Has a "Lost Generation" been created among young workers?

Maybee it is just a reality check you can start at the top.

Sadly this is a lesson that the baby boom generation will learn too late. The young people that have been, and are being thrown aside are the one's who are supposed to pay for the retirement and security of the baby boomers when they hope to retire.
Previous generations have provided for their young's education and careers leading to a standard of living unknown to the generations before.
The baby boomers will discover a degree of old age and poverty unknown to their parents. I suppose it's all fair though, you can only get a return on what you invest in and if you make the young pay for their own way they won't abide paying for anyone else's, ever.

I am 55 and out of work for 6 months now. My youngest just started university , my oldest finished masters 2 years ago and has a career and settled in marriage and home. I have given much in time and money to see that they have the opportunity I did not as my parents did not concern themselves much with my education.

Things may get much more difficult for me but I would not change. As I have told people who ask why do you do it...the reply is quite simple...who else is going to?

A few years ago I was just finishing teachers college and everyone was talking about the teacher shortage that would happen because of all the boomers retiring. Well those boomers are not retiring and if they did, most of them are taking all the subbing jobs away from us youngsters. i just find it so ironic that these retired teachers spent their lives trying to educate us kids so we would have an opportunity when we finish school but they are not helping us out at all by staying in the work force.

I am a 53 year old woman who has not been able to secure a full time job in almost 2 years. I was an executive secretary making approx 48K, 5 years ago. Now I do housekeeping at a lodge for $10 an hour and get maybe 20 hours a week. It is very hard to survive with food in my belly and a roof over my head after losing my job and my marriage. It isn't just the kids...it is affecting everyone.

This Lost Generation are not only for the young it is also for the older one because we lost most
of our good job. We have to work (2) jobs to survive it is sad, but that's will be the future here
in North America.

Baby boomers are in a bad situation also. I am sure there are a lot of people of that generation that would retire if they could. The cost of living has climbed so high over the last 10 years. Combine that with market losses of the last year and what do expect them to do?
Of course there are always some who will pursue the dollar until they die but the majority would like to retire but how are they supposed to survive. Many spent large amounts of money to provide and educate their childern. The standard of living our childern expect starting out seems to mirror what their parents took 30 years to build. Maybe we have created our own monster but it is here now and even the babyboomers need food and shelter. The assumption seems to be that they could retire if they wanted to. The reality from my viewpoint is very different. They could not even if they wanted to.

I agree, that being a young adult between 25 - 30, with a strong educational background has its advantages and disadvantages during/coming out of the recession. The opportunity cost of those years of studying, is the experience that you could have gained in a particular field. It is obviously, a mindset coming from graduates who recently completed a Bachlors or Masters that they are now qualified for the high paying jobs, but when they enter the market, and attend a couple interviews, they realise the picture is quite grim for those with little experience! My readings (which are confined to the morning newspaper) suggests that there is a toss up between the old and new potential employees, especially during this time, but employers are selecting person who have more experience i.e. the older folks, since efficiency is what they are look for, to keep their companies afloat. Its not about new ideas or quicker ways of doing stuff, its about getting the job done, with minimal errors, which you would get from the more experienced people. This then places the younger, probably more educated and less experienced people in a quandry. What do I do now? Of course it brings a level of frustration, all this money invested in my education, where is the payoff. My experience though has shown me that University teaches broad concepts that 90% of the time don't apply to real world situations because every situation is unique, and the teachings need to be adapted to fit the particular company or objective. This norming process is costly and not a cost employers are will to bear at this time. Anyways all this to say, at the end of the day, the younger generation have no choice but to settle for jobs which are below their expectations... But and there is a but, life is about knowing how to jump from one stepping stone to another and so, one should not be discouraged....after all Rome wasn't built in a day!

The problem is young people have to many expectations. It isn't a problem with the world, everyone starts at the bottom and moves up. Just throwing away money on college doesn't mean you have "earned" anything. You have to have initiative. I went to college to learn a trade I loved. I was out alot of money. Found a few starter jobs, didn't like them, kept moving on. There are different levels of what we do. I now supervise other qualified people and laborers. I am 19 years old. I just worked my way up. Still starting but working hard. The majority of young people I have worked with/supervised under 30 are immature, expect to have stuff handed to them and if it isn't start missing time and blaming it on lack of satisfaction which hurts their prospects and leads to them getting laid off. Hard work is what is missing, not opportunities. The average age of people in my trade is 55. Average starting age is 30. If you have a goal you will get there. Hopefully at 30 I will be a well respected individual in my field with 12 years experience as well as all my tickets. Eventually this generation will realize the issues, but not before a major meltdown that will make these "hardships" of hardly being able to afford oversized, overpriced houses seem mild.

Everyone has provided excellent points on the current situation the young people of North America face today. The true reality though is that people have become commodities of globalization. Our worth is only what the "market" dictates. Therefore, if your young, ambitions,educated and willing to take a risk; you will see this as an opportunity and find YOUR niche in the global playground. The North American traditional ideas of family, settlement and retirement are all history. Our economy in the past 50 years has been flooded with people from different countries who came searching for the "good life". Why we must ask? maybe its because they were in the same predicament we were! It all comes down to Supply and Demand. Follow emerging markets and you will never be steered in the wrong direction.

I remember when I finished university in 1998 the same articles writing the same story about how the young graduates have nothing to look forward to. From my own experiece (and the shared experiences of my friends who also completed university) we have realized that we did have high expectations for our future. We were taught that we would be the future leaders of companies, but when we started looking for work all we could find was entry level. I applied for over 100 positions, and had about 25 interviews before I landed my first "real job" in my chosen field. I realize now I applied for many positions that I was totally unqualified for, but I did not realize that at the time. I also can say I believe there were several times when I lost out to someone else who had more experience than me but lower education. University grads tend to get painted with the brush of "they have a lot of knowledge, but don't know anything and I don't know if they will actually get the job done". Might not be fair, but people who have not been to university don't value the degree like you do.

I graduated with a business degree, which provides a lot of general knowledge, but nothing specific to a particilar company or industry. All my friends had similar experiences like my own. We complained a lot about how unfair the world was and how all the baby boomers were hogging all the good jobs and preventing us from having a great future.

Eventually, we came to realize that we were having success and receiving promotions. Now that we look back 11 years later we generally have pretty good jobs earning good salaries, and have passed by many co-workers who do not have the same education we have despite their being in the workforce for much longer than us. Our dedication to success does get noticed, but it does take time. You do have to start at the bottom and work your way up, but if you keep applying yourself you will succeed. The "chance" that our original employers took upon hiring us inexperienced grads has been paid back by our higher performance than our more experienced less educated peers.

We all felt that upon graduation we could run the world. In hindsight, I realize my expectations were way too high, but with continued effort and application of my education I have become successful like I always wanted. At 35, I am well positioned for my next promotions when compared to my peers.

Those without university education cannot understand the pride we put in our education because they have never had to commit themselves to a goal like that (lots of studying and work with no monetary payback, at least initially). My observations are that generally (I said generally) most non-university educated people do not have the drive to continue pushing themselves to continue to upper management roles. Those roles require education and training on an ongoing basis that does not simply stop after you get the job. Many people think that tenure at the company should get you the promotion, but I have been promoted not only because of my university education, but I have achieved more in results than my peers did, and I continually took additional courses when they did not. That is why I received promotions, and my non-educated peers are still in the same positions wondering how I did it. There are lots of high performers out there, but the education you have will start to differentiate you when you are competing for promotions into higher level positions.

You can do it!! Just be more realistic in your expectations, and understand that success is more like a marathon than a sprint.... You will make it, but it takes a lot of effort over a long period of time.