Today’s young people have endured crisis after crisis—social media upheaval, a pandemic, and political turmoil. And for many eager to finally start their careers, they’re facing yet another uphill battle: entering one of the toughest job markets in a decade.
Job postings are down, and unemployment among recent graduates has climbed to 9.3%, according to the Federal Reserve—its highest level outside of the pandemic since 2014.
But one lawmaker says this may only be the beginning.
Unemployment for recent college graduates could surge to as high as 25% in the next two to three years, warned U.S. Senator Mark Warner (D-Va.) in an interview with Bloomberg, and it could cause a “level of social disruption that’s unprecedented.”
“If we eliminate that front end of the pipeline, how are people ever going to get to that mid-career spot?” Warner added to CNBC.
The ruling class fought hard to get the current administration elected so they can get the benefits it gave them so far and it’s about to give them in the future. And the part of the class that didn’t, later came onboard. The tax cuts and subsidies are massive. They’re probably even gonna get bailed out of the AI crash.
The thing is, there’s competition for growing profits. Not merely in one product market or another, because firms buy each other across markets. So if a firm doesn’t profit maximize, it runs the risk of a profit-maximizer accumulating capital faster, eventually having enough to buy that firm. And so every firm that understands this risk engages in ever growing profits. And unfortunately growing profits means extracting more money from peoples incomes by increasing prices, reducing wages and reducing headcounts. These pressures push them to choose to do the thing that makes things worse for the employee class. They can make things better but practically competition makes them tend to choose worse. If a firm doesn’t, “another one will.” They only make things better when forced to by market pressures (e.g. labour shortage), collective action (unions, boycotts), or government action (regulation). They own the government (both parties), they’ve busted the unions, so they’re left to act on market pressures. And there’s plenty of workers looking for work.
This is also why I said that it’ll take enough of us being fucked over to changes this. It’s gonna take the form of us unionizing as well as organizing to take political power. E.g. grassroots campaigns to elect socialist candidates, as they’re the only ones who’d represent our interests. Like Zohran’s campaign.
I know, I just take (very very slight) issue with your choice of “can’t” rather than “won’t”
Haha, I see. You’re right. I used to reason in accurate logical terms about this, and “won’t” is the correct one from logical standpoint. Lately I don’t do that anymore. Reason being that people who don’t have this framework in their minds, about the system pressures and such, hear the “won’t” and assign it a typical level of agency. In most situations when someone won’t do something that they can do, there’s a higher probability they can go from won’t to would. So they feel like these actors in this system have a significantly higher propensity of doing the other thing than they actually do. If only Zuckerberg heard this or that argument, he’d see the light and stop being a piece of shit. If only he read that book, he’d stop fighting regulation. But that’s not how it works and it’s not about this or that individual. It’s an aggregate action that makes most actors act to further interests opposed to ours. So these days I use “can’t” to express how unlikely it is for the ruling class to do the other thing, even if it’s not logically accurate. Cause a lot of people aren’t looking at the system this way at all.
E: I think when working people grasp the near-impossibility of the ruling class going significantly against their own interest, they (working people) start seeing through the ruling class propaganda and begin reaching for the real solutions.
Super fair, I’m neurodivergent (though generally mask very well) and tend to notice small details like that (while forgetting that my perspective is often in the minority in that regard)