The Plan is Coming Together

In another piece of depressing news, economists quoted in an article I read today have confirmed what I've long suspected: The recession left millions of college-educated Americans working in coffee shops and retail stores. Now, new research suggests their job prospects may not improve much when the economy rebounds.
Underemployment—skilled workers doing jobs that don't require their level of education—has been one of the hallmarks of the slow recovery. By some measures, nearly half of employed college graduates are in jobs that don't traditionally require a college degree.
Economists have generally assumed the problem was temporary: As the economy improved, companies would need more highly educated employees. But in a paper released Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a team of Canadian economists argues that the U.S. faces a longer-term problem.
They found that unlike the 1990s, when companies needed hundreds of thousands of skilled workers to develop, build and install high-tech systems—everything from corporate intranets to manufacturing robots—demand for such skills has fallen in recent years, even as young people continued to flock to programs that taught them.
There are people with master's degrees and bachelor's degrees and even people with law degrees applying to work for $10 an hour.  Many are back in school pursuing advanced degrees in the hopes of getting an edge. Demand for college-level occupations—primarily managers, professionals and technical workers—peaked as a share of the workforce in about 2000, just as the dot-com bubble was about to burst, and then began to decline. The supply of such workers, meanwhile, continued to grow through the 2000s. The subsequent housing boom helped mask the problem by creating artificially high demand for workers of all kinds, but only temporarily.
The good news?  I'm way ahead of the game.  I've got my eye on a retail job (if they're hiring) at a store in my local mall, which is now mostly used as office space.  The store's primary demographic is the baby boomer.  In fact, according to the mission statement on their website, they will  "provide our Baby Boomer customers with brand platforms that offer compelling product assortments, meaningful brand experiences and convenient multi-channel accessibility that reflects our respect and knowledge of both her wardrobe and lifestyle needs."  I'm going to go ahead and suggest that this company is clearly not thinking strategically (long-term) and I'm going to throw out there that they reassess their mission because their entire customer base is going to be dead in about thirty years.  However, this plan fits in perfectly with the whole being underemployed and unemployed again (because they'll eventually go out of business or at least close the store here in town) in the future extravaganza (see yesterday's post, ...and other harsh realities).  If this doesn't work, I worked at Dairy Queen in high school so maybe they'll take me back.  Now, if I could just get my hands on a few bucks to shove under my mattress.  I'm going to need to start saving for all the dope I'm going to have to buy...