A short intro to the unexamined costs of a lack of good jobs in our economic situation.
I recently graduated from a respected business university in southern California with a dual degree in International Business Management and Marketing Management. I graduated with a 3.0 average. Being as how I was heavily in credit card debt and had little income after financial aid stopped paying. I had to accept the first job that was offered. I now work for a national chain of drug stores chucking boxes at night for a living.
This job pays at the lower end of what someone in my area can survive on at the minimum. I don't make minimum wage, and I am treated reasonably well. I could complain about how my company routinely breaks federal laws about break times and lunch times, but I won't. I am told that this company is actually one of the better companies to work for.
Unfortunately, this was the best job I could find in the short time I had to find employment. This job does not require a high school degree and would be the perfect job for someone who didn't want to go to college fresh out of high school, and here I am, a university educated business graduate forced by this rotten economy to take a job that frankly, is a waste of my education and skills.
This is happening all over the country as people with higher educations are forced to lower their expectations on the sorts of jobs that they would NEVER have considered two to three years ago. College graduates lose out on earning power, and income potential and those with no education are even worse off, by having the deck further stacked against them.
One part of me is starting to regret the fact that I got an education at all. I was in College and the University system, on and off for ten years (I only settled on a major in the last six) I could have earned 200 thousand dollars in the time that I spent wasting my time on an education that is not benefiting me in the least at this moment. Another part of me is hating the idea that I took this job at all. I am miserable in this job, it's not what I trained for but it does pay the bills and I am grateful for anything at all, but I am having a hard time doing a manual labor job, as I told myself I was getting educated to avoid jobs like this