In Response to the "Unemployed Graduate" from Scholar's Gambit.

This is a response to a wonderful post written by a friend:

http://scholarsgambit.wordpress.com/2011/08/24/the-unemployed-graduate

Finding a job is not easy. It is, in fact, very hard.  The numerous statistics that come out painting a dreadful picture of our employment picture, anecdotes of close friends struggling to find a well paying job, and the numerous reports making an economic recovery seem further and further away are tough to bear. 

Contrast this with a black and white video I saw in one of my history classes: It was a 1950 documentary that interviewed Rutgers Students. In it-- all the kids almost expected a well paying, middle class job. The pretty wife, house in the suburb, and 1 (possibly 2) cars were standard. It was the birth of the long consumption boom. It also was the harbinger of something we face today: the indebted consumer. 

Today, we are facing a profound shift--getting a bachelor's degree is not enough.  And throwing your graduation hat no longer entitles one to be annoyed when a job is not given to you on a silver plated platter. A student needs to get a bachelor's degree, take a technical major, and come out near the top of the class. Add to that job experience: be an administrative assistant, intern, research (aka even if it is typing up a bibliography for a Professor's book).  That black and white video, the dreams of those Rutgers Students are gone. Chances are none of those things are guaranteed...including the pretty wife. 

Why is this the case? Roundup the usual suspects. Companies are investing more on capital (for productivity) than on labor. For the economics geeks, this is the old trade-off where a dollar spent on capital is a dollar not spent on hiring a worker. In today's world--technology has easily been able to replace swathes of workers with one server or computer. The most tragic example of this was when I saw a documentary that showed a bank's "proof and transit" (aka check clearing) have one person do a job that the CEO explained used to hire 40-50 workers. A man sits in one corner working away on a computer. In the other end--a large Pitney Bowes mailing device automatically weighs, stamps, and sorts outgoing mail for the bank's customers. A win for productivity, a win for capital, a loss for the 39 low/middle wage workers. 

Two -- India and China decided to wake up. A friend of mine who works in the IT department of a large corporation can list Indian IT companies. She is expected every morning to sit in on conference calls as she literally directs and outsources work as legions of low wage, highly motivated, and very smart workers complete jobs that were formerly the domain of the American worker. 

So is the American graduate's dream's hopeless? Not at all. It is simply harder.  College students should graduate with a technical skill set, not waste their freshman year "transitioning" into college, and work hard and take difficult classes. If you graduated -- consider a Masters, part-time job to bolster up your work experience, and network. Relentlessly pursue finding a job. Let your family know that your in the job market, look up local clubs and organizations and join them, continue using your college alumni network, take a few classes (i.e. programming). 

You need to be able to market yourself as a person that a computer cannot replace. In my personal network: every person who graduated in the top of their respective majors are employed, those who had an accounting or computer science background are employed, and those working in major corporations proudly show-off the numerous recruiters chasing after them. 

The market, unfortunately, is brutal to those who are mediocre. It is a bull market for those who are persistent, willing to work hard, and have a stroke of luck.

As the old saying goes: when it gets tough, the tough get going. There are 90% of the people employed. Those are odds I would bet on over and over again.  Look at it as if the glass being almost full.