2012 vs 1984: Young adults really do have it harder today

[patm]

Originally Posted by kwoldtimer

That seems to come through in a number of the posts and struck me as possibly some kind of generational difference in terms of expectations. In my case (class of '81), I waited twelve years to buy, finally cashing in my life insurance policy to push me over the 25% deposit that seemed to me the minimum I would want before buying.

I think it has a lot to do with not wanting to “pay some ones mortgage”. That’s the case with most people I know. If possible they prefer to live at home rent-free and save for a down payment rather then move out and get fleeced while renting a crappy 1 bdrm condo for 1200+ a month. That’s why you see all these condos sprouting up in the suburbs that sell for under 200k. Young people would rather own a condo short term then rent (even though it might not be the best financial option).

I also believe this generation is more social. People maintain a larger group of friends after High School then generations before us and anything outside of a single family house doesn’t really support large gatherings well so you always feel limited if you’re renting an affordable rental property. It’s no longer a couple guys having beers and watching the game on the weekend. People want to have all their friends over and have a BBQ, blast some music … etc.

Again, this might all be skewed from my perspective with what I see from my friends and I but that’s what I think.

Personally, my plan (22, basically graduated last month) is to buy a townhouse by the end of the year (although my parents moving is sort of focring my hand) and then eventually turning that into an income property when I get married down the line. Although it's still attached housing and doesn't really suit me the best, it still offers more flexability then a condo and gives me more room for all my sh*t

[niwell]

Originally Posted by patm

I think it has a lot to do with not wanting to “pay some ones mortgage”. That’s the case with most people I know. If possible they prefer to live at home rent-free and save for a down payment rather then move out and get fleeced while renting a crappy 1 bdrm condo for 1200+ a month. That’s why you see all these condos sprouting up in the suburbs that sell for under 200k. Young people would rather own a condo short term then rent (even though it might not be the best financial option).

I also believe this generation is more social. People maintain a larger group of friends after High School then generations before us and anything outside of a single family house doesn’t really support large gatherings well so you always feel limited if you’re renting an affordable rental property. It’s no longer a couple guys having beers and watching the game on the weekend. People want to have all their friends over and have a BBQ, blast some music … etc.

I think this is very dependent on where you are living and your social situation and wouldn't consider it the norm. Virtually all of those in my social group prefer to rent at the moment as it allows them to live in neighbourhoods where the cost of buying is out of the question. These are generally late 20s post-grads with professional (albeit junior level) jobs. Quite a few probably could afford to buy if they were willing to move out to the outer GTA and get a cheaper townhouse but would see that as a downgrade in lifestyle. Having a house to have gatherings doesn't seem very important.

Interestingly enough one of my close friends who bought in Liberty Village is at least somewhat regretting the decision, as for the price of mortgage and condo fees you can rent a significantly better place in a more desirable area of central Toronto. He's thinking of selling his condo, buying an income property in Hamilton and finding a nice rental 1 bedroom here in Toronto.

Now I wouldn't characterize this as the norm either but it does represent the thoughts of a certain group. Most of the friends I grew up with in Calgary did go the route of the affordable suburban condo/townhouse.

I hate to get all anecdotal but I guess I just did... oh well...

[floobie]

Originally Posted by PrairieGirl

My son just convocated with a bachelors degree in geology at the same time you did. He sent out applications like crazy and the only one that came through with a job offer was a mining company up at Thompson, Manitoba (they ended up offering him 3 positions). Son was interested in petroleum however, or working for a Saskatchewan company, and thankfully at the same time had a fellow graduate speak highly of him to his head hunter. He was contacted shortly after re a job as a well site geologist up in Northern Alberta. I think it was son's posting on his facebook page that he still hadn't got a job that caught the eye of his fellow grad (son has all the geologists that graduated with him connected to his facebook account).

Now he is saving money to pay off his education/new vehicle/etc. and building up a nest egg so he can get his masters (he has zero interest in living way up there for the rest of his life). The pay is damn good however.

Keep networking with your fellow graduates as I know Head Hunters are still looking for geologists.

Also, going by rigger high school buds of my son that post on his facebook page pleading with him to work for their company, there is quite the want/need for geologists that have English as their first language.

Hehe, that sounds pretty familiar. The people in my graduating class that I've since run into have been in one of four situations:

1) Unemployed
2) Working well site (and making a fair bit of money, at least)
3) Managed to get a job through their parents
4) Spent every waking minute during their degree studying so they could get a 4.0 GPA, and managed to get a job purely on that basis.

It's definitely irritating, and a little weird. I had summer student positions as a geologist the year before I even entered the program, and after my first year (which was mostly just generic first year science). Both were a piece of cake to get. After that, coinciding nicely with the beginning of the economic crisis, all such opportunities dried up. My biggest hurdle by far is simply getting my professional designation, which requires about 4 years of work experience... which is proving very difficult to get because I don't have my professional designation :p

I'm pretty sure I could get a well site job if I wanted one, but based on what I've heard, it really, really isn't something I want to do. Who knows, though... maybe I'll get desperate enough.

I've been maintaining connections with my classmates on Linkedin, and I've had a few headhunters contact me here and there. Nothing has come out of it yet, though.

Oh well. You should be proud of your son, though! He clearly did something right.

[Vaillant]

I just finished university, I'll be 25 in the summer, I'm looking for a job there is nothing for me all companies looking for people with 2 or 3 years experiences and more.. I'm getting a bit depressed cause I feel I have done all those business studies for nothing and also I need to pay my student loans.

[RyanNS]

Not sure what accounts for these trends.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Yeah, what a great point. I remember one of my mother's sixty-something friends a few years ago going on about how today's women shouldn't have maternity leave because her generation didn't have it. If women want to have kids, they should just quit their jobs just like her generation did. Belle attitude! Bravo for social progress.

The other side of this is that we as a society are technologically equipped to offer average people a much better standard of living than they had in 1984 or earlier decades. The biggest difference is that a huge number of low end jobs are now automatable or obsolete entirely; this means cheaper goods and more wealth for society. This should translate into less of a need to work, on average. Instead it's translated into larger fortunes for a small segment of society.

They've issued license plates for automated cars in Nevada. That could translate into an enormous increase in quality of life for just about everybody, but will it? Or will it just be captured as a monopoly by some patent trolls with good lobbyists and translated into a multi-billion dollar cash cow standing on the backs of all those students with tens of thousands in loan debt who are told to suck it up and go work at Wal-Mart? Will there even be Wal-Mart jobs in the future, when the value of labour is approximately $0 because cheap machines can do anything an unskilled person can do?

[rousseau]

Life stories through the prism of economics?

I started university in 1985. Finally finished in 1991 after taking a couple of years off in the middle to dick around in poverty as a wannabe musician with two guitars and a rented Fender Twin Reverb, though I never actually played a gig. I did, though, make $4.75/hour as a cashier in a multilevel parking garage while living in a rambling downtown house with six people, each of us paying $125 a month. When I went back for my last two years at U. of Winnipeg I paid $50 a month rent in a ramshackle house with three other people. This was Winnipeg in the 1980s and 1990s.

Laid low for a few years as a carpenter while plotting world domination by fiction writing, then scampered off to Taiwan to teach ESL and have adventures in Asia. I came back here in 1999 with a wife, $20,000 in cash, and a big question mark over our future. The money went quickly. I considered teaching high school as a career. The wife went back to Taiwan to make more money. I started doing freelance translation. The wife came back and did it with me. We've been doing it ever since.

We've actually made okay money at it. We bought a house in 2004 in an artsy town of 30,000 in southern Ontario for $279,000. It's now worth $350,000, apparently. Though the recession of 2008 combined with the stronger Canadian dollar (we get cheques from the US) hit us hard, and our income plummetted for three years. We considered selling up and moving back to Taiwan to teach ESL with our tails between our legs.

But we soldiered on, and things are looking good for now. I'm able to take work I like, and every day I turn down projects that I can't fit into my schedule. If I could work twice as much as I do I'd be very well off. Though instability is the name of the game when you're freelance, and every mortgage payment still feels like a minor miracle. Some days nobody calls me.

We don't have kids. If we did, I probably would have gone into teaching back in 1999, and life would have been very different.

Is my story representative? Not really. Still, I'm something of a prototype for today's generation of kids with few economic prospects who are delaying the "big decisions" in life. I was a hipster/slacker before it was cool, and have the flannel, knowledge of British bands of the 1980s and 1990s and former smoking habit to prove it. I didn't know what I wanted to do as a career until I was 33. I didn't pay off my paltry student loan of $3,500 until I was 30. Growing up and becoming responsible was something to be dreaded and put off.

I cringe when I look back and see how Peter Pannish I was. But now everyone is. Right?

[kool maudit]

at least you had echo & the bunnymen, rousseau. now they have skrillex.

[Copes]

Originally Posted by Vaillant

I just finished university, I'll be 25 in the summer, I'm looking for a job there is nothing for me all companies looking for people with 2 or 3 years experiences and more.. I'm getting a bit depressed cause I feel I have done all those business studies for nothing and also I need to pay my student loans.

On the note of challenges to new grads, this is perhaps one of the larger challenges I saw when reviewing job postings in Halifax or St. John's. I would go through so many postings. I'd read the description and think "easy enough, I can do that". Then I'd read the required deliverables and think "Ok, I've done that or something like it before." Then you get to qualification. "Got that, have that competency, have done that and... what the hell? Why do I need two or three years experience for this?"

I don't know if it is directly related to older generations feeling that Millennials are lazy, or something else, but there are far too many people who are unwilling to give fresh graduates a chance at jobs that they can undoubtedly do. Working with a major oil company during a workterm, I was constantly told by people far older and more experienced than me that working with me didn't "feel like working with a student." It was a great compliment, but I'm nothing special. In fact, I can easily name ten or fifteen people in my class who are likely more competent and more driven than myself.

Yet for some reason, there seems to be a feeling among those who are hiring that an applicant needs "two or three years related experience" to do what is arguably an entry level job. In ten to fifteen years, there are going to be mass retirements. Companies are going to be squirming to recruit anyone they can to fill the lost positions. SMART companies are grabbing young talent now, because by getting us fresh out of school and giving us a chance to prove that we most certainly CAN do it, they are setting themselves up for success once boomers retire.

Unfortunately not many companies see this, and Millennials are suffering. Give it ten years. The tables will be turned and there will be job offers coming from every direction.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by rousseau

Life stories through the prism of economics?

I started university in 1985. Finally finished in 1991 after taking a couple of years off in the middle to dick around in poverty as a wannabe musician with two guitars and a rented Fender Twin Reverb, though I never actually played a gig. I did, though, make $4.75/hour as a cashier in a multilevel parking garage while living in a rambling downtown house with six people, each of us paying $125 a month. When I went back for my last two years at U. of Winnipeg I paid $50 a month rent in a ramshackle house with three other people. This was Winnipeg in the 1980s and 1990s.

Laid low for a few years as a carpenter while plotting world domination by fiction writing, then scampered off to Taiwan to teach ESL and have adventures in Asia. I came back here in 1999 with a wife, $20,000 in cash, and a big question mark over our future. The money went quickly. I considered teaching high school as a career. The wife went back to Taiwan to make more money. I started doing freelance translation. The wife came back and did it with me. We've been doing it ever since.

We've actually made okay money at it. We bought a house in 2004 in an artsy town of 30,000 in southern Ontario for $279,000. It's now worth $350,000, apparently. Though the recession of 2008 combined with the stronger Canadian dollar (we get cheques from the US) hit us hard, and our income plummetted for three years. We considered selling up and moving back to Taiwan to teach ESL with our tails between our legs.

But we soldiered on, and things are looking good for now. I'm able to take work I like, and every day I turn down projects that I can't fit into my schedule. If I could work twice as much as I do I'd be very well off. Though instability is the name of the game when you're freelance, and every mortgage payment still feels like a minor miracle. Some days nobody calls me.

We don't have kids. If we did, I probably would have gone into teaching back in 1999, and life would have been very different.

Is my story representative? Not really. Still, I'm something of a prototype for today's generation of kids with few economic prospects who are delaying the "big decisions" in life. I was a hipster/slacker before it was cool, and have the flannel, knowledge of British bands of the 1980s and 1990s and former smoking habit to prove it. I didn't know what I wanted to do as a career until I was 33. I didn't pay off my paltry student loan of $3,500 until I was 30. Growing up and becoming responsible was something to be dreaded and put off.

I cringe when I look back and see how Peter Pannish I was. But now everyone is. Right?

Interesting story, like many others on this thread. Judging from the dates in there, you are actually quite a bit younger than I thought!

[patm]

Originally Posted by niwell

I think this is very dependent on where you are living and your social situation and wouldn't consider it the norm. Virtually all of those in my social group prefer to rent at the moment as it allows them to live in neighbourhoods where the cost of buying is out of the question. These are generally late 20s post-grads with professional (albeit junior level) jobs. Quite a few probably could afford to buy if they were willing to move out to the outer GTA and get a cheaper townhouse but would see that as a downgrade in lifestyle. Having a house to have gatherings doesn't seem very important.

Interestingly enough one of my close friends who bought in Liberty Village is at least somewhat regretting the decision, as for the price of mortgage and condo fees you can rent a significantly better place in a more desirable area of central Toronto. He's thinking of selling his condo, buying an income property in Hamilton and finding a nice rental 1 bedroom here in Toronto.

Now I wouldn't characterize this as the norm either but it does represent the thoughts of a certain group. Most of the friends I grew up with in Calgary did go the route of the affordable suburban condo/townhouse.

I hate to get all anecdotal but I guess I just did... oh well...

Yeah that makes a lot of sense.
I could totally see that from people living in a place like Toronto which is a lot more urban-oriented then Calgary.

Just a completely different attitude

[davidivivid]

My two cents:

About two times a week, I stop by McDonald’s before going to work just to drink a cup of coffee and rapidly glance through the headlines. Over time, I’ve noticed a group of seemingly educated older gentlemen who meet there in order to comment the news whilst timidly sipping their coffee. I always end up furtively listening to their conversations as it allows me to better understand their generation’s take on current events.

As it happens, a few weeks ago they were discussing the student protests so I was particularly eager to hear what these fine gentlemen had to say on the matter. At one point, a man claimed that any public subsidy funnelled towards higher education should be terminated and the money saved be invested in healthcare instead. The fact that such a proposal garnered vehement approval finally convinced me to become more interested in the current debate. Truth be told, as I have graduated a year ago (mechanical engineering and MBA), my interest in the matter had been rather timid up to this point. Still, my opinion on the subject isn’t as thought out as it should but I’ll try to sort it out as I go along!!

To be properly understood, the Quebec student protests should be put in the proper context: they are the manifestation of a broader social malaise which could be summed up by the expression “clash of generations”, a problem shared by almost all western countries I might add. In fact, it can be argued that the Occupy Wall Street and Arab Spring movements are more about intergenerational equity than anything else. The need for intergenerational burden sharing will be a huge political issue going forward. Actually, an interesting panel discussion took place on this specific subject in Davos this year:

• Video Link


Some other interesting articles on the subject:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/17/op...7friedman.html
http://www.economist.com/node/15495760
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/repor...rticle1933746/


The student protests in Quebec are very much a manifestation of this inevitable confrontation. Every week, Quebec’s youth is witnessing politicians making decisions geared toward appeasing their biggest electoral constituents: baby boomers. Ste-Justine hospital is expanding; McGill and UdM are each currently building mega-hospitals; the Ministère des Transport is investing $700M to replace road signs because font size is now considered too small for seniors; reforms of public pension plan funding seem to be off the agenda, etc etc etc. Hence, when the government announced its plan to significantly increase tuitions, it was la goutte qui a fait déborder le vase for many current and future higher education students for two main reasons.

First of all, the students are rightfully questioning whether the extra money thus collected will indeed be invested in the betterment of the higher education system. There are presently no guarantees to that effect and certainly no oversight either. Hence, the government may very well choose to take money from the students’ pockets to finance healthcare programs for the elderly. In fact, it seems that such a tactic already is implemented.

Also, as sad as it may be, the younger generation obviously believes that it cannot affect or bring change only through their votes on provincial elections because demographics simply aren’t on their side. This new reality will affect every province in Canada sooner or later: the needs of older generations, centered around healthcare, will take precedence over the needs of the youth because politicians want to be elected. I believe this is why Quebec students are trying to influence or at least to have their voices heard in other ways then through their votes.

Here’s the reality : according to numbers obtained through a great study realized by a Marius Demers, an economist working for the Ministère de l’Éducation, a typical university graduate will contribute, during his working life (ages 17-64), a total of $916 043 in income and consumption taxes. It is $379 187 more than the typical CEGEP graduate and this discrepancy climbs to $503 668 when compared to a high school graduate. Finally, that gap is evaluated to be an impressive $644 277 when compared to someone with no degree at all.


http://www.mels.gouv.qc.ca/sections/...stique38_f.pdf


In other words, current university graduates will be the future cash cows of the government and the said students are fully aware of this reality. Hence, contrarily to what might be perceived, the goal of their protests isn’t to manifest their way out of paying their fair share of the social burden, quite the contrary. Their argument, or at least how I personally interpret it, is the following: university graduates will easily contribute the most to the fiscal burden of the Province in the future. It is therefore in our society’s interest that a maximum number of young adults have easy access to higher education.

All that being said, as a Quebecer I believe it is illusory to expect higher education to be completely free. Hence, I actually support a modest tuition hike which would be tied to inflation, though under certain conditions like better university management and better access to financing for under-privileged students. However, if our society is to stay competitive in our globalized world, easy access to higher education is paramount in my humble opinion.

Another point I want to address is the presumption that contrarily to previous generations, current students live in a world of their own and that they haven't worked an honest day's work in their life. You might not agree with some of the arguments put forward by the students on strike but let's not automatically assume that these men and women are just lazy. It is a far cry from the truth, as supported by the following statistics, published by Statistics Canada.


The first chart illustrates that a much higher percentage of postsecondary students are working while studying full-time than in the past. Though it slightly dipped during the recession, approximately 47% of postsecondary students are currently managing a work/study equilibrium compared to ~32% in 1984. This is a very important increase.

Chart A Employment rate of full-time postsecondary students peaked in 2007/2008

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/75-001-.../cg00a-eng.htm



The second chart shows that not only are there much more full-time postsecondary students working but that they work more hours as well: I’d say almost 3h/week more on average.

Chart C Weekly employment hours of full-time postsecondary students

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/75-001-.../cg00c-eng.htm



The previous chart considered all postsecondary students. When only undergraduates are considered, the proportion of full-time students also holding a job increased dramatically: in Quebec, more than 80 per cent of full-time undergraduate students are gainfully employed. Of those who are gainfully employed, roughly half work more than 15 hours per week. Also, according to this last chart, Quebec's school year employment rate amongst full-time postsecondary students is the highest in Canada, followed by Manitoba.

Chart F School year1 employment rate highest in Quebec and Manitoba

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/75-001-.../cg00f-eng.htm

[patm]

^^ So coles notes version:

Old people need to die. Then we shall shine.

Just bide our time, we'll be the ones pulling the plug on them

[SpongeG]

i think grads today have to compete with downsizing companies and a large workforce in the 40+ range with a couple decades of experience who have been made redundant in the last number of years who are competing for the same jobs as grads and employers are more than likely going to take experience over fresh blood so to speak

as for housing - i don't know when or why its been drilled into kids heads that they must own their own home

[MolsonExport]

davidivivid: excellent commentary and statistics.

[rousseau]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

at least you had echo & the bunnymen, rousseau. now they have skrillex.

'Course, back in 1984 there were 35-year-olds who sneered at the idea of alternative music (as it was known back then on this side of the pond), having seen legends like the Who during their prime. And I would have self-deprecatingly nodded my head in agreement with them.

Even so, music does seem to be stagnant these days, for a couple of reasons: 1) My Bloody Valentine's Loveless was mind-blowing, but it took music somewhere it couldn't come back from. It was an ending, not a beginning. 2) The zeitgeist has shifted over to information technology. While I've heard numerous new bands that sound much like what I was listening to in the 1990s, there's no mistaking an iPod for a flip-up phone from 2001.

Used to be you could designate an earlier era in a movie just by having a few kids dancing to Chubby Checker or the Bee Gees. These days? Keep the clothes and hairstyles more or less the same, but have the line "Is there a phone booth around here?" in the dialogue somewhere.

Originally Posted by acajack

Interesting story, like many others on this thread. Judging from the dates in there, you are actually quite a bit younger than I thought!

[shreddog]

Originally Posted by davidivivid

... the Ministère des Transport is investing $700M to replace road signs because font size is now considered too small for seniors; ...

Please tell me you're joking!!!

Methinks that if a driver finds the font too small, THEY SHOULDN'T BE DRIVING!!!!!

[patm]

Originally Posted by SpongeG

as for housing - i don't know when or why its been drilled into kids heads that they must own their own home

I know alot of them view its a waste of money to rent when, if financially possible, they could own.

Rent for full units/houses (as in not a room or a basement suite) in Calgary is basically the same price as a morgatge payment these days and usually doesn't include any utilities either (Maybe heat, water & electricity for condos)

[PrairieGirl]

Originally Posted by floobie

Hehe, that sounds pretty familiar. The people in my graduating class that I've since run into have been in one of four situations:

1) Unemployed
2) Working well site (and making a fair bit of money, at least)
3) Managed to get a job through their parents
4) Spent every waking minute during their degree studying so they could get a 4.0 GPA, and managed to get a job purely on that basis.

It's definitely irritating, and a little weird. I had summer student positions as a geologist the year before I even entered the program, and after my first year (which was mostly just generic first year science). Both were a piece of cake to get. After that, coinciding nicely with the beginning of the economic crisis, all such opportunities dried up. My biggest hurdle by far is simply getting my professional designation, which requires about 4 years of work experience... which is proving very difficult to get because I don't have my professional designation :p

I'm pretty sure I could get a well site job if I wanted one, but based on what I've heard, it really, really isn't something I want to do. Who knows, though... maybe I'll get desperate enough.

I've been maintaining connections with my classmates on Linkedin, and I've had a few headhunters contact me here and there. Nothing has come out of it yet, though.

Oh well. You should be proud of your son, though! He clearly did something right.

I know my son really had reservations about being a well site geo and it wasn't surprising to hear that he disliked working up in Northern Alberta in the beginning but he now finds it isn't as bad (he still wants out however as soon as he has built up that nest egg). Thompson couldn't pay him enough to work there however ....he was flown in and knew right away that wasn't the place for him. Son did have a few interviews with a couple of Saskatchewan companies (forgot that above) at the same time offers were coming from Manitoba but they wanted some experience (he had worked in Ag Canada labs and was a TA whilst in University)

At photography sites I've had a few professional geologist connect with me (the geology tag on some of my pics brought unexpected results) and they warned me, back in son's first year, that they were a *very* competitive bunch so it was a heads up back then that good jobs would be hard to come by. At a weather site, of all places, a Texan gave me the heads up that the masters brought great fortune and satisfying work to her geo SIL.

Last I heard was that my son also wanted to make enough money to make a good payment on a house (or at least have it sitting in the bank) before he says goodbye to well site drilling. Meanwhile the fellow that spoke highly of him is working to make enough to buy out the family farm....he is working insane long drills to make that happen so I imagine he will be on his farm in the not too distant future.

It isn't a dream job/location but the pay does ease the pain.

Wishing both of you all the best!

[MTLskyline]

Originally Posted by MexiQuebecois

Hope that helps

Thank you for the insight! I really had no idea that jobs in Mexico were THAT centralized.