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but when I graduated from college in the Reagan era, unemployment was over 10% in my state. Life wasn't no crystal stair for me either. I imagine that I am not the only one who was seriously unemployed/underemployed when I graduated, as opposed to walking right into a well-paying entry-level job in my field after having had to choose the best from bouquets of offers from eager employers.
When I was young, those bouquets of job offers seemed to exist only for those who had majored in business, engineering or computer science, which was not me.
Of course, I realize even those majors can't walk into great jobs anymore, largely because what they do has been offshored, and that's sad. I just question the impression many of these stories present that college graduates in the past always had their pick of wonderful jobs to choose from the second they got their degrees, and only now are they finding the door closed to their wonderful fresh young selves. I don't think that has been true for a long time. Most of us had to pay our dues in low-paying first jobs we hated...assuming we could FIND jobs. That is not new. And we all thought it was somehow going to be different for us than for our older peers, too...THEY might have had a tough time, but everyone would want US. Then the cold reality set in.
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