Will you sprint, stroll or stumble into a career?
Concluding part
JEFFREY J. SELINGO
Such job hopping is typically seen as a lack of commitment or direction and it could be but it can also boost chances for more satisfying and higher paying work in the decades that follow.
Henry E. Siu calls it job shopping for a better match. Dr. Siu, a professor at the Vancouver School of Economics at the University of British Columbia, was part of a team of economists that examined more than 30 years of unemployment data in the United States. In a 2014 study, the economists found that increased mobility in ones 20s leads to higher earnings later in life.
College should prepare graduates to be occupationally footloose, Dr. Siu told me, meaning they can perform a variety of entry-level jobs in different occupations. Men and women in their 20s have always changed jobs. The difference now, Dr. Siu said, is that one in three changes occupations annually, compared with one in 10 in previous generations.
We are living in an increasingly complex society with many more choices for occupations, Dr. Siu said more than anyone can reasonably explore while in college. Trying out different occupations is another reason 20-somethings need a longer runway to lifes milestones.
The reality, however, is that a growing number of emerging adults lack the financial flexibility to change jobs or to take low-paying positions that might be great career starters. The problem? Student loans.
Of those who financed college through loans, the class of 2015 left commencement day $35,000 in debt on average. Six months later, those graduates received their first payment notice in the mail, for about $380 on average, with 120 more monthly payments ahead of them. That figure might not seem like much, but when it accounts for about 15 percent of a new graduates take-home salary, it can have an impact on career decisions. Salary not happiness or career advancement or a good fit becomes the driving decision. Debt rules out unpaid internships, for example, or living in pricey cities with dynamic labor markets. Or even living independently. In one study, the University of Arizona tracked a sample of its 2011 graduates half, including those employed full time, reported relying on financial support from family.
This is a relatively recent occurrence. In 1989, only 17 percent of those in their 20s and early 30s had student debt; today, 42 percent do, according to the Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances. Gallup, which measures well-being on five metrics, including financial, physical and purpose in life, has found that the more student-loan debt you have, the less likely you are to be thriving in your well-being, said Brandon Busteed, who heads up its education division.
Mr. Busteed wasnt surprised when I told him that nearly every young person I met at the 1776 incubator was free of student debt. According to Gallups polling data, most entrepreneurs owe less than $10,000 in student loans debt any greater has a negative impact on the decision to start a business.
In the end, fewer emerging adults willing to take a chance on their business idea makes it harder for everyone else to get a job.
Wanderers: On an Uncertain Path
When I met Valerie Lapointe for coffee, she was studying for the G.R.E. Her job search had stalled, and she had decided to do what many recent college graduates do when they get stuck: go back to school for yet another degree. The masters degree has become the new bachelors degree. In 2013, the most recent year available, about 760,000 masters degrees were awarded, up 250 percent since 1980. Nearly 30 percent of college graduates are back in school within two years. Graduate school gives structure and direction.
As we sipped our coffee, Ms. Lapointe, her smile as quick as her wit, quipped about the relevance of our setting. After all, coffee shops have become emblematic of those wandering through their 20s. The Starbucks barista with a bachelors is the underemployed stereotype. I have applied for jobs from here to kingdom come, she said. When you are unemployed, you can apply for jobs all day. She likened her job search to dating. You look great on paper, they interview you, but then they never call you back. You get used to the rejection.
Ms. Lapointe grew up in the affluent suburbs of Northern Virginia. She graduated from a top-notch high school with a 3.9 grade-point average in 2008, a year marked by a boom in the number of 18-year-olds across the country (so lots of competition to get into the college of her choice) as well as by one of the worst economic crashes in the nations history (so lots of unemployed recent college graduates).
I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life when I went to college, she said. I asked her why she hadnt taken a gap year to discover interests or explore majors at a local community college. There was never a question in my parents mind that Id go directly on to college, the question was just where, she said. It had worked out for them, so why not me?
I heard similar stories from many recent graduates with college-educated parents that a four-year college was the only pathway right out of high school.
Wait-listed at James Madison University, Ms. Lapointe landed at the University of Mary Washington, a public college in south-central Virginia. Unsure about a major, she filled her schedule with general-education courses her first two years. Then she took a journalism class, and she was hooked.
But Mary Washington didnt have a journalism major. Ms. Lapointe found as many writing courses as she could and joined the student newspaper. She thought about transferring but was on track to finish her degree in just three years to save money.
By the time I figured it out, it was too late, she said.
Instead, she became a Wanderer, part of the contingent of young adults who are largely treading water in the years after graduation. Although the unemployment rate among recent college graduates has dropped to around 4 percent from a high of 7 percent in 2011, underemployment remains stubbornly high. Nearly half of new graduates are underemployed, working jobs that dont require a bachelors degree, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
That described Ms. Lapointe. She took a job as a nanny while living at home. By the time she started seriously looking for a job in her field of interest a year and a half after graduation, she was already competing with the next crop of graduates. She paid to enroll in a summer program that matched her to a media internship, hoping it would lead to better employment prospects. It didnt. A video production company laid her off after three months. She then patched together a series of jobs through temp agencies.
I knew it would be difficult but not this difficult, she said. Signing onto Facebook sometimes made her feel even farther behind, as friends posted the highlights of their daily lives. I honestly believed that Id have more of my life together.
Finally, last fall, at 25, she began a masters program at Northwestern, with a scholarship covering half the tuition. So now, she said, life is good, debt is mounting, and Im hoping my job prospects will be better once I finish. I do feel far more career-minded than I did as an undergrad, and therefore in a better position to take advantage of career services and internship opportunities, and to utilize the resources a university has to offer.
Many young people are similarly derailed. They settle for any paying job, mostly outside their major, because of financial pressures. Some bypass meaningful internships or jobs because they find them menial or cant live on a paltry salary (or as with most internships, none at all). And some go back to school and deeper into debt. According to the University of Arizona study of the class of 2011, student debt more than tripled for those not working while in graduate school, from $22,000 to $76,000.
Perhaps most critical for Wanderers is that the bulk of salary increases tend to come in the first decade of employment. Three-quarters of a mans wage growth happens in the first 10 years, according to Richard A. Settersten Jr., director of the Hallie E. Ford Center for Healthy Children and Families at Oregon State University.
Lisa Kahn, an economist at Yale, found that students graduating from college in a weak economy have lower earnings even decades later. The graduating classes immediately following the 2008 recession, for instance, now earn a third less than those who left college just a few years earlier and had a better economic footing getting started. New graduates dont shop for jobs as much in a bad economy, Dr. Kahn explained, and job shopping is how they get bigger paychecks in those critical first years.
The longer Wanderers drift through their 20s, the harder it becomes to catch up.
Stragglers: Drifting Through Your 20s
On a crisp fall evening in 2014, I found myself in Portland, Ore., the city where young people go to retire, to steal the tag line from the satirical television show Portlandia. With its mountains, mild winters, outdoorsy reputation and streak of independence, Portland has become a magnet for Stragglers those who spend much of their 20s looking for what they were meant to do.
Josh Mabry in the woodworking shop he set up in the garage of his home in Portland, In the Eastside industrial district, I met up with Josh Mabry. He was about to turn 30, and sported a military buzz cut and forearms filled with tattoos.
After a decade of dead-end jobs and false starts at a handful of colleges, he was finally settling into something he cared about: woodworking. Mr. Mabry always liked working with his hands. His father and grandfather were woodworkers. But he took his last woodshop class in seventh grade. Guidance counselors were pushing college. After high school, he followed a girlfriend two hours south to Eugene and enrolled in graphic design classes at Lane Community College. But he fell into the party scene and dropped out. I was drifting, he admitted.
That defined much of the next decade for him. He tried two other community colleges, dabbling in welding and forestry. I wanted the skill set, not the piece of paper, he said. He took off to Central America for eight months, working bartending gigs when he returned. Then, at 29, he saw a flyer for woodworking, metalworking and upholstery classes. He began to make wooden light fixtures and art pieces. He set up a website and now sells his products online. I knew that by the time I turned 30 I
needed to figure something out for myself, he said. I finally have some sort of path. The New York Time
