Op-Ed: The Struggles of a Member of the ‘Lost Generation’

New York, N.Y.   A few weeks before finishing my studies in London in 2009, I sat around with my classmates as we contemplated where we would go immediately after graduation. A few mentioned taking a break and traveling to different parts of the world while others wanted to return to work. I said very confidently that upon my return I will be working, naïve enough to believe that after receiving my Master’s of Science degree in Asian Politics surely a job will be found. I attended one of the top schools in the UK, I ended up receiving a merit on my dissertation, but I had no idea what the devastating impact of the economic crash would be.

In what has been dubbed the “Age of the Permatern” and the era of the “Lost Generation”, the statistics are startling. In a Newsweek/Daily Beast article titled “Are Millennials the Screwed Generation?” :

Overall the young suffer stubbornly high unemployment rates—and an even higher incidence of underemployment. The unemployment rate for people between 18 and 29 is 12 percent in the U.S., nearly 50 percent above the national average. That’s a far cry from the fearsome 50 percent rate seen in Spain or Greece, or the 35 percent in Italy and 22 percent in France and the U.K., but well above the 8 percent rate in Germany.

Then there is the debt that the Millennials have incurred themselves. The average student, according to Forbes, already carries $12,700 in credit-card and other kinds of debt. Student loans have grown consistently over the last few decades to an average of $27,000 each. Nationwide in the U.S., tuition debt is close to $1 trillion.

It’s no surprise that with these numbers, more Millennials are left to return to live with their parents. A Pew report reveals that in 2012 “a record total of 21.6 million Millennials lived in their parents’ home in 2012, up from 18.5 million of their same aged counterparts in 2007.” As a result, “growing up” comes at a much later age: starting a family and buying a home or car are put on hold because the priority is to find steady work all the while trying to pay off student loans. Another Pew report found that 34 percent of those ages 25 to 29 moved back home with their parents – essentially one in three! It’s not by choice – an independent life is simply unaffordable .

This has been my reality. I live at home with my mother and have difficulty paying over $50,000 I owe in student loans. Faced with these issues and a crumbling economy, I worked internships, temporary jobs, and volunteered at United Nations liaison offices solely thanks to my mother’s connections. It is also because of my mother working at the UN that I am prohibited from working at the Secretariat, so positions in the Department of Political Affairs and Disarmament Affairs, all relevant to my field of study, are out the door. Instead I worked in liaison offices such as the Food and Agriculture Organization, focusing on issues related to the Millennium Development Goals (among them: climate change, migration, agriculture, women’s issues) and though valuable, far from what I studied in school. Jobs at the UN are very difficult to get and internships do not guarantee future employment.

I sent applications to foundations, think tanks, the public and private sector, and other UN offices (e.g. UNICEF, UNDP) with either no responses, job cancellations, or no job offers after interviews, which were few. I poured my heart into every single cover letter I wrote. I interviewed for posts where I was told I deserved better pay; that I’m overqualified because of my Master’s and at the same time inexperienced ; that I should seek work that essentially did not exist. I applied to all possible positions just to get my foot in the door. One interviewer at an NGO told me she was surprised why she suddenly received over 800 applications for one job while another remarked that I will have to compete with PhD students for internships .

So I decided to reinvent myself. I heard from many friends that they started careers in PR and Marketing while having degrees in International Relations. After some helpful advice, I redid my resume entirely: I looked at something I considered a hobby for over a decade and thought it would be the best route to take. The market for social media strategists has taken off because of the latest developments in technology and better recognition of this powerful medium. Companies are giving entire departments dedicated to communications via social media platforms to market their brands. It also gave me an opportunity to combine my professional and personal interests. I started applying to posts this April and have already had more responses than I had months before, but still no job offers.

Sometimes it all comes down to luck. I was introduced to Jim Luce at a party. Realizing we are neighbors on Roosevelt Island, he offered me a chance to contribute to the Stewardship Report. I now volunteer as a Social Media Strategist and Staff Writer. I am still looking for paid employment in that field: to continue to best utilize the platforms the Internet has to offer and to continue writing, editing, and researching.

I have not given up hope. I am still sending out job applications every other day. It’s difficult not to be down on yourself (it’s been four years of internships and paid temporary work as well as thousands of applications sent without responses or rejections), but I keep saying someday all this would be worth it and build up to something better .

I appreciate any feedback. Please find me here: about.me/anastagan , where you can find my profile on LinkedIn and view some of my professional and personal work.

Further reading:

There is plenty of literature on the subject of Millennial unemployment that needs to be mentioned.

New York Magazine’s insightful and thought-provoking post is a must-read on the subject, “ Sucks to be Us: The Kids are Actually Sort of Alright ”, which includes statistics, analysis, and stories from those, like myself, out of the job (or barely getting by).

The Fiscal Policy Institute’s “ The State of Working New York 2012: Disappointingly Weak Recovery – September 2, 2012 ” report states that more jobs were created in the lower-wage industries (+194,304) between July 2008 and July 2012. However, the middle and high-wage industries took a hit, losing -144,427 and -29,252 respectively. Please note, I have applied to jobs out of the city and country, but there is difficulty in that as well. Europe’s job market has been dubbed “ a historic disaster ”.

“Up with Chris Hayes” did a segment with a few of the city’s mayoral candidates on New York City’s “vanishing middle class”, which can be viewed here .

The cost of college for both private and public schools has tripled since 1980, according to a 2011 Pew Research Center study . Mother Jones did a piece on the skyrocketing student debt (in charts) and it’s worth knowing that the cost of student debt exceeds credit card and auto debt.

The Newsweek/Daily Beast article rightly notes: “over 43 percent of recent graduates now working, according to a recent report by the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development, are at jobs that don’t require a college education.” This is because more jobs were created in lower-wage industries, which results in high school students competing with college graduates for jobs. At the same time, people are working jobs they did not study for and do not see themselves working in long-term. An important Pew report has more information regarding this issue.

Further to the previous point, the Atlantic’s profile of fast-food workers is worth noting: the median age is about 28 and at least 31 percent have college degrees.

The American Center for Progress’s article, “ America’s 10 Million Unemployed Youth Spell Danger for Future Economic Growth ”, is worth reading.

“The Age of the Permatern” is not a joke – the Washingtonian profiled the age of permanent interns, a vicious cycle that I am too familiar with. It’s not simply a Washington, D.C. problem – it’s a world-wide one. In the article, Ross Perlin states: “Low-paid and unpaid work is the new normal and if you can’t do those internships you may be totally shut out of certain fields. How is that fair?”

Finally, a letter to the editor in the New York Times from 2010: “ The Pain of Unemployment ”.

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