This Economy
 

I hate it.

So very much.

These are my personal feelings:

I don't think getting a job will ever be the same in capitalistic United States. Outsourcing to India and China and cheap labor nations will even start to do all of our computer programming and accounting. The ability to climb the corporate ladder will never exist again. You need to create new technologically advanced and convenient ideas, and then sell it for all it's worth before someone else thinks of it too.

Sorry, mad rant because I'm still an underemployed 2010 college graduate. But I'm still very mad, because I feel like my bachelor's degree is completely worthless and I'm not ready to go back to school for a master's (nor can afford it).

Blame the wealthy.

Fresh, what are you doing with your underemployed self to make you more employable?

My suggestions:

Degrees are worthless. It's what you do with the knowledge that counts. The more people that have the same degree that you do, the less it's worth even to the unenlightened.

Build a portfolio. Start doing the job that you want, and soon you might actually be paid to do it.

Anyway, these are my personal feelings:

I love this economy, but I'm annoyed at the hysterical responses. Make a plan that fits the circumstances and keep hustling. Don't whine that today is not the same as yesterday.

I think it's getting tougher worldwide to get a job if you aren't providing enough value to justify the expense of employing you. This is a net good. The momentum of productivity gains from the industrial and information revolutions that has persisted until recently is all but gone.

I am betting there will be another such revolution in the next 100 years.

Some people will have trouble adjusting to the increased shift toward entrepreneurial capitalism our economy is going through, especially established families. I think new and first-gen immigrants will be fine with that, since the hustle is their milieu.

Fuck the corporate ladder. Build your own.

(ever read "The Rise of David Levinsky"?)

I am optimistic.

By the way, I'm a computer programmer. I've switched jobs three times since the first crisis in 2008. I got my first job in the middle of the .com bust. Most of the programmers I know that are unemployed deserve to be so because of poor choices or lack of skill.

Accounting is a more or less scripted job, though I'm certain there are forms that are highly specialized that are likely to stay on-shore.

Manufacturing? We should model it after Germany's manufacturing industry. High-end, specialized equipment.

I'm happy to send away low-skill jobs.

My BA History degree isn't doing jack for me other than just being there saying "yes I can do the work and complete a long-term goal". The key to my job market is personal connections. Sure I had to go through EMT and firefighter training to get qualified, but to make myself stand out I had to make connections through different departments. Put in the work, get to know people, volunteer for everything you can, stay on their radar screen, and then when something opens up you are top of the list.

I got hired at my new EMT job through this method. I used a guy I know who works there as a reference. Who I worked with at my old EMT job, which I in turn had gotten by getting to know someone on a volunteer department. Work every angle you can and don't burn any bridges.

This economy is the best! What better excuse could there possibly be for sitting on your ass and blaming "the man"!

Praise the lord!

Underemployed means exactly what in your case? Part-time? An internship? If it's at all in the field you want to be in, you can make it a path to something better. Work as if you were fully-employed in this position, and you'll stand out.

Never forget what created it. How many so hated America as to support "Mission Accomplished"? In 30 some years when another president lies for a political agenda (as Nixon did in 1968), then you will know better. Then you will know what will happen to jobs and the economy four and ten years later. Welcome to what I warned about here in the Cellar back in 2003. Not just warned. Also said ‘why’ it would happen. I even put a number to it. $400billion. That, the highest predicted number when Rumsfeld was saying $2billion, is far below what Mission Accomplished actually cost. And did not include the resulting economic calamity that always follows. As I said so often then (and do not forget it in 2035):
Deja Vue Nam.