Well, I wouldn't rack up $100,000 debt pursuing a BA and MA to be a lab tech then. Seems like a poor set of career choices.
Does America not need lab techs? Because it looks to me like you've got a mission critical career in our economy that people cannot afford to go into, that's a major societal issue.
Well, all the professors and lead researchers and doctors could do all the lab work themselves. They get paid hundreds of thousands a year, and they'd all be completely useless without armies of underpaid graduate students and lab techs, but to fix that would require America to find having a top-heavy economy troubling.
I actually think this is part of the problem. I've got friends working for pharmaceutical testing in labs and doing site visits. They get paid crap, but they were hired with the understanding that they would move up as performance and turnover permits.
Years later, they are still doing lab work and site visits. People aren't moving up in this economy, so the salaries that make the loans a good decision never appear.
Maybe it just doesn't pay much in North Carolina. DoL statistics show much higher wages. Cursory googling shows much higher wages. Heck, I know someone that used to be a lab tech and made much higher wages.
'Course, that was in an economy where people with 30 years of experience weren't competing with people fresh out of college for the same entry level jobs.
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mrt144King of the NumbernamesRegistered Userregular
This is always a hot topic issue but maybe a problem with universities in the united states is that maybe all colleges at the universities should not be treated equally in regards to tuition charged. It seems unreasonable for someone who has only had peripheral experience with university life to look in and see someone paying the same amount of money for a degree that has completely different time investment requirements and career prospects afterwards, especially if credentialism has become so engrained into the basic fabric of the labor market.
'Course, that was in an economy where people with 30 years of experience weren't competing with people fresh out of college for the same entry level jobs.
Bingo. The tech job market has been increasingly broken for awhile.
As for North Carolina, it's not some backwater. The RTP is a big deal:
Well, I wouldn't rack up $100,000 debt pursuing a BA and MA to be a lab tech then. Seems like a poor set of career choices.
Does America not need lab techs? Because it looks to me like you've got a mission critical career in our economy that people cannot afford to go into, that's a major societal issue.
Well, all the professors and lead researchers and doctors could do all the lab work themselves. They get paid hundreds of thousands a year, and they'd all be completely useless without armies of underpaid graduate students and lab techs, but to fix that would require America to find having a top-heavy economy troubling.
To a degree, yes, they need other people to do as well as they do, but on the other hand, they also can be better able to do their best work if they delegate other work to other people.
Never said NC was a backwater w/r/t lab tech jobs. Just that maybe entry level jobs don't pay as much there as they would in somewhere with a higher CoL.
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mrt144King of the NumbernamesRegistered Userregular
I actually think this is part of the problem. I've got friends working for pharmaceutical testing in labs and doing site visits. They get paid crap, but they were hired with the understanding that they would move up as performance and turnover permits.
Years later, they are still doing lab work and site visits. People aren't moving up in this economy, so the salaries that make the loans a good decision never appear.
The thing that's kind of funny about that though is the ability to imagine your life without the degree that opened the door to a job that hasn't had any advancement in 3 years.
It's interesting and cool to me that there has been blowback against law schools because of what they create and the very high stakes involved.
I actually think this is part of the problem. I've got friends working for pharmaceutical testing in labs and doing site visits. They get paid crap, but they were hired with the understanding that they would move up as performance and turnover permits.
Years later, they are still doing lab work and site visits. People aren't moving up in this economy, so the salaries that make the loans a good decision never appear.
The thing that's kind of funny about that though is the ability to imagine your life without the degree that opened the door to a job that hasn't had any advancement in 3 years.
It's interesting and cool to me that there has been blowback against law schools because of what they create and the very high stakes involved.
I actually think this is part of the problem. I've got friends working for pharmaceutical testing in labs and doing site visits. They get paid crap, but they were hired with the understanding that they would move up as performance and turnover permits.
Years later, they are still doing lab work and site visits. People aren't moving up in this economy, so the salaries that make the loans a good decision never appear.
The thing that's kind of funny about that though is the ability to imagine your life without the degree that opened the door to a job that hasn't had any advancement in 3 years.
It's interesting and cool to me that there has been blowback against law schools because of what they create and the very high stakes involved.
Thousands of dollars not in debt?
There are tons of unemployed law school graduates right now. Some of them racked up 6 figures of debt to get there, figuring they'd get the kind of money (some) lawyers do. Whoops!
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mrt144King of the NumbernamesRegistered Userregular
I actually think this is part of the problem. I've got friends working for pharmaceutical testing in labs and doing site visits. They get paid crap, but they were hired with the understanding that they would move up as performance and turnover permits.
Years later, they are still doing lab work and site visits. People aren't moving up in this economy, so the salaries that make the loans a good decision never appear.
The thing that's kind of funny about that though is the ability to imagine your life without the degree that opened the door to a job that hasn't had any advancement in 3 years.
It's interesting and cool to me that there has been blowback against law schools because of what they create and the very high stakes involved.
Thousands of dollars not in debt?
What would net monthly income (Post Tax income minus all debt service) be without that job and an average job that doesn't require a college education and what is the likelihood you'd have faced job loss in that situation.
The thing that you have to consider is that for someone in the situation you describe, the marginal value of that degree weighed against the debt used to pay for it has only lost it's value in comparison to future expectations, there are still huge underlying benefits to having the degree in comparison to not, both in current expectations and opportunity.
What would net monthly income (Post Tax income minus all debt service) be without that job and an average job that doesn't require a college education and what is the likelihood you'd have faced job loss in that situation.
The thing that you have to consider is that for someone in the situation you describe, the marginal value of that degree weighed against the debt used to pay for it has only lost it's value in comparison to future expectations, there are still huge underlying benefits to having the degree in comparison to not, both in current expectations and opportunity.
Still the argument that you're only slightly less fucked than the truly fucked isn't exactly comforting.
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mrt144King of the NumbernamesRegistered Userregular
What would net monthly income (Post Tax income minus all debt service) be without that job and an average job that doesn't require a college education and what is the likelihood you'd have faced job loss in that situation.
The thing that you have to consider is that for someone in the situation you describe, the marginal value of that degree weighed against the debt used to pay for it has only lost it's value in comparison to future expectations, there are still huge underlying benefits to having the degree in comparison to not, both in current expectations and opportunity.
Still the argument that you're only slightly less fucked than the truly fucked isn't exactly comforting.
But it's absolutely important to realize that when almost everyone has been fucked in one way or another in the past 3 years.
And for the people that are thousands and thousands in debt from college and currently unemployed/underemployed etc etc we should in equal parts be honest that a lot got boned just because of the job market alone and a lot got boned by a systemic problem with higher education and credentialism in this country.
What would net monthly income (Post Tax income minus all debt service) be without that job and an average job that doesn't require a college education and what is the likelihood you'd have faced job loss in that situation.
The thing that you have to consider is that for someone in the situation you describe, the marginal value of that degree weighed against the debt used to pay for it has only lost it's value in comparison to future expectations, there are still huge underlying benefits to having the degree in comparison to not, both in current expectations and opportunity.
Still the argument that you're only slightly less fucked than the truly fucked isn't exactly comforting.
Participation(Unemployment) rates Aug '11 seasonally adjusted Age 25+:
Did not finish HS: 46.7 (14.3%)
HS-Only : 60% (9.6%)
Associates or some College : 69.2% (8%)
Bachelors and higher : 76.0 (4.3%)
Never said NC was a backwater w/r/t lab tech jobs. Just that maybe entry level jobs don't pay as much there as they would in somewhere with a higher CoL.
Cost of living in North Carolina, and most of the urbanized South, has equalized with the rest of the nation in the last two decades. One of the side effects of the massive influx of retirees and professionals from across the world into the region is that prices have risen to levels equal or exceeding the national norm.
What haven't increased are wages. That's one of the reasons that the economy feels more desperate down here than it does in the Northeast.
I actually had this conversation last night with two Californians who migrated here. One was a semi-retiree who started a restaurant when he realized that keeping his job as an nurse with experience managing ERs meant his pay would be cut to a third. The other ran a lab testing the purity of pharmaceutical ingredients and actually got a raise to come here, only to realize that she was paid several times more than the local hires in her company.
The one thing that both mentioned was that, while the cost of living was less in N.C., it was not so much less that working in the South at local wages was a good deal. If housing, food and gas cost a third less, but overall pay is a third, you do not come out ahead.
This is the reason that the South - and many similar spots in the nation - with low cost of living are also the spots with massive poverty and unemployment.
I dispute that the CoL has "normalized" with major cities in the Northeast and on the West coast, so if you have a citation I'd be interested to see it.
I am sure that the CoL has increased, so do you have any theory as to why wages haven't increased, particularly for jobs that require a formal education?
I am continually amazed at how expensive some US colleges are. I didn't go to a super prestigious school or anything, but my B.Eng cost me $15000 total. Net positive with work terms.
Private universities can be really expensive, sure. Sometimes its worth it, though- a Harvard, Stanford or MIT degree opens a lot of doors. But there are plenty of mediocre private colleges that don't make sense from a cost/benefit analysis.
You can still get a reasonably priced high-quality public school education, though. A year's worth of tuition in-state at the University of Michigan is about $13,000.
Aetian Jupiter - 41 Gunslinger - The Old Republic
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I am continually amazed at how expensive some US colleges are. I didn't go to a super prestigious school or anything, but my B.Eng cost me $15000 total. Net positive with work terms.
Private universities can be really expensive, sure. Sometimes its worth it, though- a Harvard, Stanford or MIT degree opens a lot of doors. But there are plenty of mediocre private colleges that don't make sense from a cost/benefit analysis.
You can still get a reasonably priced high-quality public school education, though. A year's worth of tuition in-state at the University of Michigan is about $13,000.
A year of out of country tuition at McGill, one of the top ranking universities internationally, is the same price. You also get free healthcare. No one should attend university in the states if they can help it.
I am continually amazed at how expensive some US colleges are. I didn't go to a super prestigious school or anything, but my B.Eng cost me $15000 total. Net positive with work terms.
Private universities can be really expensive, sure. Sometimes its worth it, though- a Harvard, Stanford or MIT degree opens a lot of doors. But there are plenty of mediocre private colleges that don't make sense from a cost/benefit analysis.
You can still get a reasonably priced high-quality public school education, though. A year's worth of tuition in-state at the University of Michigan is about $13,000.
A year of out of country tuition at McGill, one of the top ranking universities internationally, is the same price. You also get free healthcare. No one should attend university in the states if they can help it.
No one? That's an incredibly broad statement. And there are only a limited number of openings in universities abroad. It's not really a solution for most people. But good and affordable public colleges are available to many more Americans. And, for anyone who can reasonably afford to go to a school like Harvard or MIT, that's a better long-term investment than saving some money and going to McGill.
Nothing against Canadian universities, though. My sons will be able to go there and pay the citizen tuition, even though they'll likely never live in Canada
Modern Man on
Aetian Jupiter - 41 Gunslinger - The Old Republic
Rigorous Scholarship
What would net monthly income (Post Tax income minus all debt service) be without that job and an average job that doesn't require a college education and what is the likelihood you'd have faced job loss in that situation.
The thing that you have to consider is that for someone in the situation you describe, the marginal value of that degree weighed against the debt used to pay for it has only lost it's value in comparison to future expectations, there are still huge underlying benefits to having the degree in comparison to not, both in current expectations and opportunity.
Still the argument that you're only slightly less fucked than the truly fucked isn't exactly comforting.
Participation(Unemployment) rates Aug '11 seasonally adjusted Age 25+:
Did not finish HS: 46.7 (14.3%)
HS-Only : 60% (9.6%)
Associates or some College : 69.2% (8%)
Bachelors and higher : 76.0 (4.3%)
That's a huge difference.
The key word here is 25+. That's 4 years of experience.
I heard on NPR today that the Spring graduates of 2011 have a 60% unemployment rate.
[The key word here is 25+. That's 4 years of experience.
I heard on NPR today that the Spring graduates of 2011 have a 60% unemployment rate.
60%.
We're in the middle of a shitty economy. Eventually, things will improve and people with college degrees will be better off, long-term, than people without a degree. Unless you think our economy has entered some sort of situation where new college graduates are going to have a 60% unemployment rate perpetually.
And I imagine the employment rate for people looking for work right out of high school right now is probably pretty bleak, too.
Aetian Jupiter - 41 Gunslinger - The Old Republic
Rigorous Scholarship
[The key word here is 25+. That's 4 years of experience.
I heard on NPR today that the Spring graduates of 2011 have a 60% unemployment rate.
60%.
We're in the middle of a shitty economy. Eventually, things will improve and people with college degrees will be better off, long-term, than people without a degree. Unless you think our economy has entered some sort of situation where new college graduates are going to have a 60% unemployment rate perpetually.
And I imagine the employment rate for people looking for work right out of high school right now is probably pretty bleak, too.
A) That doesn't mean there isn't a problem to be resolved
They might not be significantly better off if they can't get experience in their field.
C) Considering the harm to retirement benefits, the scaling back of workforces, and the more experienced people kicking around in lower tier positions, it's not unthinkable that we may actually have a systemic employment problem on our hands for people entering the workforce.
You raise some good points. But, I don't think people can expect to make their long-term employment prospects better by getting less education. Unless they're going into high-demand trades. It's not like there's a plethora of good jobs for people who only have a high school degree.
Aetian Jupiter - 41 Gunslinger - The Old Republic
Rigorous Scholarship
I am continually amazed at how expensive some US colleges are. I didn't go to a super prestigious school or anything, but my B.Eng cost me $15000 total. Net positive with work terms.
Private universities can be really expensive, sure. Sometimes its worth it, though- a Harvard, Stanford or MIT degree opens a lot of doors. But there are plenty of mediocre private colleges that don't make sense from a cost/benefit analysis.
You can still get a reasonably priced high-quality public school education, though. A year's worth of tuition in-state at the University of Michigan is about $13,000.
Which was something like 8k (and an inflation adjusted $560 60 years ago) a decade ago. It's insane.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
I dispute that the CoL has "normalized" with major cities in the Northeast and on the West coast, so if you have a citation I'd be interested to see it.
I am sure that the CoL has increased, so do you have any theory as to why wages haven't increased, particularly for jobs that require a formal education?
Looking at this, I stand by this. Housing is slightly lower than the national average, but not by that much. Everything else in the Southern cities seem to be in line with the national averages.
As for why wages haven't increased, North Carolina is a right-to-work state with laws that make it extremely difficult for workers to organize. This fact has been a major bragging point for economic development types since the 1920s, so I'm taking their word that this keeps "labor costs" down. The same is true for the rest of the South.
And it's worth noting that "right to work" laws are on the agenda for state GOP parties throughout the nation. There's a move by the GOP to emulate the "Southern Miracle" nationwide.
We're talking about different things I guess. It may have normalized compared to the country "as a whole", but not as compared to other large cities that it competes with for talent. Compared to them it is still significantly cheaper.
We're talking about different things I guess. It may have normalized compared to the country "as a whole", but not as compared to other large cities that it competes with for talent. Compared to them it is still significantly cheaper.
Oh sure, we're nowhere near the cost of living of Los Angeles or New York.
What I was getting it was that wages in the South and large areas of the Midwest and West are far below the national average and facing huge unemployment numbers while the cost of living has crept up to the national average. Without a rise in wages that equalizes with the cost of living, lots of people are struggling to make ends meet.
This is always a hot topic issue but maybe a problem with universities in the united states is that maybe all colleges at the universities should not be treated equally in regards to tuition charged. It seems unreasonable for someone who has only had peripheral experience with university life to look in and see someone paying the same amount of money for a degree that has completely different time investment requirements and career prospects afterwards, especially if credentialism has become so engrained into the basic fabric of the labor market.
The reason that this is so can be explained with some basic economics.
In introductory economics it was probably explained that the price of a good reflected its real relative cost in the economy (I.E. the relative price of the good reflected the amount of resources used to generate it relative to another). For the most part this is relatively true in many types of markets.
Such it can be useful to examine the costs of education based on the degree and if you do so you will find that except for engineering and lab sciences the cost to provide the degree is about the same. The properties that make good researchers also make competitive business people and as such the opportunity costs of professors, even in the soft sciences and humanities can be quite high. At the very least, those who have PHD's in History and English have demonstrated an aptitude to work and scholarship which will signal their competency (yes, i know the stories of out of work English doctorates but I am willing to bet that the numbers are much lower for them than for general undergraduates). Because of this and because of the similar time investment that you find for each doctorate the costs to achieve a degree are typically relatively stable across disciplines.
Engineering and lab sciences are typically subsidized by extra fees.
In short, its not the time investment requirements and career prospects (frankly i would say that those with the highest time investment requirements have the lowest "career prospects" but that is just a predilection of mine to the ease of science/engineering/math curriculum and the relative dearth of writing that goes on in such programs) that determine the cost, its the expense required to maintain the curriculum, which is relatively stable.
I dispute that the CoL has "normalized" with major cities in the Northeast and on the West coast, so if you have a citation I'd be interested to see it.
I am sure that the CoL has increased, so do you have any theory as to why wages haven't increased, particularly for jobs that require a formal education?
Looking at this, I stand by this. Housing is slightly lower than the national average, but not by that much. Everything else in the Southern cities seem to be in line with the national averages.
As for why wages haven't increased, North Carolina is a right-to-work state with laws that make it extremely difficult for workers to organize. This fact has been a major bragging point for economic development types since the 1920s, so I'm taking their word that this keeps "labor costs" down. The same is true for the rest of the South.
And it's worth noting that "right to work" laws are on the agenda for state GOP parties throughout the nation. There's a move by the GOP to emulate the "Southern Miracle" nationwide.
I don't know about wages, but it has certainly generated some jobs because companies have shifted manufacturing to the Carolinas specifically to avoid union issues (e.g. the Boeing dreamliner plant that was built in Charleston).
Obviously, if the entire country had a similar stance on unions, then it would cease to be a competitive advantage. But when your bully pulpit is that we created X number of jobs for the economy with these laws, then it's not really surprising to see politicians leap at it.
Obviously, if the entire country had a similar stance on unions, then it would cease to be a competitive advantage. But when your bully pulpit is that we created X number of jobs for the economy with these laws, then it's not really surprising to see politicians leap at it.
Support for the issue is killing the GOP in Ohio. They are a union state, and on the border of the South, so the voters know exactly what "right to work" politicians are peddling and want none of it.
This is despite the dire situation of the economy in Ohio. Voters there are smart enough to know that the solution to their problems is not "be more like Texas, Mississippi and Alabama."
Yeah places like Texas have created jobs but more and more of them are minimum wage ones. Creating a nation of Walmart greeters isn't going to solve our problems
Not sure what that has to do with the right to work vs union thing. I don't think a union is going to solve the problem of minimum wage jobs in retail hell. Retail jobs have to exist in every state regardless of political climate, and they aren't going to pay much more than minimum wage for a variety of reasons.
The jobs that states are trying to lure are manufacturing/industrial, and it has met with at least some (anecdotal) success. I don't know the numbers behind it, but, assuming that unions are costly for businesses (and how could they not be), it isn't very surprising for companies to choose non-unionized areas when feasible.
Not sure what that has to do with the right to work vs union thing. I don't think a union is going to solve the problem of minimum wage jobs in retail hell. Retail jobs have to exist in every state regardless of political climate, and they aren't going to pay much more than minimum wage for a variety of reasons.
Unionized states have higher wages than right to work states, across the board. One of the side effects of unionization is that it raises wages across the board.
And the big push in unionization has been service sector jobs - i.e. retail, housekeeping and the like. As the traditional manufacturing unions are dying, groups like the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) are seeing large membership increases.
Obviously, if the entire country had a similar stance on unions, then it would cease to be a competitive advantage. But when your bully pulpit is that we created X number of jobs for the economy with these laws, then it's not really surprising to see politicians leap at it.
Support for the issue is killing the GOP in Ohio. They are a union state, and on the border of the South, so the voters know exactly what "right to work" politicians are peddling and want none of it.
This is despite the dire situation of the economy in Ohio. Voters there are smart enough to know that the solution to their problems is not "be more like Texas, Mississippi and Alabama."
Reminds me of the former Michigan governor who was on The Daily Show recently talking about how states are just competing with other states for jobs, but nobody's actually bringing any new jobs to the US, so it's just a downward spiral of worker compensation and rights, chasing the unemployment rabbit around in circles.
So long as it's easy to ship jobs overseas, and the fact that most over seas employees --whether blue or white collar-- are much much cheaper than American workers, this trend will continue.
"Simple, real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time." -Mustrum Ridcully in Terry Pratchett's Hogfather p. 142 (HarperPrism 1996)
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Well, all the professors and lead researchers and doctors could do all the lab work themselves. They get paid hundreds of thousands a year, and they'd all be completely useless without armies of underpaid graduate students and lab techs, but to fix that would require America to find having a top-heavy economy troubling.
I don't support that salary statement.
I have some friends who were able to get around 50,000/yr with bio degrees (Pre-Economic Collapse)
On the other hand I know friends doing the same job earning 18/hr (Post-Economic Collapse)
I actually think this is part of the problem. I've got friends working for pharmaceutical testing in labs and doing site visits. They get paid crap, but they were hired with the understanding that they would move up as performance and turnover permits.
Years later, they are still doing lab work and site visits. People aren't moving up in this economy, so the salaries that make the loans a good decision never appear.
From what my friends tell me, this is not unusual in my area:
http://www.careerbuilder.com/JobSeeker/Jobs/JobDetails.aspx?ipath=EXIND&siteid=cbindeed&Job_DID=J8A5B1729RMWB835F4J
$13/hr. with a 4-year degree and 2-5 years of experience.
'Course, that was in an economy where people with 30 years of experience weren't competing with people fresh out of college for the same entry level jobs.
Bingo. The tech job market has been increasingly broken for awhile.
As for North Carolina, it's not some backwater. The RTP is a big deal:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_Triangle_Park
To a degree, yes, they need other people to do as well as they do, but on the other hand, they also can be better able to do their best work if they delegate other work to other people.
The thing that's kind of funny about that though is the ability to imagine your life without the degree that opened the door to a job that hasn't had any advancement in 3 years.
It's interesting and cool to me that there has been blowback against law schools because of what they create and the very high stakes involved.
Thousands of dollars not in debt?
There are tons of unemployed law school graduates right now. Some of them racked up 6 figures of debt to get there, figuring they'd get the kind of money (some) lawyers do. Whoops!
What would net monthly income (Post Tax income minus all debt service) be without that job and an average job that doesn't require a college education and what is the likelihood you'd have faced job loss in that situation.
The thing that you have to consider is that for someone in the situation you describe, the marginal value of that degree weighed against the debt used to pay for it has only lost it's value in comparison to future expectations, there are still huge underlying benefits to having the degree in comparison to not, both in current expectations and opportunity.
Still the argument that you're only slightly less fucked than the truly fucked isn't exactly comforting.
But it's absolutely important to realize that when almost everyone has been fucked in one way or another in the past 3 years.
And for the people that are thousands and thousands in debt from college and currently unemployed/underemployed etc etc we should in equal parts be honest that a lot got boned just because of the job market alone and a lot got boned by a systemic problem with higher education and credentialism in this country.
Though I don't know any solution to this.
Participation(Unemployment) rates Aug '11 seasonally adjusted Age 25+:
Did not finish HS: 46.7 (14.3%)
HS-Only : 60% (9.6%)
Associates or some College : 69.2% (8%)
Bachelors and higher : 76.0 (4.3%)
That's a huge difference.
Cost of living in North Carolina, and most of the urbanized South, has equalized with the rest of the nation in the last two decades. One of the side effects of the massive influx of retirees and professionals from across the world into the region is that prices have risen to levels equal or exceeding the national norm.
What haven't increased are wages. That's one of the reasons that the economy feels more desperate down here than it does in the Northeast.
I actually had this conversation last night with two Californians who migrated here. One was a semi-retiree who started a restaurant when he realized that keeping his job as an nurse with experience managing ERs meant his pay would be cut to a third. The other ran a lab testing the purity of pharmaceutical ingredients and actually got a raise to come here, only to realize that she was paid several times more than the local hires in her company.
The one thing that both mentioned was that, while the cost of living was less in N.C., it was not so much less that working in the South at local wages was a good deal. If housing, food and gas cost a third less, but overall pay is a third, you do not come out ahead.
This is the reason that the South - and many similar spots in the nation - with low cost of living are also the spots with massive poverty and unemployment.
I am sure that the CoL has increased, so do you have any theory as to why wages haven't increased, particularly for jobs that require a formal education?
You can still get a reasonably priced high-quality public school education, though. A year's worth of tuition in-state at the University of Michigan is about $13,000.
Rigorous Scholarship
Nothing against Canadian universities, though. My sons will be able to go there and pay the citizen tuition, even though they'll likely never live in Canada
Rigorous Scholarship
The key word here is 25+. That's 4 years of experience.
I heard on NPR today that the Spring graduates of 2011 have a 60% unemployment rate.
60%.
And I imagine the employment rate for people looking for work right out of high school right now is probably pretty bleak, too.
Rigorous Scholarship
A) That doesn't mean there isn't a problem to be resolved
C) Considering the harm to retirement benefits, the scaling back of workforces, and the more experienced people kicking around in lower tier positions, it's not unthinkable that we may actually have a systemic employment problem on our hands for people entering the workforce.
Rigorous Scholarship
Which was something like 8k (and an inflation adjusted $560 60 years ago) a decade ago. It's insane.
Looking at this, I stand by this. Housing is slightly lower than the national average, but not by that much. Everything else in the Southern cities seem to be in line with the national averages.
http://www.raleigh4u.com/page/cost-of-living
As for why wages haven't increased, North Carolina is a right-to-work state with laws that make it extremely difficult for workers to organize. This fact has been a major bragging point for economic development types since the 1920s, so I'm taking their word that this keeps "labor costs" down. The same is true for the rest of the South.
And it's worth noting that "right to work" laws are on the agenda for state GOP parties throughout the nation. There's a move by the GOP to emulate the "Southern Miracle" nationwide.
Oh sure, we're nowhere near the cost of living of Los Angeles or New York.
What I was getting it was that wages in the South and large areas of the Midwest and West are far below the national average and facing huge unemployment numbers while the cost of living has crept up to the national average. Without a rise in wages that equalizes with the cost of living, lots of people are struggling to make ends meet.
The reason that this is so can be explained with some basic economics.
In introductory economics it was probably explained that the price of a good reflected its real relative cost in the economy (I.E. the relative price of the good reflected the amount of resources used to generate it relative to another). For the most part this is relatively true in many types of markets.
Such it can be useful to examine the costs of education based on the degree and if you do so you will find that except for engineering and lab sciences the cost to provide the degree is about the same. The properties that make good researchers also make competitive business people and as such the opportunity costs of professors, even in the soft sciences and humanities can be quite high. At the very least, those who have PHD's in History and English have demonstrated an aptitude to work and scholarship which will signal their competency (yes, i know the stories of out of work English doctorates but I am willing to bet that the numbers are much lower for them than for general undergraduates). Because of this and because of the similar time investment that you find for each doctorate the costs to achieve a degree are typically relatively stable across disciplines.
Engineering and lab sciences are typically subsidized by extra fees.
In short, its not the time investment requirements and career prospects (frankly i would say that those with the highest time investment requirements have the lowest "career prospects" but that is just a predilection of mine to the ease of science/engineering/math curriculum and the relative dearth of writing that goes on in such programs) that determine the cost, its the expense required to maintain the curriculum, which is relatively stable.
I don't know about wages, but it has certainly generated some jobs because companies have shifted manufacturing to the Carolinas specifically to avoid union issues (e.g. the Boeing dreamliner plant that was built in Charleston).
Obviously, if the entire country had a similar stance on unions, then it would cease to be a competitive advantage. But when your bully pulpit is that we created X number of jobs for the economy with these laws, then it's not really surprising to see politicians leap at it.
Support for the issue is killing the GOP in Ohio. They are a union state, and on the border of the South, so the voters know exactly what "right to work" politicians are peddling and want none of it.
This is despite the dire situation of the economy in Ohio. Voters there are smart enough to know that the solution to their problems is not "be more like Texas, Mississippi and Alabama."
The jobs that states are trying to lure are manufacturing/industrial, and it has met with at least some (anecdotal) success. I don't know the numbers behind it, but, assuming that unions are costly for businesses (and how could they not be), it isn't very surprising for companies to choose non-unionized areas when feasible.
Unionized states have higher wages than right to work states, across the board. One of the side effects of unionization is that it raises wages across the board.
And the big push in unionization has been service sector jobs - i.e. retail, housekeeping and the like. As the traditional manufacturing unions are dying, groups like the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) are seeing large membership increases.
Reminds me of the former Michigan governor who was on The Daily Show recently talking about how states are just competing with other states for jobs, but nobody's actually bringing any new jobs to the US, so it's just a downward spiral of worker compensation and rights, chasing the unemployment rabbit around in circles.