OPINION: Economics savvy can help new generation
Janus Adams is an author, historian and social commentator.
While it's good news that the recession officially ended last summer, the most recent monthly unemployment head count remains too high for comfort. Nationwide, we're seeing double-digit joblessness among traditionally vulnerable African-American and Latino men and boys, women of color and single mothers.
What's the future of American labor and how will we get out of this mess? Taking the past as prologue, things don't look promising.
In the '80s, Ronald Reagan cut his presidential teeth on a head-to-head confrontation with air traffic controllers that broke their union and weakened labor across the board. The '90s gave us ritual bloodlettings - thousands of workers laid off each year just before Christmas. Then came the dot-com debacle, the real estate bust and "too big to fail."
But what has changed our world most isn't recklessness and greed - it's technology. Jobs that once were are never coming back.
That's something worth thinking about the next time you scan your own groceries in the automated checkout lane of your local supermarket. Gone are the after-school jobs, second jobs, junior managers. And that's just in the retail food industry.
With e-books and iTunes, we're losing printing and audio-manufacturing companies, the truck drivers who deliver our books and music, and the retailers that sell them. And that's just in the book and music industries.
Add the outsourcing to foreign shores of manufacturing and service jobs in every major field and a grim picture emerges: Working-class America isn't working any more. The society that has ceased to make things is not making work. At least, not work as we once knew it.
So what are the job prospects for today's young people? To inspire youngsters in these challenging times, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has created a Career Information for Kids website (bls.gov/k12), complete with a teacher's guide. Its Occupational Outlook Handbook, due out this fall, includes a guide to 100 recession-proof occupations.
Significantly, the bureau reports, "All of the increase in employment over the past two decades has been among workers . . . who have associate or bachelor's degrees." It's a fact borne out by the college graduating Class of 2010, which - although having no easy time finding work - succeeded in capturing three out of every five of August's newly filled jobs.
Most young people are savvy about technology; they have their Facebook pages, they tweet, and hold the world in the smart phones in their hands. But that's not all they need to succeed in the postindustrial world.
It's interesting that the workings of the engine of this country, capitalism, is one thing we don't uniformly teach children in school. Every high schooler should learn practical economics. We should ensure that they know how to read and interpret three essential financial documents: the balance sheet, and P&L (profit and loss) and cash-flow statements.
High schoolers should also know something of history. Beyond the traditional "great men" view, a broader perspective would be helpful: history's cycles and trends, the mistakes made, the repercussions and, most important, how previous generations climbed their way out of past economic ditches. How many people realize how similar the buildup to this recession was to the Great Depression of the 1930s, and thus, how predictable and avoidable?
Particularly in times like these, everyone should be guided by a sense of collective ethics and compassion. How else will we be able to cope with the effects of this economic downturn that will mark our underemployed nation's uncertain future?
