I agree with most of what you said but I don't feel too bad for young people.
- Back when I graduated college the unemployment rate was nearly 8%. Today it's just over 4%. Young people today have a much easier time finding jobs.
- Pay is generally good too. My local McDonald's is offering $19.50 to start. Local manufacturers are paying $22/hr with full benefits - no experience necessary. I saw a sign that my school district is looking for bus drivers at $29.50/hr to start. UPS drivers, dock workers, etc are making 6 figures.
- We were very lucky to get an 8.5% mortgage on our first house. They went up to 14% shortly after that.
- Today's youth has far more luxuries than we had. A cell phone is just the beginning.
- The Great Wealth Transfer is just beginning. $53 trillion will be passed down from boomers to their Gen X, millennial and Gen Z heirs, as well as to charities.
All good points.
It's an interesting picture these days...and not necessarily interesting in a good way.
On the one hand, as you suggest, I see help-wanted signs all over the place. Restaurants, factories, county government, retail stores...the list goes on.
On the other hand, most of these positions don't seem to be of the sort that lend themselves to long-term careers in support of families and communities.
Forbes published an article earlier this year describing the problems that college graduates are having in finding decent jobs after graduation. Of course the article also discussed how one of the reasons for this is that a lot of these kids are simply not grown up, and companies are looking for grown-ups or people who can at least come across as grown-ups in interviews.
To your point, however, I'm pretty sure most of our five married kids are not heavily invested in the stock market but they (and/or their spouses) are building good careers and providing good lives for their children by simple virtue of high character and hard work, the two elements that have always been the most important elements of success in life, no matter the prevailing economic conditions.
You said not to feel bad for young people today, but in a way I do because they grew up in a consumer society with a variety of comforts and privileges that were unimaginable in previous ages of history while being conditioned to think of success in terms of acquiring things.
Yet by and large, I don't know that most of them were given the most important thing of all, something you can't put a price tag on but is essential: a sense of meaning and purpose in life. I think that's the foundation of character...and character is the foundation of success in everything else.
