Lost generation? U.S. grads work for free, look abroad

[InfiniteThoughts]

Americans fresh out of university are discovering their expensive degrees are not the entry ticket to a job they had hoped in the face of high unemployment. Some young graduates are working for free to enhance their skills and bolster their resumes. Some are looking abroad for work while others are determined to push their way into the U.S. job market. Jessicalind Ah Kit got off to a great start in her job search. One company flew her abroad and gave her a rental car. After a first day of interviews, the company told her it had a freeze on global hiring.

Ah Kit studied management information systems, economics and Japanese in college. After an 18-month search, she has taken an unpaid internship -- her third. The National Association of Colleges and Employers says only 19.7 percent of 2009's graduates who applied for jobs had them as of May 2009. During the second quarter this year, unemployment for workers under 25 years of age was 17.3 percent, nearly double the national average.

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This isn't right anywhere. Be it Bangalore, Beijing or Boston, it is sad that companies make multi billion quarterly profit and there aren't jobs!

[comtec]

1. Internships are legalized slavery

they are all sizzle and no meat!

I don't mind making interns suffer a bit, but that's normal on the job abuse, this not paying them thing is complete bullshit!

I think there should be a requirement that these multi billion corps M U S T pay at least the minimum living wage for the area they are in. That means about 12 dollar an hour in CA and NYC and 8 in MS.

oh well. anything to keep slavery alive, the south will rise again indeed.

[Berry Cool]

3. In journalism, pretty much ALL internships are unpaid.

Or they were when I was in school. Demand for them was through the roof so the "employers" knew they could afford to pay you in nothing but experience. That meant that effectively you had to find one that would allow you to live with your parents while you worked in it. That might work out great for kids who happened to live near major media centers like New York or LA, but God help the kid in a place with fewer media outlets; you'd wind up competing with everyone else for the one spot available at North Dakota Lifestyle magazine or something.

[Fearless]

5. Absolutely agreed!

[Berry Cool]

2. I don't wish to appear unsympathetic

but when I graduated from college in the Reagan era, unemployment was over 10% in my state. Life wasn't no crystal stair for me either. I imagine that I am not the only one who was seriously unemployed/underemployed when I graduated, as opposed to walking right into a well-paying entry-level job in my field after having had to choose the best from bouquets of offers from eager employers.

When I was young, those bouquets of job offers seemed to exist only for those who had majored in business, engineering or computer science, which was not me.

Of course, I realize even those majors can't walk into great jobs anymore, largely because what they do has been offshored, and that's sad. I just question the impression many of these stories present that college graduates in the past always had their pick of wonderful jobs to choose from the second they got their degrees, and only now are they finding the door closed to their wonderful fresh young selves. I don't think that has been true for a long time. Most of us had to pay our dues in low-paying first jobs we hated...assuming we could FIND jobs. That is not new. And we all thought it was somehow going to be different for us than for our older peers, too...THEY might have had a tough time, but everyone would want US. Then the cold reality set in.

[InfiniteThoughts]

4. quite a different view ...

Thanks for your comment. Given that i graduated in early 2000s, there was always a ton of opportunities to go around (esp. from the now collapsed dot com movement!) that i forgot what it was some time back.