Nearly half of grads working jobs they're overqualified for: report

No possibly way this could end badly for society as we see smaller and smaller groups of people holding larger and larger amounts of the nations wealth. I mean, it's not like the population is educated enough to realize that the wealth is flooding upwards to the asset holders at the expense of the young.
If there was ever a situation that was a vote winner for a communist (or worse) party, this would be it.

Sam I have never heard of such BS in my life. The very few who are outrageuously wealthy do not account for the problems you refer to. If we had communism, we would be even worse off. My parents and grandparents lived under communist rule in the past, and were poor beyond your comprehension. That is why they moved to a capitalist country. They have no education, and are now living well above this country's average standard of living. The only good communist is a dead communist.

The only way these overqualified youth will escape their dead end jobs is by being their own boss and starting their own companies.

That is the only solution to break this cycle.

@William: This is EXACTLY a big portion of the problem, although it's more a symptom than a cause. In the past when times were tough, the rich took their hit along with everyone else until things recovered. These days, they not only want their cut to stay the same. They want it to GROW. So to do that, there are jobs that need to be filled, but aren't. When someone retires these days, they're often not replaced. Their work and responsibilities usually fall to one or two lower-paid people already at the company, who are usually already overworked. Even Governments are doing the same thing, although they already have an over-abundance of people, working at lower productivity levels. The intrepid 'youth' described in this article could indeed go it alone and be entrepreneurs, but it is VERY hard to get funding these days and they often end up bought out or just crushed by the larger, established organizations.

Even if these 'rich' people decided to be nice and 'take one for the team', it wouldn't do much good. These days, that tends to be the death knell of businesses as others take advantage of that good will to boost THEIR profits, and customers don't increase their business with those 'good samaritans', as they don't seem to care anymore, either.

The Western World has been led down the garden path over the decades that almost every job should be high paying, and every product or service should be as cheap as possible. This is an unsustainable cycle. But noone seems to have learned anything from 2008 about unsustainable cycles...

What a crock! This has nothing to do with the rich. It has to do with everyone wanting to be rich the fastest and easiest way possible. The fallacy over higher education opening the golden doors is now beginning to crack and crumble. People put themselves into enormous amounts of debt pursuing a degree when simple hard work is what is most required to succeed. I'm willing to bet that I make more than 90% of grads but I hold NO degrees but have worked hard and changed careers 3 times to get to where I am today. Careers, not jobs. Stop whining, get a job and then work hard and smart.

We are now experiancing the results of free trade,how is that working for you? I do not beleive that when they first got free trade in and got rid of the auto pack and other methods to keep good paying jobs in Canada and the States that you could not see this coming. At first it was a win win for the States because they where taking good paying Canadian jobs,then they sign up Mexico and loss their good paying jobs. Now north America is lossing all of the good jobs to Asia. Can no one add, do you not see what is happening here? Let me spell it out for you. Manufactoring will go to the cheapest labour pool they can find, like china. No unoins to protect the worker,no environment laws to worry about as they pad their bottom dollar. Do you get to buy that product any cheaper? NO! What happened to their excuse that it was high labour cost that drove them out? If that was the case then we should be able to purchase the products cheaper that are being produce with slave and child labour. I said back then that it was only a matter of time befor we become a third wold nation and I can see it happening now, just look around you and see the differance. Try and buy anything in a store that is made in Canada.The rich and business elete are laughing at all of us idiots all the way to the bank,and that is anouther story in its self.

@Kevin: You are absolutely right! Being a enterprenuer is the only way to escape a go-no-where job. It not only can provide a bright future for the individual starting it, but it can also open the possiblitiy of regaining jobs and positions lost overseas.

@Mike: The debt of education is what holds most back from taking major risks in life. So while you hold no degrees, you also hold no debt because of it, making it much easier to take a big risk in terms of jumping career positions and life changing possibilities. And also, its not the fallacy of higher education opening doors, its what employers want. You need a degree to be a simple Librarian, you need a degree to do this, do that. Its the employers fault for making it mandatory nowadays. Jobs that 20 years ago needed no degrees, now need a ridiculous amount of certifications and diplomas. So of course people are going to pursue them, because its what is required. If 90% of employers removed the degree and diploma requirements from job postings, in 5 - 10 years colleges and universities would be empty.

@Mark G. is correct. Most employers requesting post-secondary education for job qualifications are asking for more than they need. I completed a college diploma and a uni degree when I was in my 20's. The position I started my career in did not require this level of education, however it was (and still is) expected that you have it to even be considered for the role. My current mid-level manager position also expects post-secondary education to be considered for the role. I would say that while helpful, it certainly is not required for my current role. Especially, since many of those who completed post-secondary do not even work in their field of study. I the business world I work in, many of those who completed post-secondary did so in arts (English, History, etc), which has nothing at all to do with my business. Post-secondary is simply a way for employers to weed out less desirable job applicants in an easy to apply formula. I am supportive of post-secondary education, however the focus needs to be expanded to include other options that simply the university route. My brother went to trade school and has done very well for himself. The main roadblock is that white collar university careers are seen as desirable (especially by parents who were blue collar labourers their whole lives), where trade schools are seen as not as good. That is a problem that needs to be corrected. After all, you can't outsource construction of a road, house, or building to a different country.

we have been sold a bill of goods... the education establishment continues to produce graduates that are not needed. For example, there are still many teachers produced in Ontario in the seven faculties of education, far more than the system could ever absorb. The best approach is to get a great high school education, invest your tuition monies into a TSFA, continue to read and study your field on your own... (ie. at the library) for free, work hard, save money and invest.

so off I go to starbucks for my $11/hr shift today,

masters degree in my hip pocket

saw an interesting job advert isement today....

Dishwasher required, apply with RESUME to Joe's Restaurant.

funny thing is, joe got forty applicants for one job

Well, I have a degree in biological sciences, and my current career is not even remotely close to what I went to school for.

When I first started off in university I had the hopes and dreams of working in a laboratory, helping out with scientific research. The jobs were there, and they were screaming for people to enter and that biotech and pharma companies were booming. By the time I graduated, the jobs were gone. I started to notice a bad trend that entry level jobs in that field slowly began wanting Master's degrees, and then Doctorates.

Luckily I stopped when I did, and didnt continue on to do post-grad (which I really wanted to do). So many of my classmates who continued on ended up competing for low entry level lab/research jobs that paid miserably. A good portion ended up with Doctorates and in non-releated non-scientific jobs at the end, and a mountain of debt. But its sad, I really loved science, and in a perfect world I shouldnt have given up that dream, but in reality it was a total financial and careet dead-end. I'm just glad I didnt end up with a 6-figure debt load like many of those who I went to school with.

WOW, I think some people need to go back to school and relearn some definitions.
Communism in THEORY, is about WEALTH DISTRUBUTION! Hello, that means the rich distrubute thier weatlth to the poor people of the NATION.You can not blame Communism, only the way that it is practiced by nation leaders today.
NAFTA, means NORTH AMERICAN FREE TRADE AGREEMENT - This does not include CHINA, I work with NAFTA every day and import 90% of my company's products from China, even if they are imported from the US they are still considered made in China and the Candian Border Service Agency (CBSA) dings these goods at 18% when imported into Canada! NAFTA does not apply in these circumstances. Ever heard of Near shoring? Its the new term of the day....China is becoming a huge world economic player and now US companies are moving thier manufacturing process back to mexico and S.America where its' much cheaper to pay workers and reduce transportion costs.
Libraian's need degree's because they its a science in classification, the average person has no idea how to catalogue a new book with in the dewy decimail system (not that the average grad would even know what that means) and I took Libary Science as course in University. It's way more technical then a person standing behind a desk!

Personally, I have a diploma in Journalism, a degree in Sociology / Anthropology, a certificate in Customs and Logistics, and currently taking a correspondance course in Transportaion and still take home less then $35,000 in net salary. I waited till I was 23 years old to begin any post secondary education....before that I was quite happy hitch-hiking around the US, living off of Canadain Taxpayers dollars not doing a damn thing (gotta love Communism! Haha - that's a joke btw).
Today, I'm a 38 year old single parent living just above the poverty line, so it just isn't todays youth who are suffering this has been an on going issue that is multifaceted.

Funny.... nobody has mentioned over population!?

@Ms.Mae:

Overpopulation? The only overpopulation that is causing problems is in China, India, and Pakistan. These three countries alone account for the largest amount of outsourced jobs, enormous amount of poverty, enormous amount of disease, pump out 10's of millions of degree holders each year due to low educational costs, and are total threats to the rest of the world. They are nuclear powerhouses and arent afraid of threatening others with it, all corrupt to the extreme, care nothing about life (even of their very own peoples).

If these three countries got their populations down to the 50 - 100million mark each, the entire world would be far better off, instead they are multiplying like a cancer, and their populations alone will be the cause that humanity crumbles as a whole, because they are a drain on the entire world wide system.

@Ms Rae… who the F**k do you think you are telling anyone to go back to school to learn anything? I couldn’t care less about the THEORY of communism. Communism is just pure evil. Why should I, having received the highest level of education available to any person on this planet, and made huge personal sacrifices to increase knowledge, science, and technology distribute a single F**king penny of my hard earned income to those that do less? What would be the incentive to me to develop my skills and knowledge, if some loser schmuck gets the same compensation?