The Newest Face of Long-Term Unemployment? The College Educated

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I just started as a substitute teacher. On the day we did the intro workshop (8-4), I looked around. Here were 75 underemployed people who are willing and able to contribute to society.

The 10 people I talked to, all were
-laid off
-or able to work ft/pt, but due to family circumstances can’t do hours outside of our own flexibility. (Like me)

The problem we have in the USA is health insurance being tied to full time permanent job employment. And the fact that healthcare costs are too exorbitant for people to afford on their own making them seek government benefits instead of working part time, and part time work being generally unavailable anyway outside of the service sector low paying jobs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Being book smart doesn’t bring much value to an org when practically every piece of information you want is at your fingertips.

It isn’t hard to find college educated employees. Finding college educated employees employees that can think, analyze, process and apply that is a rarity.

People with these skills usually have personal characteristics that employers may find undesirable. High critical thinking skills tend to come with less willingness to simply follow orders, not wanting to do grunt work and more friction when there is disagreement on how things should be done with other employees who may not want to look stupid in comparison.

Our workplace isn't well adapted to using talents of these people efficiently. A lot of them end up unemployable, we have a lot of waste of brainpower because of how our corporate culture is structured. And you, as a hiring manager end up with people who are just ok but have to be babysat, and holding on to that one employee who can babysit them dearly and hoping they never quit.

So much truth in this.

"Idiocracy" is not just a movie.. We are living it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There’s always firefighting and law enforcement.

Early retirement, pensions, decent salaries and excellent benefits with next to no anxiety about AI.

Of course you did not read Project 2025

Those jobs are about to be crushed in terms of annual salary and benefits.

Really? How so? Trump’s OBBB just created up to a $25,000 tax credit for overtime. This contradicts your assertion that benefits are “about to be crushed.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My department posted two Cybersecurity analyst positions, and we are looking for recent college grads with some internship experience. We received over 3700 applications. Of those 3700 resumes, 99% of the candidates were rejected. From 99% of the resumes, there were 75 of those applicants graduated from Ivies, Northwestern, UCLA, UVA, Michigan, etc... We looked at 37 remaining applicants and phone-screen about eighteen of them. We brought nine candidates for on-site final interviews. As a technical interviewer, I asked "off the record" how many jobs they applied for and the number of interviews they received in the past twelve months. Almost all of them told me that they had applied for over 500 jobs, received less than 5% of phone interviews, and less than 1% for final interviews. All nine candidates qualified for the two positions, but we only have two slots available. In the end, my manager selected one from Brown, and the other one from UVA.

The job market is horrible. I know many people who were making 300K/yr from Amazon and Microsoft, and they got layoffs. They are looking for jobs that only pay 150K/yr, and are still looking.

Suppose that at a given moment a certain number of people are engaged in the manufacture of pins. They make as many pins as the world needs, working (say) eight hours a day. Someone makes an invention by which the same number of men can make twice as many pins as before. But the world does not need twice as many pins: pins are already so cheap that hardly any more will be bought at a lower price. In a sensible world everybody concerned in the manufacture of pins would take to working four hours instead of eight, and everything else would go on as before. But in the actual world this would be thought demoralizing. The men still work eight hours, there are too many pins, some employers go bankrupt, and half the men previously concerned in making pins are thrown out of work. There is, in the end, just as much leisure as on the other plan, but half the men are totally idle while half are still overworked. In this way it is ensured that the unavoidable leisure shall cause misery all round instead of being a universal source of happiness. Can anything more insane be imagined?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Being book smart doesn’t bring much value to an org when practically every piece of information you want is at your fingertips.

It isn’t hard to find college educated employees. Finding college educated employees employees that can think, analyze, process and apply that is a rarity.

People with these skills usually have personal characteristics that employers may find undesirable. High critical thinking skills tend to come with less willingness to simply follow orders, not wanting to do grunt work and more friction when there is disagreement on how things should be done with other employees who may not want to look stupid in comparison.

Our workplace isn't well adapted to using talents of these people efficiently. A lot of them end up unemployable, we have a lot of waste of brainpower because of how our corporate culture is structured. And you, as a hiring manager end up with people who are just ok but have to be babysat, and holding on to that one employee who can babysit them dearly and hoping they never quit.

Oh wow. This sounds like education and how teachers are treated when they come in from outside careers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just started as a substitute teacher. On the day we did the intro workshop (8-4), I looked around. Here were 75 underemployed people who are willing and able to contribute to society.

The 10 people I talked to, all were
-laid off
-or able to work ft/pt, but due to family circumstances can’t do hours outside of our own flexibility. (Like me)

The problem we have in the USA is health insurance being tied to full time permanent job employment. And the fact that healthcare costs are too exorbitant for people to afford on their own making them seek government benefits instead of working part time, and part time work being generally unavailable anyway outside of the service sector low paying jobs.

+100

So many would be so much better off if we all had access to public healthcare.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There’s always firefighting and law enforcement.

Early retirement, pensions, decent salaries and excellent benefits with next to no anxiety about AI.

What about those of us who are too old for things like this? Literally - they have age maximums of new hires.

How old are you?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There’s always firefighting and law enforcement.

Early retirement, pensions, decent salaries and excellent benefits with next to no anxiety about AI.

There was a huge article last week about young contract firefighters getting cancer from exposure to toxins, and facing death without any health insurance.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/07/us/wildfire-firefighter-cancer.html
‘If I Live to 25, I’ve Lived a Good Life’
He started fighting wildfires as a teenager. After inhaling smoke on the front lines for six seasons, he faced an impossible choice.

[Anonymous]

There is no job beneath an unemployed person.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My department posted two Cybersecurity analyst positions, and we are looking for recent college grads with some internship experience. We received over 3700 applications. Of those 3700 resumes, 99% of the candidates were rejected. From 99% of the resumes, there were 75 of those applicants graduated from Ivies, Northwestern, UCLA, UVA, Michigan, etc... We looked at 37 remaining applicants and phone-screen about eighteen of them. We brought nine candidates for on-site final interviews. As a technical interviewer, I asked "off the record" how many jobs they applied for and the number of interviews they received in the past twelve months. Almost all of them told me that they had applied for over 500 jobs, received less than 5% of phone interviews, and less than 1% for final interviews. All nine candidates qualified for the two positions, but we only have two slots available. In the end, my manager selected one from Brown, and the other one from UVA.

The job market is horrible. I know many people who were making 300K/yr from Amazon and Microsoft, and they got layoffs. They are looking for jobs that only pay 150K/yr, and are still looking.

Suppose that at a given moment a certain number of people are engaged in the manufacture of pins. They make as many pins as the world needs, working (say) eight hours a day. Someone makes an invention by which the same number of men can make twice as many pins as before. But the world does not need twice as many pins: pins are already so cheap that hardly any more will be bought at a lower price. In a sensible world everybody concerned in the manufacture of pins would take to working four hours instead of eight, and everything else would go on as before. But in the actual world this would be thought demoralizing. The men still work eight hours, there are too many pins, some employers go bankrupt, and half the men previously concerned in making pins are thrown out of work. There is, in the end, just as much leisure as on the other plan, but half the men are totally idle while half are still overworked. In this way it is ensured that the unavoidable leisure shall cause misery all round instead of being a universal source of happiness. Can anything more insane be imagined?

It seems by design to force people to work full time, our healthcare system is designed to handcuff people to "permanent" (nothing permanent about them) full time jobs. It's possible that in the past this was needed for productivity. With productivity improvement we can pay the same for people to work part time doing the same jobs and producing the same. But productivity improvements had not been allocated towards improving QOL of the workers but instead towards profits, which in your example, and as it often happens in real life isn't always profitable either. There is only so much demand for specific goods and services and skills. Do you see this system changing , and how do you think it will change? I don't see the light at the end of the tunnel, because literally nobody of significance who has audiences is talking about it. And it has to start with our healthcare system reforms an decoupling health insurance from employment. To do this it has to be made truly affordable for the workers to buy on their own. I only see the opposite - it's getting more and more expensive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There is no job beneath an unemployed person.

Unfortunately you are wrong. You aren't considering this thing called "resume". Employers want people with experience and mostly experience relevant to the job you are hired for. If you got laid off from your professional field and want to keep working there any job that doesn't contribute to your resume and your goal is going to be a negative. You are better off seeking unpaid internships to improve your chances to ever work in the field again. Once you slide towards completely different industry (I know you mean low wage service jobs that are easier to get) you may get stuck there unless you also pursue education to make yourself more competitive in the field and stand out. In our day and age resumes are process by AI before they are seen by human beings, which exacerbates this problem further.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Being book smart doesn’t bring much value to an org when practically every piece of information you want is at your fingertips.

It isn’t hard to find college educated employees. Finding college educated employees employees that can think, analyze, process and apply that is a rarity.

Finding employers who know how to create economic value by employing people who can think, analyze, process, and apply is also a rarity.

People who can think, analyze, process, and apply it can work for themselves. Why are college educated people even looking to work for someone? Who promised you all a job?

For decades people were told that getting a college degree would lead to a good job. And we generally need jobs to provide our health insurance in this messed up system.

This is still generally true, but yea, the system is broken if people have to rely on a job for healthcare.

I could retire right now and give my six figure job to a younger person, but I need the healthcare.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There’s always firefighting and law enforcement.

Early retirement, pensions, decent salaries and excellent benefits with next to no anxiety about AI.

What about those of us who are too old for things like this? Literally - they have age maximums of new hires.

How old are you?

dp.. I"m 56, F, petite. Do you think they'd hire me? I don't think so.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There’s always firefighting and law enforcement.

Early retirement, pensions, decent salaries and excellent benefits with next to no anxiety about AI.

What about those of us who are too old for things like this? Literally - they have age maximums of new hires.

How old are you?

dp.. I"m 56, F, petite. Do you think they'd hire me? I don't think so.

Every law enforcement organization has civilian staff, so yes, it’s likely.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There’s always firefighting and law enforcement.

Early retirement, pensions, decent salaries and excellent benefits with next to no anxiety about AI.

There was a huge article last week about young contract firefighters getting cancer from exposure to toxins, and facing death without any health insurance.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/07/us/wildfire-firefighter-cancer.html
‘If I Live to 25, I’ve Lived a Good Life’
He started fighting wildfires as a teenager. After inhaling smoke on the front lines for six seasons, he faced an impossible choice.

Contract wildfire firefighters don’t get the same assortment of PPE that career firefighters get.