bring in more and more cash. And you'll wonder why you weren't making this sort of money before - it's so obvious and easy - that's what's called unconscious competence.

Persistance trumps intelligence. If you work hard and are attacking a legitimate need in the marketplace you will start making money.

One thing you can always do, of course, is hustle fiverr gigs to businesses in your local area. If you make yourself well-liked in your neighborhood in a second tier Asian city, you can get quite a bit of business doing certain sorts of hustles and fiverr gigs. Not everything has to be the next twitter/linkedin or instagram. Just try to create cash, wealth, and sales out of thin air. You'll start to see business opportunities everywhere.

5. Try Internships

You can also try an internship with a local multinational - but picking up these digital nomad skills are probably better for you in the long run - all depends on what you want to do.

Internships in emerging market countries generally are the first step to being hired full time. Positions are rarely posted for people with a recent-grad type profile - you need to get your foot in the door with connections and then carve out a niche for yourself inside of the company.

6. Conclusion

If you save 1K USD a month to pay off debt and you have the national average of 27,000 USD of debt then it will take you 27 months to pay it off. That is just about two and a half years.

Thus, if you began this plan right when you graduated at 21/22 years old....

...then when you finished it you would be 24/25 years old, debt free, and have acquired various practical skills that make you formidable as a location independent entrepreneur.

Even if you majored in Sociology, Philosophy, Literature (or something equally useless) it is never too late to build practical skill sets for yourself that you can use to make money.

More important than building these skill sets, arguably, is the art of delegation and creating systems within your business so that you can scale.

All of the tools that you can build that will help you build a web-based business are all useful for any company that would want to hire you. Ultimately if you can add more value than you extract and your impact can be measured in dollars added or the retention of potential dollars lost, then you can be valuable to a company.

Ironically, by the time you become good enough at these skills (and 2.5 years is more than enough time) you won't need to get hired anymore.

Thus, this guide I laid out above is for you young bucks with humanities degrees and under 30K USD in student loan debt and working at American Apparel or at Starbucks, wondering when you're going to get your big break.

Don't wait for your big break - you gotta make it happen.

Geoarbitrage is the way.

-

[ms224]

If each one of us ate an old person, this problem would be greatly alleviated.

[travolta]

After college I travelled. I realized that all I wanted to do was travel, and that affiliate marketing was a plausible way to make this happen. I aggressively looked for and pursued people to mentor me. I found a solid mentor within my group of friends, and latched onto his every word.

I'm not necessarily saying to learn Affiliate Marketing, but figure out how you want to make money, and do whatever it takes to find a mentor who will teach you. Looking on the internet is not a good way to find a mentor... most people will NOT agree to this, as they have no incentive and have nothing to gain by helping you out. Being a mentor isn't some charity service... Finding a real mentor must be done in person. Honestly I sort of lucked out in the sense that my mentor was in my close group of friends, but I approached the situation properly. I told him that I'd listen to any advice he gave and actually go through with it. I did just that, and made money. Now we work together on projects.

Summary: do whatever you have to do to find a mentor. I don't think you can succeed without one. At least I wouldn't have if I tried without one.

[iknowexactly]

(07-13-2013 12:37 PM)ms224 Wrote:  

If each one of us ate an old person, this problem would be greatly alleviated.

Yes this would work well, but it should stop when you turn 50 for obvious reasons.

[Architekt]

I'd like to pose a question to you: What motivation is there for the younger generation to work?

[TheKantian]

A lot fall into the "post-college death spiral".

They graduate college with no legitimate job, that is a job in their field, however, they might have experience from internships or not. They try to apply for these jobs, but they all want 5ish years of experience, so eventually they settle for a McJob. However, this McJob is largely irrelevant because it's unskilled minimum or slightly skilled slightly above minimum wage type pay.

So here they are working a job that is gaining them zero skills or zero experience in their field while they are trying to find something in their field, yet as the months pass they are competing with the more and more newly graduated college students. This is especially true for the entry level positions.

So come 3-5 years later if they don't have a job in their field they feel like legitimate losers especially if they are paying off 20-30k in debt for a degree that was largely useless. However, now they are contemplating either getting a masters or going back to school, not necessarily a university, to get some skills so they can finally rise above the poverty threshold. All the while trying to reconcile the bitterness they feel about their college education while trying to hold the ideal and belief that a college education is always valuable in of itself.

Throw in a good dose of American status obsession that's associated with career and you're left with a person that feels miserable or very pissed off.

You know shit has to hit the fan if it's not already when someone with a masters degree in economics is waiting tables for a living.

Not to mention the fact that it seems entirely possible that the people in power will be content with a 8ish% unemployment rate.

[Vacancier Permanent]

Some great suggestions in here for sure. As usual, excellent input YMG! I suggest every young gun in here to print and and put this post in a place where they can see it every day! These sites below are simply pure gold! Thanks for sharing them!

(07-13-2013 12:35 PM)youngmobileglobal Wrote:  

3. Acquire Digital Nomad Skill Sets

Your regular work hours will be about 20-30 hours per week so you can either do tutoring and make more cash or you can invest in building location independent digital skillsets such as:

-Coding http://www.codecademy.com
-Wordpress https://www.udemy.com/building-custom-wo...m-scratch/
-Design https://www.udemy.com/courses/Design
-SEO http://moz.com/learn/seo
-Languages http://www.italki.com http://www.duolingo.com


Don't wait for your big break - you gotta make it happen.

Geoarbitrage is the way.

Also would suggest young guys to go for a trade/oil sands as opposed to a useless degree in Arts. If you're set on doing a degree to appease the family's expectations, then take petroleum engineering. Do trades for 5-10 years in the oil sands in your 20's and by the time you reach your thirties, you'd have a great career, have a solid, valuable and portable skill,be debt free and a few hundred G's if not a Mill or two in the bank. Then you can do whatever the hell you please with the rest of your life.

[TheBlackNarwhal]

Fortunately I was lucky enough to land myself a retail job at the local mall so soon out of high school. Alot of my peers are going off to different colleges and will soon be racking up thousands in student loan debts with their useless liberal degrees.

I'm going to let the military pay for as much of my college as possible. Personally I think alot of college is a hoax meant to squeeze every last dime from your poor-ass while giving you useless Gen-ed classes that you have to complete. But, alas having a bachelors is a requirement these days for any decent employer to consider you.

A lot of the older gents are simply not retiring and the jobs that young dogs usually fill are taken up by men in their late 30s, 40s, and 50s that are down on their luck, making the situation even more depressing.

[jmoney29]

I graduated from a good school with a low gpa but good extra-curriculars. I did temp data entry in the healthcare industry and showed them that I knew as much about the business as they did. This presented the opportunity to work side-by-side with experienced consultants, albeit I was making ~$10/hr net. After doing this for 9 months, I leveraged my college and job experience to get a contract job in the industrial sector that was greater than %50 net raise and am treating it like a class because there is value in learning about their revenue generation. I am relatively happy because I know that I can take the info and start my own business or take it to another employer if shit hits the fan. One thing I have noticed is that older people are clinging very tightly to their jobs;there are more grandparents at my employer than I ever expected and I am the youngest person at my office by at least 10 years. Also, student loans are killing me. They are %25 of my net income just to pay interest, so I live with my parents.

[tairos]

(07-13-2013 12:37 PM)ms224 Wrote:  

If each one of us ate an old person, this problem would be greatly alleviated.

We should shorten the work week to combat unemployment, while postponing or even eliminating "retirement" to remove the crushing burden of idle geriatrics. The latter would be more palatable owing to the more humane work culture fostered by the former -- would people really be so burned out and used up by a lifetime of 20 hour work weeks? The diminished income stemming from fewer work hours would sting in the short run, but in the long run it's for everybody's own good. If everybody gets proportionately poorer, after all, status differentials should remain as they are more or less.

Of course, this will never happen.

[Dr. Howard]

(07-13-2013 03:26 PM)TheBlackNarwhal Wrote:  

Fortunately I was lucky enough to land myself a retail job at the local mall so soon out of high school. Alot of my peers are going off to different colleges and will soon be racking up thousands in student loan debts with their useless liberal degrees.

I'm going to let the military pay for as much of my college as possible. Personally I think alot of college is a hoax meant to squeeze every last dime from your poor-ass while giving you useless Gen-ed classes that you have to complete. But, alas having a bachelors is a requirement these days for any decent employer to consider you.

A lot of the older gents are simply not retiring and the jobs that young dogs usually fill are taken up by men in their late 30s, 40s, and 50s that are down on their luck, making the situation even more depressing.

This last part is particularly relevant. At one of my jobs when I showed up I made friends with an HR specialist. She liked to talk about an impending turnover crisis that within 5 years 80 percent of the senior staff would be eligible to retire and their replacements would all be rookies and the place would go. 5 years later, no crisis, no more retirement than usual. The old people were staying because they couldn't afford to retire. The most common reason was that they had kids who were still in college on year 6 or 7 or some sort of fuck up daughter that they paid the bills for despite living outside the home. I remember when retirement used to be mandatory in Canada.

[_DC_]

Scorpion is completely on point.

We are in a market economy which means supply and demand for jobs/salaries. If you wanna make six figures, you need to have a rare set of skills or be exceptionally good at more common ones.

All this entrepenuer idealization is cool and all, you know "don't work for the man", but its not practical. Working for someone out of college is in the cards for 99% of people, if we're talking desirable and steady salaries. Once you get that job, crush it. Be efficient; be valuable; make yourself indisposable to that company. Master skills that higher level people need.

I started off working a 9-5 with a good starting salary (STEM luckily), but after six years of being as valuable as possible and learning new skills, Im now making three times my starting salary and work from home with my own hours. There was undoubtably some luck involved too (the company offering work from home), but I have a couple of friends in different fields with similar stories (including a few making even more than me with non-STEM majors).

Here is where the entrepenuer stuff makes sense. When you make a good steady income, these pie-in-the-sky dreams become exponentially more viable.

So if anybody has any great ideas for me to make even more, holla at me!

[Steve9]

Jim Rogers recommends agriculture careers :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifkIHCjVyEA

Im interested to hear what forum members think about this idea.

[Travesty]

I know there are some hard workers in the world and many on this forum.

But doesn't anyone else notice the true fact though of the future that you cannot run from?

Every job in a career office environment above a McJob you could fire half the people today and still have the place run well. People look at their phones, FB, etc.. half the day. Any job I have been in is like this. My peers in their career jobs see the same thing.

We do not need everyone working, it is a farce. It is either corporate or government well-fare already.

How many people have the intelligence to make an impact in STEM fields?

How many are inventive enough to push a product to a new level?

How many are great enough entertainers to make a living from it? I include athletics and the entire gambit or the arts inside this.

Not many, probably less than 10% of the population. More like 5%. And how much of that 5% is really driven to be successful and make a really significant impact? 1-2%?

The end game is there will be a Post-Work world where notion of working builds character will be laughed at it. It may take 30-50 years but it will come. Increasingly sophisticated automation, robotics and technology won't leave much room for people working.

As someone else mentioned there will be a stipend given out to non-workers. The entrepreneurs, inventors, and government (automation) workers will just earn more money than the vast majority who live on a stipend. The average man with average skills even if he wants to improve his life style by earning some extra money will have an extremely hard time being able to as any small or odd job will automated, and so called careers will only be available to the truly outstanding.

We already see the graph line being drawn in this direction over the last 10 years.

Does anyone else laugh out loud at the notion of a college graduate with an average degree, average school, and average grades have multiple offers before graduation at any point in the future?

I see that as laughable. Meaning the average person no longer will have a relatively easy time at success. 1950 to 1970 was a small piece of time at which forces came together to give such a boost to the middle class. That is truly unsustainable without heavy socialism/unions and in this case in the future a non-worker stipend. The alternative is to have a vast majority live the slum life.