Gen Z on the Move

 

New report from the consulting firm Oliver Wyman has lots of interesting data on what young people in the United States and the United Kingdom look for in a job.  

An astonishing 62 percent of Gen Z workers are at least passively looking for a job as are 60 percent of Millennials (graphic below).  

Some other key findings

- Young people today are twice as likely to struggle with mental health issues as older workers.

- 41 percent of men and 48 percent of women have a side hustle of some sort whether it be a second formal or informal job.  

A key takeaway form the study is that young people want flexibility.  As I point out in my own research, the rigid environment of unionized workplaces is unlikely to provide the flexibility that young people need.

The United States should be freeing up workers, not forcing them into rigid employment relationships.  This is a big problem for the Democratic party as it pits one of their most important voting blocks (younger people) against one of their main funders (labor unions). 

New Survey Shows Gen Z is Remarkably Career Focused

 

There's a new survey on the career goals and higher education needs of Gen Z high schoolers out from Question the Quo.  The results show that younger Americans are very much focused on their careers and the practical education requirements necessary to achieve those goals.  

Findings were published in June 2023.  Fieldwork was done in January 2023.

Some high level takeaways from their January 2023 survey.  

- 65 percent think that some education after high school is necessary however 52 percent are considering a four year college, down from 65 percent in their February 2020 survey.  The letter follows a general decline in perceived value of a four year college experience and degree among the general population.

- Interest in community college, on-the-job training and career and technical education are all up from February 2020.

- Students eel unprepared for the next step.  Only 13 percent feel prepared for their next step after high school.  

- 63 percent say that they need more guidance on managing their finances.  

I personally am a big advocate for financial education.  There was a bill put forth in the Wisconsin legislature that would require some form of financial education in high schools.  Unfortunately, that bill was not enacted.   

- 53 percent want more formalized learning throughout their lives, up from 46 percent in 2021.  

Opportunities for formalized learning throughout one's career are important.  

My own view is that the Baby Boom generation, of which I am a part, was not good (or motivated) to develop others.  The Baby Boom was a large generation.  When generations are large, there's more competition for opportunities.  

The jobs website Indeed points out the competitive nature of the Baby Boomers.         

Up and coming generations are smaller and more interested in getting along rather than getting ahead.  This has virtues as well as drawbacks.  Nevertheless, successful employers need to meet their workers where they are and adapt to their desires.  Opportunities for life-long learning are one such area where employers need to step up their game.  

China’s Youth Unemployment Problem Provides More Evidence That Socialism Doesn’t Work

 

Karl Marx wrote that communism would solve the unemployment problem created by capitalism.  Evidence from China shows he had it backwards.

In 1847 Marx wrote: 

“Big industry constantly requires a reserve army of unemployed workers for times of overproduction. The main purpose of the bourgeois in relation to the worker is, of course, to have the commodity labour as cheaply as possible, which is only possible when the supply of this commodity is as large as possible in relation to the demand for it, i.e., when the overpopulation is the greatest.”

But does his critique of capitalism hold? 

China provides a natural experiment.  Were Marx correct that socialism solves the unemployment problem then we’d expect to see little or no unemployment in China. 

China is the world largest communist regime.  The Chinese Communist Party has been in power for 74 years.  Surely they must have gotten it right by now. 

Well, not so much.

The figure below contains the unemployment rate for young Chinese (between 16 and 24).  Their reported unemployment rate is almost 20 percent.  And since the Chinese government often fudges its figures, the actual youth unemployment rate may well be far higher. 

 

Compare that to the United States.  Youth unemployment in the United States never got above 20 percent.

 

This comparison show that socialism, even when practiced in its most extreme form (communism), doesn’t solve the unemployment problem.  In fact, it makes it worse.

The figure below contains average unemployment rates among young people between the ages of 20 and 34 for the advanced countries of the world (OECD member countries) over the past ten years.

The chart clearly shows that unemployment rates are lower in countries with economies that are closer to the capitalist economic model (more economic freedom) than those with larger public sectors and more regulation (less economic freedom).

 

Bottom line: socialism fails young people wherever its been tried.  And that’s a fact.   

 

Quiet Quitters and Productivity

Survey datashows that job dedication among young people is far lower than for older generations. Is this due to their upbringing--that what's important is me and my happiness? Or is it due to the fact that older people tend to be managers while young people are individual contributors? My experience is that it's far easier to be dedicated to your job if you are the one calling the shots versus the one taking orders. If the latter, it suggests that we are going to see very slow productivity growth going forward.

Newsweek: Number of U.S. NEETs grows due to COVID

 

Newsweek magazine reports that the number of young Americans employed or in education has increased massively since the state of the COVID pandemic. 

For one, the idea that they're all rejecting college because entry-level jobs pay much more than they used to turns out to be something of a myth: Bogged down perhaps by a pandemic malaise, as many as one in six young adults ages 18 to 24 are neither in school nor working, according to an analysis for Newsweek by Lightcast, a data-driven labor market consulting firm. In other words, they're doing...nothing.

Disconnected from the mainstream economy, these young adults risk staying unemployed and under-educated, struggling to catch up with their peers. "People who are not working nor in school are potentially missing out on some really formative skill building years," says Lightcast senior economist Layla O'Kane. Studies suggest these young people may face lifelong consequences, including lower wages throughout their careers, higher risk of unemployment and greater odds of poor health. 

Likely fearmongering over COVID had a big part in it.  Young people were told over and over again that the world was ending and that they were super-spreaders (both untrue).  Under those circumstances, who would be motivated to start a career, train for many years for a job, or start a business.   

Poll: Young People Reject Defunding the Police

 

A new poll by the Pew Research Center shows solid support for more funding for the police among young people.  The poll, taken in September 2021, found that 36 percent of Americans aged 18-49 support more funding for the police and another 40 percent support maintaining current funding levels.  Less than one in four—23 percent—want funding reduced.

Older Americans are overwhelming supportive of more funding with 59 percent supporting more funding and only 7 percent supporting less.

Americans of all races, ethnicities and political leanings all reject defunding.  Only one in four Democrats wants funding reduced.  Details from Pew appear below.

The unfortunate truth is that the defund the police movement has been terrible for young Americans.

Young people are more likely to live in urban areas than are older Americans and therefore more likely to be in cities like New York, Chicago, Portland, or Boston where funding for the police has been cut by progressive left-wing Democratic mayors. 

The toll on young people from the murder and mayhem resulting from police cutbacks has been enormous. 

Take the case of Chicago.  In 2019 Chicago elected a mayor who backs the defund the police movement.  Since that time the number of homicides involving young Chicagoans has skyrocketed.

In 2019, 365 Chicagoans under the age of 36 we killed.  In 2020, 570 Chicagoans between the ages of 0 and 35 were killed (including 101 teenagers and 14 that were younger than thirteen).  Chicago is on pace to beat 2020.  So far in 2021, 509 young Chicagoans have been murdered. 

The additional deaths of 400 young Chicagoans over the past two years provides stark evidence of the harms caused by the defund the police movement.   

The same trends are evident in Portland, Seattle, New York City, and Minneapolis—all cites with mayors and city councils that have defunded the police. 

Perhaps it is direct experience or that of friends or family with rising crime that is turning young people off to the defund the police movement.  In any event, the newfound appreciation for the police and law and order among young Americans is good news indeed.   

The Economist: Europe's Labor Markets Stacked Aginst The Young

In this week's issue The Economist notes that youth unemployment may, in the long run, prove to be the worst of Europe's many problems 

OF ALL the euro zone’s many problems, youth unemployment is perhaps the most distressing. Joblessness among young workers is around 30% in Portugal and nearly 50% in Spain. Above-average unemployment is the norm for young people, even in more liberal markets like America’s. But Spain’s youth unemployment rate jumped by nearly 20 percentage points between 2007 and 2009, compared with a rise of seven points in America. Labour-market regulations take much of the blame: while hard-to-fire older workers luxuriate on permanent contracts, the young are typically hired temporarily and are easier to sack.

Read the whole thing!