The Next Greatest Generation?
My wife and I have four kids. Well you can't technically call them kids because they are between the ages of 25 - 20. So I'll say, we have four young adult "children". Well for a while now a lot of people, including me, thought that this generation was "spoiled". Meaning they grew up with a lot more stuff then any generation before.
What I didn't take into account was the great recession of 2008 and beyond. You see, since my oldest and some of yours to, have graduated high school and now college. This generation is going through a harder recession and job search then I went though when I graduated high school in 1980. To call an average kid today a "spoiled kid" is real dis-service to these kids. The national unemployment rate for youth (16-24) is at 17.1% as of July 2012 (per government statistics).
When I was a teenager getting an after school job meant extra pocket money for dates. Today is helping to support the family to just pay bills. With their moms and dads struggling under the debt of house payments and ever increasing fuel and food prices. A debt that at one time wasn't a strain until the recession took millions of decent jobs and with it the money we made. Now parents and kids fight for jobs that at one time only teenagers filled.
For me I know first hand what's it like to not have a job. You see, my last employer left the country taking my job overseas. Leaving me with no severance package and an unemployment check that was less than half my original salary. Thankfully, I had the foresight to start back to school before my job left. But now that I'm weeks away from graduation even the local Wally World won't take my application.
I recall my grandparents telling me about raising my dad and his siblings in the '30's & '40's as sharecroppers in South Georgia. About how they struggled just to buy shoes and made dresses from flour sacks. But that was a different time when most rural people raised their own food anyway. Today you may have a garden to support you, but what about the other things we had taken for granted like electricity and running water. And what about those who live in urban areas? Where do they plant a garden and maintain it while working a minimum wage job across town.
I guess I'm rambling on to say our children are getting quite an education in how the world works. Hopefully if a lesson comes out of all this it will be greed isn't good and that family comes first. One of my main reasons for going back to school was to set the example that it's never too late to finish something to get what you want. All we can hope for now is that the world doesn't make a liar out of me.
What I didn't take into account was the great recession of 2008 and beyond. You see, since my oldest and some of yours to, have graduated high school and now college. This generation is going through a harder recession and job search then I went though when I graduated high school in 1980. To call an average kid today a "spoiled kid" is real dis-service to these kids. The national unemployment rate for youth (16-24) is at 17.1% as of July 2012 (per government statistics).
When I was a teenager getting an after school job meant extra pocket money for dates. Today is helping to support the family to just pay bills. With their moms and dads struggling under the debt of house payments and ever increasing fuel and food prices. A debt that at one time wasn't a strain until the recession took millions of decent jobs and with it the money we made. Now parents and kids fight for jobs that at one time only teenagers filled.
For me I know first hand what's it like to not have a job. You see, my last employer left the country taking my job overseas. Leaving me with no severance package and an unemployment check that was less than half my original salary. Thankfully, I had the foresight to start back to school before my job left. But now that I'm weeks away from graduation even the local Wally World won't take my application.
I recall my grandparents telling me about raising my dad and his siblings in the '30's & '40's as sharecroppers in South Georgia. About how they struggled just to buy shoes and made dresses from flour sacks. But that was a different time when most rural people raised their own food anyway. Today you may have a garden to support you, but what about the other things we had taken for granted like electricity and running water. And what about those who live in urban areas? Where do they plant a garden and maintain it while working a minimum wage job across town.
I guess I'm rambling on to say our children are getting quite an education in how the world works. Hopefully if a lesson comes out of all this it will be greed isn't good and that family comes first. One of my main reasons for going back to school was to set the example that it's never too late to finish something to get what you want. All we can hope for now is that the world doesn't make a liar out of me.
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