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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsCan’t find a job? Move overseas.
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
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Demeter
(85,373 posts)Also known as putting all the eggs in one basket, then smashing the basket.
pampango
(24,692 posts)
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Small, decentralized, decoupled economies, not interlinked by massive corporate systems, can sustain small spasms that heal quickly, and the worker can travel short distances to find work if the spasm lasts too long, and return when conditions improve back home, if desired.
But now, with 147 closely coupled Corporations pulling all the strings, there is no independence, which we have seen already.
When one bank goes down (say, Lehmans), they all go down and so do all their clients, unless some government backstops the entire global financial system (like US).
Is this any way to run an economy? Are people safer, better employed, able to plan their futures? NO!
For more education on the subject, DU hosts an excellent Stock Market Watch daily thread, and a weekly Weekend Economists thread, bringing data, analysis, and humor to the subject. (Disclosure, I am a long-time participant in those group efforts, and started the Weekend effort).
aletier_v
(1,773 posts)It never made sense in its current (i.e. this century) form.
It's mostly a play on temporary differentials that are already playing out,
that's partly why we had the 2008 crash. It's currently morphing into
"regional globalism" which makes a little more sense but will still suffer
an additional failure in the near future, I think.
There's just no fricking reason to buy raw materials in South America,
ship it to Asia to processing, then back to Japan to more processing,
and then back over to the U.S. for assembly
and back to Europe for sales.
It's fricking insanity and I strongly suspect future historians will view it as such.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)because the system is unsustainable, ineffective, and intent on killing us all.
Honeycombe8
(37,648 posts)Singapore has several official languages; English is one of them, so that's fine. If you move to China, that official language is Chinese, of course. French is the official for France. And so on.
ErikJ
(6,335 posts)..........Without knowing Cantonese, considered one of the world’s hardest languages, we may never feel like locals. But now more than ever, “local” is hard to define. Our friends here are from all over — the United States, Britain, India, Italy, South Africa, Greece. A few came for the adventure. But most others came for the jobs.
HereSince1628
(36,063 posts)Self-interested little sn*** think they can get ahead by ditching their responsibilities...well just you wait and see how that works out in the WILL!!!!
Work your fingers to the bone....and what do you get... SHIT and SHINOLA! Little brats have no sense of decency...
Little Star
(17,055 posts)
bluestateguy
(44,173 posts)She is making more money than she ever did in any job she previously had here.
ChisolmTrailDem
(9,463 posts)there's no way in hell I'm leaving the U.S.!
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Lydia Leftcoast
(48,217 posts)and never came back. She kept postponing her return and has ended up spending her whole career there. I asked her what her parents thought about it, and she said that eventually they realized that she was enjoying a much better quality of life in Norway than she would have in the U.S.
RainDog
(28,784 posts)have made other nations more attractive for talented young people.
America used to be the nation where those looking for opportunity would come to study and stay.
This is a reverse brain drain and it's an example of why a refusal to update America's social safety net and minimum wage, treating colleges as corporate entities rather than investments in America's young people and so on... has been so bad.
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)The US used to be the beneficiary...hmmm brain drain. That's it. Welcome to banana republic status.
ErikJ
(6,335 posts)A gamble that you wont get very sick or injured and die or lose everything. 1 million people a year in the US declare bankruptcy from medical bills. It would be reasonable to move overseas just for their universal health care alone.
RagAss
(13,832 posts)It's a fucking frontier, fleeced by the rich until the courage comes to overthrow them.
southernyankeebelle
(11,304 posts)tabasco
(22,974 posts)There are many places and they are all different.
Some are better than others and the USA is best in some ways and worst in other ways, for me.
southernyankeebelle
(11,304 posts)in Germany or Italy or Spain for that matter. My husband and I both have european relatives but they aren't the immediate family. But I could see me living there. But there is no place like home during the holidays, period. I miss 4th of July when living in europe. Just little things like that.
