- Call them Generation R — Generation Recession — the millions of teenagers and twenty-somethings struggling to carve out a future for themselves when the nation’s economy is in its worst shape in decades. Many are settling for second choices or pursuing low-cost detours because the recession has wiped out hoped-for jobs.
- In the tight-knit, middle-class communities surrounding Dayton, many members of the class of ’09 knew exactly what they would do when they grew up. They would get a good-paying job at the General Motors factory or at one of the Delphi auto parts plants, get married and start families. But the deep recession and the downsizing of American manufacturing have bulldozed those plans, leaving many of these young people confused and rudderless, with some contemplating a path that might be new to their families: college.
Far beyond Dayton — where the huge, shuttered G.M. plant not long ago employed 4,000 people — millions of young Americans are facing the reality that manufacturing will no longer serve as a conveyor belt to the middle class.
“In the ’60s and ’70s you could get a good job at Delco, NCR, Frigidaire, Inland, Dayton Press, the Standard Register, Chrysler,” said David Hicks, Moraine’s city manager. “They came with good benefits and good pay.”
So without real dynamic private job growth that does not require bubbles by the Federal Reserve (tech boom, real estate boom, high finance boom) - what do you do? I've been saying it for 2 years, momma send your kids to be a government worker. This will continue to work until some day tax rates are so high to pay for these government jobs that people will realize its just shuffling money from the left hand to the right to create "prosperity". If we could not, as a country, borrow up to our eyeballs this would already be apparent since we'd face the same dilemna the states are now facing. But until that day of reckoning comes? More government jobs!
- Brandon Abney, a newly minted high school graduate, would have loved to work at the G.M. truck plant in Moraine, a neighboring suburb, but it closed last December. So he is enrolling in an 18-month college program to become a firefighter.
Nick Salyers would like to follow in the footsteps of his grandfather, whose 36-year career at a Delco auto parts plant (before it became Delphi) enabled him to buy a spacious house and raise five children. But with that factory closed and his mother and father laid off in recent plant closings, he has chosen a career in the military. “I needed something secure,” he said. “No matter what happens, I’ll always have a job in the Army. I don’t have to worry about getting laid off. I don’t have to experience what my parents experienced.”
Onward...
Dezaraé Austin, of the class of ’09, moved in with a friend after her father lost his job at G.M. and left the state in search of employment. With the job market offering high school grads little beyond $7.50-an-hour fast-food and supermarket jobs, she is enrolling in community college to become a physician assistant.
Fred Gehron, the principal of West Carrollton High School, remembers what happened when he graduated from high school in 1966 and told his parents he wanted to go to college. “I remember them rolling their eyes,” he said. “My father asked, ‘Are you sure that’s necessary? Why not get a job at the steel mill where your brother works?’ ”
The G.M. plant’s basic wage was $28 an hour when it closed. “For the laid-off guys, the highest-paying job I’ve heard anyone find was $13 an hour,” Mr. Alsept said. The brightest spot in Dayton’s economy is Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
Since the recession began, enrollment at Sinclair (College) has jumped 14 percent, largely because many laid-off workers have returned to school and because the uninviting job market has pushed many high school grads into college.
Said Todd Salyers, “My father always told us, ‘As long as you put in an honest day’s pay and are an honest person, you’d be O.K.’ That’s not even close to being right anymore.”
Please don't worry Todd, the Federal Reserve is hard at work creating a new and massive bubble that will make the past few look like child's candy. Once this avalanche of paper currency finds a home, and the velocity of money picks up - we'll have jobs galore in some sector that makes little sense. We'll all sing along how the US economy is dynamic and flexible, while ignoring the fact this precept for the past 15 years has been based on easy money policies of pushing money into the economy at ungoldy rates to create imbalances in one sector or another. This is now a national policy and we call it "prosperity"... we'll sigh deeply in relief, high five each other as the bubble of 2012-2014 takes place, and then wonder how we got into another crash in 2015-2017. We'll ask why we keep repeating this pattern, apparently too dumb to see the exact same pattern play out over and over, and figure out the root causes. We'll shrug our shoulders, have a few Congressional hearings, do a few song and dances, and then? Well, we'll start it all over again in 2018. Because money trees allow you to wave your hands and tell the peasants it's all working out great!
We can continue doing this pattern... maybe one more iteration after that. But by the 2020s I think a lot of our enablers will have moved on after looking at how we act and stop supplying us the drugs. Sort of like an adult looking at his pretentious teen. Then ... maybe... we'll be forced to look into the mirror and ask how we got here.
But until the next bubble economy is manufactured?
... healthcare, education, military, municipal....government jobs young man (and woman).
