Low-Paid Grads On Tight Budgets Switching to Discounters

[marmar]

(Bloomberg) Michael Baum took every substitute teaching job he found and has sent out hundreds of resumes since graduating from college two years ago. He never got a full-time offer and works as a waiter in a pizza parlor in Chicago, earning $650 on a busy week.

“It’s discouraging,” said Baum, 25, who is certified to teach in Texas and North Carolina as well as his native Michigan. His pay is just enough to cover basic living expenses.

Baum has joined the growing number of underemployed graduates in the U.S., in an election year when both President Barack Obama and presumptive Republican challenger Mitt Romney are vying for young voters with promises to restore jobs. Underemployment isn’t debilitating only for individuals whose career and income opportunities are stunted. It threatens the economic expansion as college-educated young adults have traditionally fueled consumer spending on clothes, technology, entertainment and cars.

“If you have a stumbling entry into the labor market, you risk getting stuck in jobs for which you’re overqualified and poorly paid for the rest of your life,” said Katherine Newman, a sociologist and dean of the school of arts and sciences at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore who has studied the long- term effects of underemployment. “There’s a scarring effect, with employers you want marking you as undesirable. The economic toll is enormous.” ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-10/low-paid-grads-on-tight-budgets-switching-to-discounters.html

[xchrom]

1. Du rec. Nt

[geckosfeet]

2. Try exlpaining that to some poor sap who is only getting by with a

$250k after taxes income. What a horror being a stuck at that employment level must be.

[Javaman]

3. A friend of mine is getting her doctorate...

she told my GF and I that she will be so deeply in debt that she has no idea how she's going to pay off her loan.

She's 29.

The US, 30 years from now will be a very terrifying place to live. there will effectively be no middle class left.