| HappySqurriel said: On another note, the demographics of Occupy Wall Street:
I don't want to be rude, but it seems that kids today are suffering because they're making very bad educational choices and are unwilling to own up to their part in this, consider the following graph:
In spite of the massive growth in IT, and the amazing need for people with engineering, math, science and technology degrees, the number of graduates in in-demand fields has remaind stagnant for 30 years while there has been an explosion in "worthless" degrees. |
This "massive growth" you speak of in IT is not here in North America. Any work, like software development, which can go offshore, does go offshore now. Computer programmers was listed as a field demanding less people. Computer science is a field generally geared in that area. Also, it is a field not everyone is suited for. Generally, the norm is computer tech people are horrible in other areas requiring good interpersonal skills. And industry increasingly shifting to contractors, which it is, wants people who hit the ground running. On the whole, college are bad in the area of properly training people for tech jobs. The industry relies on certification as the norm, and colleges don't do that. Another aspect of the tech industry is that it is a very tight in what it demands, and skills it looks for. It is a mix of a hodgepodge of different tech, them expecting all of the above, and if missing they don't hire. On top of that, it is feast or famine for employment, with a practice of them not hiring anyone who is out of work any period of time. In short, the pay out can be higher, but the risks are higher. It be worth considering because of how unstable the job market is there, that people won't go into that field. You don't think the word of outsourcing hasn't hit the IT industry? When an industry treats its workers as disposable, people aren't eager to go into that industry. That happened with the oil industry also. They ended up losing their labor base after they laid off people, and they went on elsewhere. Students wouldn't go into fields in that area, because of what had happened. Any industry that has a labor shortage only has itself to blame.
Another reality is that there is too many people graduating for college degrees, for a job market that doesn't need them in practice. Segments of the economy end up repositioning themselves for people with any college degree, using it as a form of character test, a very pricey one at that to.
Also, there are these global trends of globalization and automating, which also have put the pressure on wages and driven people into local job markets, for stuff that can't be subject to automating and globalization, which also pay a lot less. This goes into it:
http://www.uctv.tv/search-details.aspx?showID=9521
