Crossposted from Hillbilly Report.
One of the key components to the American Dream has always been that one generation wants their children to be more secure than they were. For many generations this pattern seemed to play out nicely as the middle-class was created and thrived. However, Corporate control of our elected officials and government has reversed that trend. With outsourcing, and other cost-cutting measures young workers today face huge challenges and very well may see their their own future security be less than their parents.
Nobody has to tell many of us in rural areas and small towns about this. We constantly lose our young people who are forced to leave their homes and families and the communities they grew up in for more lucrative areas. Even degreed professionals must relocate in many circumstances. Well, the really bad news is that soon they may not have anywhere better to relocate to in finding lucrative middle-class careers with livable wages and benefits.
The AFL-CIO has conducted a study that should be particularly alarming and unfortunately depressing to the young American worker. The Corporate war on unions and wages and workers is hitting this generation of young people, even professionals very hard. This is causing them to be forced to delay key components of the American Dream, including starting their own families and having their own households:
The decline in young workers’ financial standing over the past decade has serious implications, and not just for their bank accounts.
Young workers are finding it increasingly difficult to achieve personal and financial independence— in other words, to transition effectively into adulthood. Many are forced to postpone the education and professional development that ould help them become financially independent.
Many are putting off starting a family or even
moving out of their parents’ house. Rising costs,
coupled with less pay, fewer benefits on the
job and fewer stable job opportunities, create a
system in which traditional paths to adulthood
are blocked for a growing number of young
people.
Today, more than one-third of workers younger
than 35 live at home with parents. And the data
strongly suggest that young workers are living
at home not by choice, but out of economic
necessity. Young low-income workers are an
astounding 40 percentage points more likely to
live at home than young workers with incomes
over $30,000. In a similar vein, 41 percent of
young workers without a college education say
they live at home, compared with 19 percent of
college graduates.
http://www.aflcio.org/...
This is because there simply are not the same oportunities for this lost generation as existed for their parents:
Since 2000, employment rates for young
workers have plummeted, according to the
Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern
University, while older workers have actually
seen an increase in employment rates.2 If it’s
hard for young people to find jobs, it’s even
harder for them to find good jobs. More than
one-third of young workers the AFL-CIO
surveyed worry they will not be able to find
permanent, full-time jobs—up from 27 percent
in 1999. And they have good reason to worry.
According to research conducted by the Center
for Economic and Policy Research, the number of
"good jobs" available to young workers has fallen
substantially since their parents’ generation.
These problems have serious implications in the healthcare debate also because many misconceptions and downright propoganda by right-wing opponents of reform mischaracterize the plight of young, uninsured Americans:
Young people are the least likely of any age group to have health care coverage.4 Today, nearly one in three young workers reports being uninsured, compared with 24 percent without
coverage in 1999. Women are even less likely
than men to have coverage, as are workers of
color relative to white workers. Though young
workers of color are roughly even with those in
1999, every other demographic group has seen
a substantial decline in insurance coverage rates.
Contrary to popular thought, young people are
not uninsured because they consider themselves
invincible. Just the opposite—of those without
insurance, close to half say they can’t afford
health insurance, while 31 percent say their
employer doesn’t offer it. And the setbacks don’t
end there. Even those with insurance are more
likely to worry about having health care costs
they can’t afford compared with young workers
surveyed a decade ago.
More of the study's disturbing findings are here:
31 percent of young workers report being uninsured, up from 24 percent 10 years ago, and 79 percent of the uninsured say they don’t have coverage because they can’t afford it or their employer does not offer it.
Strikingly, one in three young workers are currently living at home with their parents.
Only 31 percent say they make enough money to cover their bills and put some money aside—22 percentage points fewer than in 1999—while 24 percent cannot even pay their monthly bills.
A third cannot pay their bills and seven in 10 do not have enough saved to cover two months of living expenses.
37 percent have put off education or professional development because they can’t afford it.
When asked who is most responsible for the country’s economic woes, close to 50 percent of young workers place the blame on Wall Street and banks or corporate CEOs. And young workers say greed by corporations and CEOs is the factor most to blame for in the current financial downturn.
By a 22-point margin, young workers favor expanding public investment over reducing the budget deficit. Young workers rank conservative economic approaches such as reducing taxes, government spending and regulation on business among the five lowest of 16 long-term priorities for Congress and the president.
Thirty-five percent say they voted for the first time in 2008, and nearly three-quarters now keep tabs on government and public affairs, even when there’s not an election going on.
The majority of young workers and nearly 70 percent of first-time voters are confident that Obama will take the country in the right direction.
Read the whole, disturbing report here, and watch this video:
http://www.aflcio.org/...
We owe it to the young to stand up and start fighting against corporate greed and the outsourcing of our jobs to third world countries to exploit virtual slave labor. Our policies in the last several decades have been disasterous to young folks attempting to enter the workforce and achieve their little piece of the American dream. If not, we risk seeing the young people now actually having their standard of living decline.
We need to fight for not only healthcare, but for higher wages, greater benefits and penalties to "Benedict Arnold" corporations that outsource middle-class jobs are young people were depending on. The two main places to start are passing real healthcare reform with a robust public option and fighting for the Employee Free Choice Act to allow many millions of young people who would love to be a part of a union a fair playing field to do so.
If not, we are sacrificing the promise of America for not only this lost generation, but for the many that will follow them.