Most young workers have missed out on the boom
By David Moberg, 10/16/99
he world of work that young people face today is starkly different
from what their parents
encountered a few decades ago. For the vast majority, it is also
unlike the heavily hyped
image of youthful ''new media'' or Internet whizzes, bouncing comfortably
from job to job on their
way to their first million-dollar-stock-option deal.
Soren Schulien is more typical of the ''entrepreneurial'' young worker. A
25-year-old college
dropout, he has moved from one part-time service job to another - from Java
Central to Borders
Books to Havajava Bagel, never making more than $7 an hour, with few or no
benefits. Now he's
living in a Chicago suburb with his parents (''The number of people I know
who live with their
parents is insanely high,'' he says), taking technical courses and hoping
to find a better-paying job -
but far from the Web.
Schulien wants to clean up hazardous waste, like asbestos, or become an
apprentice electrician. He
also wants his new job to be unionized. ''I thought if retail workers had a
union, they might make
more,'' he said, reflecting on his hopes that the union formed at one
Borders store would expand to
his. ''Now they're completely expendable.''
The hype is that we have entered a post-industrial knowledge economy, but
three-fourths of
workers aged 18 to 35, such as Schulien, do not have college degrees. It's
hard to argue against
more and better education, but one big, largely ignored problem is that the
majority of new jobs
don't require advanced education - or allow the use of much intelligence on
the job.
The people filling them are expendable, easily replaceable - depending on
their industry - by
computers, low-wage workers overseas, desperate immigrants or the churning
sea of other young
workers.
Just as American society has grown more unequal over the past quarter
century, there is also a
widening gulf in the experience of young workers, between those with and
without college degrees.
Workers without a degree are far more likely than grads to have
substandard, unstable, poorly paid
jobs.
According to a recent survey by Peter D. Hart Research, conducted for the
AFL-CIO, 71 percent
of young college graduates have full-time, permanent jobs, but only half of
young nongraduates do.
Roughly 62 to 68 percent of young grads earn more than $20,000 a year and
have
employer-financed retirement and health plans, but only 36 to 39 percent of
nongrads do.
Young workers are the prime victims of a growing trend toward nonstandard
work - part-time,
temporary, leased or contract jobs. Half of all temporary workers are 20 to
34 years old,
according to the Department of Labor, and about one-sixth of young people
will work as a temp
before they are 35.
Some nonstandard workers (especially contractors) prefer the flexible
arrangement, but many more
(including most temps) would prefer a full-time, permanent job, which
almost always pays
significantly better in wages and benefits.
Despite divergent experiences of young workers, they all share something in
common: No matter
what their education or occupation, they are likely to be making much less
than their counterparts
did two decades ago. Even young technicians made 9 percent less in 1996
than in 1979, adjusting
for inflation, but the noncollege workers suffered a bigger hit. Young
skilled or semi-skilled factory
workers make one-fourth less, compared to the late 1970s, and laborers make
about 30 percent
less. Education helps the young worker in the job market, but even college
can't compensate for the
forces of globalization, corporate downsizing, anti-unionism and
laissez-faire government that are
squeezing most Americans' incomes.
As they watch the top 1 percent prosper (chief executive pay is up 480
percent since 1990, the
S&P 500 index up 224 percent), young workers are even more likely than
older ones - 77 percent
of those under 24, according to Hart, compared with 67 percent over 35 - to
think that America's
wealth is unfairly distributed.
They also view unions more favorably than older workers, and 54 percent
told the Hart pollsters
that they would probably or definitely vote for a union, compared to 36
percent of workers over
35.
They also want government to play a bigger role in raising standards for
corporations and providing
education, child care, health insurance, and a higher minimum wage.
Despite boom times, work for most young Americans in the ''new economy'' is
looking pretty old,
even if they use computers or wear ''business casual'' to work. Indeed,
they're looking a lot like
jobs before the labor movement lifted standards for most workers earlier in
this century.
That may help explain why, even though unions are unfamiliar, young workers
such as Schulien are
increasingly concluding that there's nothing hip about being stuck in lousy
jobs while a few people at
the top get rich.
David Moberg is a fellow of the Nation Institute and a senior editor at In
These Times.
This story ran on page A21 of the Boston Globe on 10/16/99.
© Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company.
