Boomerang Babies: Record Numbers of Young Adults Live with Parents at Terrible Cost

[LongTomH]

60. Another aspect of this is the effect on careers!

This is from one of my journal posts back in the ancient days of 2010:

First a quote from the New York Times article:

Where you start out in your career has a big impact on where you end up. When jobs are scarce, more college grads start out in lower-level jobs with lower starting salaries. Academic research suggests that for many of these graduates, that correlates to overall lower levels of career attainment and lower lifetime earnings.

Which means that:

"This is how an economy shrinks, or it's at least one way an economy shrinks, and permanently at that."

All this was from 2010; but, it seems downright prescient now; we haven't climbed out of the hole that George Bush dug for us. Sadly, our young people probably never will!

More quotes -- this time from an Atlantic article: How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America:

If it persists much longer, this era of high joblessness will likely change the life course and character of a generation of young adults—and quite possibly those of the children behind them as well. It will leave an indelible imprint on many blue-collar white men—and on white culture. It could change the nature of modern marriage, and also cripple marriage as an institution in many communities. It may already be plunging many inner cities into a kind of despair and dysfunction not seen for decades. Ultimately, it is likely to warp our politics, our culture, and the character of our society for years.

...........//snip

The effects are going to passed down from one generation to another, if nothing is done. There is much talk about our children "inheriting" the federal deficit. But if our children inherit the jobs deficit and its consequences, they will have much less of a chance at dealing with the other deficit or any number of other challenges. With the loss of employment and income comes a loss of a host of opportunities that previous generations have inherited from their middle class parents. The decline in the workforce makes it inevitable that state and local governments will make cuts in everything from education to social services that have long helped make up at least some of the difference for children of needy families -- providing, if nothing else, an education and often the full stomach needed to take advantage of the opportunity.

What our children will inherit is fewer opportunities to do as well as or better than their parents. In fact, their children will likely do worse than their parents, as they will not only have fewer opportunities, but far lower expectations for themselves, based on what they see their parents struggling with. (And their parents will probably find it difficult to exhort their kids to get an education, since it will have done the parents little good to do so. The jobless economy they are graduating into now, will be little changed if the jobs deficit persists, as there will be fewer consumers, thus a lower demand for goods and services, and ultimately no need for employers to expand. If anything, it means more joblessness.