Change.org's Poverty in America blog asks a great question: Why do we think young poor people are lazy? The stereotype, of course, is that 20-something college graduates are just slackers living off their parents. But that ignores the realities of a terrible job market in which they're often competing with older, more experienced workers. It also ignores how many college students get degrees without their parents' financial support or, if they did have parental support, have parents now so in debt they can't continue to help them.
Perhaps we think younger people haven't yet experienced the dramatic life events that can set someone behind, but that doesn't mean these young people got a good start. It's also unfair, since we spend so much time convincing high schoolers of the economic value of a college degree, only to dump them in a labor market unable to absorb them:
The fact is that young 20-somethings are the most likely age group to be unemployed. Nearly 16 percent of them can't find jobs, double the rate among adults over 45 -- the age of millennials' parents. The article begins with a tale about a 22-year-old Oberlin graduate who works at a bar and lives with her parents, then segues into a complete non sequitur: anecdotes (without any supporting statistics, natch) about parents calling their children's employers and graduate schools to complain on their behalf. Clearly such behavior is absurd, but what does it have to do with 20-somethings forced to rely on their parents because they can't find work?
The fact is, these college graduates have many, many more options than an adult who did not finish high school. But using individual vignettes of 20-somethings who haven't seemed to grow up as an excuse for an entire generation's struggles to find work is dubious.
-- Monica Potts
