RT News As the US economic forecast moves from fragile to cautiously optimistic, most young people are still searching for a paycheck. Over half of the Americans who graduated college in 2011 and 2012 are either unemployed or overqualified for their current job.
Poll results released last week reveal that 41 per cent of US college graduates from the past two years are working in positions that do not require a degree, according to a survey of 1,005 former students from consulting firm Accenture. Another 11 per cent of respondents said they are unemployed, seven per cent of which have not had a job since graduation.
Almost two-thirds of those polled said they expected to need additional training before entering a career, while nearly fifty per cent believed their studies did not equip them for the working world.
National unemployment remains stagnant at 7.6 per cent and graduates of 2011 and 2012 will soon be forced to compete with the graduating class of 2013 in the job hunt.
Of those polled, 42 per cent expected to enroll in graduate school. Only 18 per cent of the class of 2013 thought finishing graduate school would be necessary.
While useless school curricula and scarce job opportunities are the most obvious targets of blame for society’s disenfranchised youth, the cost of education and its corollary, student debt, have crippled an entire generation. Americans now owe more money on student loans than on credit cards, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, as quoted by USA Today.
Recent research has showed that students are borrowing twice as much as they did ten years ago (after adjusting for inflation). Lawmakers in Congress have given lenders, including the government, unprecedented collection power far more powerful than mortgage brokers and credit card companies. And student debt is one of the only kinds that can’t be unloaded in bankruptcy.
“Students who borrow too much end up delaying life-cycle events such as buying a car, buying a home, getting married, and having children,” Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of FinAid.org, told USA Today.
That assessment, echoed by other experts, has financial forecasters wondering if the US economy’s slow recovery might only be temporary. Nick Pardini, an investor and financial blogger, told the paper the current climate is “going to create a generation of wage slavery.”
Two-thirds of 2011’s college graduates completed their higher education owing money, with debt ranging up to an average $26,600 per person – a five per cent increase from the year before, according to the Associated Press.
Still, college grads are in far superior shape than those without a degree, as 19.1 per cent of people with only a high school diploma were unemployed in 2011.
“In these tough times, a college degree is still your best bet for getting a job and decent pay,” said Lauren Asher, president of the Institute for College Access and Success. “But, as debt levels rise, fear of loans can prevent students from getting the education they need to succeed.”
Despite the gloomy outlook for young people there is cause for hope overall. The US economy added 165,000 jobs in April, a boost from the monthly average of 138,000 over the six months prior. The growth could indicate that the slashed federal budget “does not mean recession,” John Silvia, a chief economist at Wells Fargo, told the Associated Press.
Mad Angel, Of course the Student Debt is meant to lead to Wage Slavery. We are already ad Debt Slave Socieity, and if you take any funds from the feds, it comes with Chains Attached and a Noose Around Your Neck. Once you get the Loans, then cannot Find Work, you begin Defaulting on said Loans, and the Feds come after you with everything they have to collect and while the Feds are spending millions in extracting payments from the borrowers, the Feds keep Adding Late Fees and Interest that in no time the fees, penalties and interest far exceed the original amount of the loan, and this loan stays with you forever, and while it stays with you, the interest, late fees, etc. continue, and each time you find a job that is reported as income, your SSN triggers the Government Tax Collectors and they come after your income in the form of garnishment, and if you open a bank account, the same thing happens, and even if you make it to Retirement Age, it will follow you and your Social Security Retirement will be garnished, and when you die, your assets instead of going to heris, will go to government to pay on that Student Loan you took out many Decades Ago, in order to try and better yourself and get a good job, wound up with a degree that is useless in an economy that has been destroyed of jobs that pay good money because of the government’s excessive regulations and taxation on America’s Businesses, both small and large, that they have shut their doors or let the country to escape the Tyrannical U.S. Government Regulators, Legislators and Tax Collectors. And, in the meantime, the U.S. purosely keeps the borders wide open so that tens of millions of low skill, low wage workers flood the labor market and the businesses love it, because the tax payers have to pay for the care of these illegal invaders while the businesses get cheap labor by laborers who pay no taxes, and at the same time take jobs that other Americans Could and Would take given the opportunity. That is why the Feds make Student Loans so easy to get. Once you get the loan, you are hooked for life if you are unable to find a job and pay these goons off. The Feds make Mafia Loan Sharks look like Kindergarten Pick Pockets compared to the Ruthlessness of the Feds in Collecting the Last Piece of Change you have.
I warned my ex-girlfriend that exactly this would happen when she tried to drag me back to school with her many years ago. Now she’s buried in debt, and unemployed because she’s far too intelligent to listen to me. I hope she likes living with her Mom, because she’s not coming back here.
Most of what she got from her “education” is arrogance.