Poor Dan, hasn't he heard? Applebee's won't even look at you unless you have a master's degree.

It's a hirer's market. And 180 degrees from post dot-com, this'll be a long one.

Retention bonuses? How's that work again?

Except around here for small things, where the cost of living is too high for many service industry folks to survive, given the decrease in total job hours. So they move or stay away. Which screws with supply & demand. Which means many jobs are done by overqualified workers and cost too much or they remain unfinished jobs. Bah.

"Statistics show that people who come of age and spend the early years of their careers un- or underemployed will fall behind their always-employed peers in both earnings and career status, and most will never recover the lost ground."

these statistics are irrelevant because they don't look at the job market after a recession. The people in the entry-level jobs when they return will be better qualified and will accelerate faster than the people studied in the statistics mentioned.

Tailor your application and your resume to the job you are applying for. If it doesn't require a college degree, don't list it on the application.

I have a Class A CDL with doubles/triples and I can't PAY someone to let me drive a truck, except for the major long-haul carriers (Swift, CR England, etc.). I have a wife and two kids; no long-haul for me.

Well looks like I'm screwed haha.

I do have a job but I'd say I'm underemployed at the moment.

This sounds kind of like common sense though. Start your career later and it will take you longer to move up.

I call BS. I've been able to rebound, even after spending time unemployed during the dot-com bust. Sure, it took some luck along the way, but I've done quite well.

My first job was in the middle of the 90's recession, when California was still recovering. I managed just fine.

Wow. An English major without a job. I'm shocked.

DAMMIT.

DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT.

GOD DAMMIT.

AHHHHHH I WILL NEVER GET OUT OF RETAIL NOW SOMEONE JUST KILL ME AND TAKE ME OUT OF MY MISERY.

A University of Wisconsin graduate with a bachelor's degree in English who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.?

Step 1: Move out of New York

@QADude: Plus, I'm inclined to believe that this is just a bit o' propoganda to make people happy with whatever low-paying job they can get their hands on.

This is a BusinessWeek article after all. I don't know if I'm remembering correctly, but I seem to remember reading an article from there suggesting that the minimum wage needed to be lowered or eliminated. [Citation Needed]

We had some people over for dinner this evening. One is a law student, graduating this May. The other is a combined law and graduate school student also graduating this May. Neither has a job offer or even an interview lined up despite being in the top 10% of a nationally recognized school. It's a tough market, especially when law firms are letting good lawyers go.

@StevePJobs: Actually, this very article claims that a lower minimum wage would help with unemployment.

@Eldritch: Ok, but can I have your job when I'm done with you?

@henrygates: I hear this advice often, but I'm a bit confused as to how to make it work. If I leave out my college degree, it's still very obvious from my work history that I have a college education, and in what field.

If I leave out work history which points to that education (student jobs, internships, work in the field) I have an almost empty work-history, and no way to answer the inevitable question of what you were doing during those years of unemployment. At 26, that's devastating to a job hunt, even for jobs which don't require a college education. The gaps that already exist are already causing problems, adding to that can only make things worse.

How to remedy that?

That advice is offered often, and I don't doubt it has some merit. But it is never given with a follow-up about what to do with the destruction of work history the method causes.

@QADude: Well there you have it. One example disproves the survey.

@QADude:
And I call you a stupid youngn', but only time will tell!

*sigh* when it rains it pours. I graduated from an excellent school, with an internship overseas with the US Government, I can speak 3 languages and I have more talents and capabilities than you can shake a stick at, white or blue collar. I'm stuck in a substitute job, and never get any callbacks. Though I'm in the process of offering my soul to Homeland.

@Thaddeus:

Step 2. Get a degree worth something.

What kind of job is he looking for? unless its being a teacher, what good is an english degree?

Uggg. I have been living on unemployment for the past 7 months now and have decided to go back to school in Jan to get my Bachelors. This news truly does suck for me.

@henrygates: Yeah except now employers are requiring a college degree for almost everything. I'm sure in the coming years we'll see something like "sanitation management" degrees so that even the janitors need a bachelors.

Also, why are people always down on English majors? If this said he was a math major or a business major, would you call him out?

English majors: We're not ALL useless

@xtc46 - thinksmarter on twitter: An English degree is useful for a lot of things, but you have to actually want to do something besides teach. English majors can tailor their skills and experience to do a lot of things - it's just that a lot of them, in my experience, have no clue what they want to do.

all the NY market TV and film jobs seemed to have vanished overnight about a year ago, which totally sucks.

I get why the surveyors wanted to look at people 16 to 24, but people who are 21 and above tend to be much, much more impacted by the slowing job market than people who are aged 16 to 18. Being unemployed or underemployed at 16 is ridiculous. It means you're a student in high school and while you may not have as much gas money as you intended, it doesn't mean you are damaging your career. And it's hard to be underemployed as a teen because the most popular jobs for teens are in retail or restaurant work, and they're usually in the bottom rungs.

It's once they're out of college that it affects them more because they're thinking about long-term careers.

All the depressing job market news has me kind of wishing I hadn't started on my masters instead of getting a job.

Now graduate school is the trendy thing to do...

@thisistobehelpful: What henrygates probably means is that if you spent 3 years being a waiter, that's great for you but it's not going to look good on your resume if you are applying for a job at an interior decorating firm as a decorator. Even if you learned good leadership qualities from it, it can backfire. If you're applying to be a sous chef, by all means, you can list how you started as a waiter. But for unrelated fields, it just looks like you're filling space.

@dryfire: I got laid off in January and my former boss said that perhaps it was an opportunity for us laid off workers to go back to grad school. There was some snickering as we all thought, "with what money?"

It's rough for a lot of people, even grad school students. The thing you have going for you is that you're already in grad school so when you get out, the people who lost their jobs and went to grad school will still be in school, and you won't be competing with them for work.

@xtc46 - thinksmarter on twitter: I have a degree in History/Sociology and got a decent job out of college in the music industry. Plenty of employers just want a college degree, any college degree, and with the way people "write" these days, an English degree would hopefully indicate a good candidate.

I don't have a college degree (although people always assume I do). Before I dropped out to be a housewife, I had a pretty decent job at an international investment bank pushing paper. My manager asked if I'd be interested in a job as an analyst, but I knew I was pregnant and wouldn't be willing to spend the time to do it.

Obviously, I could have gotten MUCH further if I'd had a college degree. Many places won't look at you unless you have one, regardless of work experience and I must have missed many opportunities. But then again, when I dropped out, I was making 20 grand more than my Georgetown-grad SIL does today.

It makes me glad to have started out when I did (as a receptionist) when you could actually work your way up the ladder. Does that still happen anymore?

I can vouch for that theory. I graduated in the 2001 recession, couldn't get a decent job and forced to settle. People see the job I settled for (along with inability to get new skill sets etc) and no longer "qualified" for higher paid jobs. Basically getting out of the rut is incredibly difficult and the longer in it, the harder it is to get out of it.

@Laura Northrup: They claim it but I doubt it would. Any wage savings will just go into the pockets of the business owners.

The real solution is going to be peer to peer job creation. People agreeing to hire someone local or use someone local for a needed ongoing service or to have a product supplied. Then that person spends his wages doing the same. Some sort of more micro economy is probably the only way around the mired mess we are stuck in.

people who come of age and spend the early years of their careers un- or underemployed will fall behind their always-employed peers in both earnings and career status, and most will never recover the lost ground.

Right. So?

This is not surprising: people with uninterrupted careers have more earnings and better status than others. Is comparing yourself to other people supposed to be important? It's not the route to happiness, kids.

When today's unemployed finally do get jobs in the recovery, many may be dissatisfied to be slotted below people who worked all along

Dissatisfied? Are unproven new hires entitled to move into an advanced level in their pay grade ahead of workers with a known performance record? Answer: No.

I look forward to the article: "Strong sense of entitlement correlates with job dissatisfaction".

Instead of trying to find a job with another company, how about starting your own business?

@pollyannacowgirl: I saw a posting a few years ago asking for a BS for a receptionist. That kind of nonsense started when the economy was supposedly good. I don't even want to know what employers are going to start asking for.

@xtc46 - thinksmarter on twitter: I have a degree in the Japanese language, and ended up working in health care as a database specialist. It's not all in the degree.

I was just thinking the same thing. Time to seriously think about that business idea that's been rattling around in my head for a few years now and hasn't gone away.

@pollyannacowgirl: I don't know how easy it is to work your way up the ladder nowadays. My mom doesn't have any kind of college degree, and was turned down for a director's position. She's currently in a very decent position through her own hard work and excellent skill set -- she just can't climb up any farther in the company she is now without a master's degree.

@2Wheelsor4: The Moto-Stig: Just curious which 3 languages you speak? I know the market for Pashto or Urdu speakers is excellent right now for obvious reasons and some contract companies are paying $200k+ for those specialists.

Of course you have to go to Afghanistan but for the money I'd do it! I'm also going on 6 months of unemployment to...

@Eldritch: Someone has to save the english language from the horror of internet/text message english.

@Eldritch: Indeed. It gets under my skin when people criticize majors like English. *shakes head*

"Possible solutions proposed by experts? ...a lower minimum wage for young workers..."

First of all, you can't logically have two minimum anythings. Secondly, I'm not sure it would be legal to have two minimum wages. And thirdly, you want to go LOWER than $7.25/hour? I made more than that at 16 working in a restaurant 21 YEARS AGO!

Recently, I've read want ads in Texas:

"Wanted: Office Manager. Must have professional appearance, be smart, reliable, etc. etc. $8 an hour."

What kind of "professional appearance" is expected for $8 an hour? Does anybody know? I'm really fucking curious. Maintain a professional appearance and add in transportation costs and you're working for free, chump!

"Wanted: Electrician. Must be experienced and have own truck and tools. $8.50/hour."

Yessir: you provide the experience, the journeyman's license, your own truck, your own tools, and then work at a dirty, dangerous job for 10+ hours a day for the princely sum of $8.50 an hour.

I wonder what kind of benefits package they offer?

@pecan 3.14159265: Thank you!!! Yeah, I too was laid off in Jan and people tell me I should go to school (not grad school, though) to learn a new computer skill (it seems my OpenVMS system admin skills are not in demand as much these days). And my answer is with what money? The money I saved for a rainy day? Well, that money is paying my mortgage, oil, water, electric, & food bills. And besides, just because I learn a new skill, most if not all job specs nowadays want 1 or 2 years of my new computer skill (whatever it might have been). So, while learning Perl might be good, I do not know if would have been the thing to do.

Any thoughts on the subject? Thx.

@kingdom2000: It's a catch-22 alright. You do what you have to do to survive and then get asked all kinds of questions about gaps in your job history and that shit stays with you forever like herpes.

Leave the McJobs off and put down something else like contract work (like self-employed consulting) or volunteer/internship or herbal distribution entrepreneur/dispatcher (sounds better than "weed dealer").

Best of luck.

@StevePJobs: Agreed. I know that may companies are just making their workers glad that they even have a job.

The best jobs and salaries are found via networking. That will beat any recession.

I can see that especially if you want a career and not a job.

I've resigned from companies that supposedly were 'career' oriented or in a career oriented field and made 2 mistakes.

The first mistake was resigning from the job with no immediate job to go to. I went to school but potential employers didn't like that I resigned from that job. And by the way that company and job has been downsized manytimes since I left. That's why I left. It was becoming a dead end job.

The second mistake was even after some schooling was not having continuously year after year updating or learning new skills. Potential employers in ' career ' fields want to see you are really into it to the point of constantly taking courses,getting certifications,degrees,seminars etc.

Point being at least try to get some part time work in choosen career field and take courses & training even if non credit twards a degree. And need a dare say a voluntary internship even if for a month or so.

If you want a career and not a job you have to keep your hands in it at all times.

The reaction I got from many potential employers was where the heck were you meaning these schools and training are it ? I was always led to believe unless you are taking a course for college credit it is a waste. WRONG-even many an adult continuing education course can help. Or volunteer work.

And if you still want to stay in the game so to speak at least keep up on the industry or field on your own by reading related magazines,journals,articles etc. You will at least come off as being well read along with trying to keep up.

One last thing. Never ever let a boss talk you out of schooling or try to convince you ' this ' job will last for ever . Most bosses and fellow employees are smart enough to realize that they can be replaced and fear a more educated and more experienced person so they will hinder you advancement for their own agenda and NOT because it messes up the schedule .

@nybiker: Perl? Thats a bit old school, its all about java and c/c++ these days. Learn those, read up on your assembly(which is a bitch) and re-read you proofs book. Proofs are stupid but hey it'll help you get that development job.

@yodel: "...the market for Pashto or Urdu speakers is excellent right now for obvious reasons and some contract companies are paying $200k+ for those specialists."

Unless you've got teh gay, because when it comes to translating languages in the fight to keep safe from evil doers, the first thing to comes to my mind is, "How does this person feels about penises?"

/Straight but not narrow.

I was unemployed for a month. I now make much more than I did before.

Just look.