Can’t find a job? Move overseas. [View all]

[ErikJ]

Can’t find a job? Move overseas. Emily Matchar, WaPa 11/23/12

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We didn’t know we would be part of a wave of educated young Americans heading overseas in search of better employment opportunities. According to State Department estimates, 6.3 million Americans are studying or working abroad, the highest number ever recorded. What’s more, the percentage of Americans ages 25 to 34 who are planning to move overseas has quintupled in two years, from less than 1 percent to 5.1 percent. Among 18- to 24-year-olds, 40 percent are interested in moving abroad, up from 12 percent in 2007.

In the past, Americans often took foreign jobs for the adventure or because their career field demanded overseas work. Today, these young people are leaving because they can’t find jobs in the United States. They’re leaving because the jobs they do find often don’t offer benefits such as health insurance. They’re leaving because the gloomy atmosphere of the American economy makes it hard to break through with a new innovative idea or business model. “This is a huge movement,” says Bob Adams, president and chief executive of America Wave, an organization that studies overseas relocation.
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Jackson estimates that half of her graduate school classmates in the United States are underemployed or employed in jobs far different fromprofessions they trained for. Still, her family has a hard time understanding why she and her husband chose to live abroad. “They didn’t believe us when we said we can’t get a job” in the United States that’s competitive, she says. “Not only can we not get jobs in the U.S., but even if we did, we’d be taking a serious pay cut.”
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Sean Love, 27, traded a job as a medical research assistant in an “understaffed and underfunded” lab at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore for a similar job in Singapore. But the new position comes with better funding, happier co-workers, twice the number of vacation days, nearly free health care and a much higher quality of life.Love’s girlfriend, who had spent months fruitlessly searching for a nonprofit job in the Baltimore-Washington area, had two appealing job offers within two months of moving to Singapore. Other friends who moved to Asia had similar experiences. “Asia is without a doubt the new land of opportunity for those brave enough to buy a plane ticket,” Love says.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/cant-find-a-job-move-overseas/2012/11/23/b7322ef4-3273-11e2-9cfa-e41bac906cc9_story_2.html