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Being 30 then and now

Winchester said:
Boomers started turning 65 in 2011, 10,000 are retiring every day and will continue to do so till about 2029. I was unfortunate to come just after the boom and upper level positions were chock full of boomers. My kids all in their mid to late 20s have a wide open field in their professions with the looming retirements.
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Yes, I agree with this very much.

The Boomers are retiring in droves, and then everyone else subsequently moves up the totem pole. I think we too easily forget this.

And one example where we already see this occurring, is in the growing shortage of airline pilots, and their rising wages, benefits, and sign-on bonuses. Airline pilots, due to their highly regulated stringent physical requirements including good eyesight and perfect cardio health, tend to be forced out of the seat before those in regular society. I believe what we see in the airlines, is what we will be soon seeing throughout the other employment sectors.
 
WCH said:
You have to start somewhere. A lot of guys I know got experience [and sometimes education] from other companies then went off on their own. Others went to school and started their own business right out of the box. Still others went all the way from the bottom to making 6 figures.

Unfortunately not enough to fill all the needs out there.
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Yep. I cautioned my kids to try to pick careers that lend lend themselves to allowing them to hang-out their own shingle. And I very much also cautioned them that it's great to learn on someone else's dime, but try not to get too hung-up in working as a lifer employee.

And I will say this about the trades: They lend themselves well to moonlighting or starting your own business.

In fact, a couple of my most financially successful buddies learned trades right out of high school via apprentice programs while living at home with their parents. Since they lived at home, they were both able to hustle-up bits & pieces of work for extra money while training, and then parlay that into amazingly successful full-time businesses. Neither ever worked for anyone else, save for the hours during their apprenticeships. I believe this last is an integral part of their success. Of course they were able to build a small business starting from scratch, because the were in their teens and living at home with no bills or responsibility.
 
Chomsky said:
Yep. I cautioned my kids to try to pick careers that lend lend themselves to allowing them to hang-out their own shingle. And I very much also cautioned them that it's great to learn on someone else's dime, but try not to get too hung-up in working as a lifer employee.

And I will say this about the trades: They lend themselves well to moonlighting or starting your own business.

In fact, a couple of my most financially successful buddies learned trades right out of high school via apprentice programs while living at home with their parents. Since they lived at home, they were both able to hustle-up bits & pieces of work for extra money while training, and then parlay that into amazingly successful full-time businesses. Neither ever worked for anyone else, save for the hours during their apprenticeships. I believe this last is an integral part of their success. Of course they were able to build a small business starting from scratch, because the were in their teens and living at home with no bills or responsibility.
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Well, As a small business owner myself, your customers tend to be the bosses. Fortunately they can be dismissed at will. ;)
 
cuban smokes said:
My mother wanted to attend college when she graduated high school in 1948 but her family could not afford college.
She went to work for a law firm upon graduation from high school.
Mom worked most of her life, until she retired; she worked through much of her college education.
She went to college during the 1970s, after basically raising a family.
She graduated with a 3.89 GPA with a BS in nursing. Believe me, they do NOT give nursing degrees away; they are extremely strict.
An amazing woman & an inspiration (for many reasons) to all that knew her :cool:
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And the fact that she had a lot of skin in the game made her appreciate it more. My wife was also a college graduate after having a family...2 masters degree and 4 education certifications later, she's happy that she did the work.
 
Greenbeard said:
Axios took a look today at how life has changed for 30-somethings over the past four decades. No surprises: stagnant incomes, rising college costs and debt, less ownership (indeed, more often cohabitation with parents), less marriage, fewer children.

Being 30 then and now



An entire generation is feeling like the ladder of opportunity has been pulled up by its forebears and that seems to be showing up in its politics.
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Some people here seem to be taking this data for ALL 30-year-olds, and then making conclusions on just the college educated kids based on it. Although it's true that these kids are graduating with often crushing debt, they still tend to do much better than those without a college degree. Those without a college degree are the ones really being left holding the bag in today's economy. So what do they do? They get desperate and do things to make the situation even worse for themselves, like electing the likes of Paul Ryan and Donald Trump. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot!

Workers with no college degree fall further behind than ever - CBS News
 
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Carjosse said:
Except that is how the job market works these days for a lot of employers. They only care about that.
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ataraxia said:
Some people here seem to be taking this data for ALL 30-year-olds, and then making conclusions on just the college educated kids based on it. Although it's true that these kids are graduating with often crushing debt, they still tend to do much better than those without a college degree. Those without a college degree are the ones really being left holding the bag in today's economy. So what do they do? They get desperate and do things to make the situation even worse for themselves, like electing the likes of Paul Ryan and Donald Trump. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot!

Workers with no college degree fall further behind than ever - CBS News
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Two important points. Even as wage growth has stagnated and the cost of higher education has soared, (1) employers increasingly require the credential for jobs that didn't require them before, and (2) the opportunity gap between those with and without college degrees has grown tremendously.

The college degree has become the new high school degree
You’ve heard of grade inflation? Welcome to the world of degree inflation.

A new report finds that employers are increasingly requiring a bachelor’s degree for positions that didn’t used to require baccalaureate education. A college degree, in other words, is becoming the new high school diploma: the minimum credential required to get even the most basic, entry-level job.

The report is from Burning Glass, a labor market analytics company that mines millions of online job postings. The company found that a wide range of jobs — in management, administration, sales and other fields — are undergoing “upcredentialing,” or degree inflation. As examples, just 25 percent of people employed as insurance clerks have a BA, but twice that percentage of insurance-clerk job ads require one. Among executive secretaries and executive assistants, 19 percent of job-holders have degrees, but 65 percent of job postings mandate them.
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Pay gap between college grads and everyone else at a record
WASHINGTON — Americans with no more than a high school diploma have fallen so far behind college graduates in their economic lives that the earnings gap between college grads and everyone else has reached its widest point on record.

The growing disparity has become a source of frustration for millions of Americans worried that they — and their children — are losing economic ground.

College graduates, on average, earned 56% more than high school grads in 2015, according to data compiled by the Economic Policy Institute. That was up from 51% in 1999 and is the largest such gap in EPI's figures dating to 1973.

Since the Great Recession ended in 2009, college-educated workers have captured most of the new jobs and enjoyed pay gains. Non-college grads, by contrast, have faced dwindling job opportunities and an overall 3% decline in income, EPI's data shows.
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I fear we're stumbling toward an era in which a master's (and the accompanying extra debt) is the basic requirement for entry to decent work.
 
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