APU students weigh in on the future job market
Philosopher George Santayana once said, “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” The future is unpredictable. According to Time, this year has the potential to be more devastating than the Great Depression.
“Depressions don’t just generate ugly stats and send buyers and sellers into hibernation. They change the way we live,” foreign affairs columnist Ian Bremmer wrote in his article for the magazine.
Unknown future
The Great Depression started when the stock market crashed in 1929 and continued until 1939. The months leading up to the stock market crash were the Roaring Twenties when the nation’s wealth doubled. Once the market crashed, personal debts skyrocketed, businesses suffered greatly and caused mass layoffs. During this time, over 15 million Americans found themselves unemployed, reaching 26%.
In comparison, the coronavirus pandemic has only lasted for about nine months in the U.S. The highest rate of unemployment that the Pew Research Center recorded during this period was 16%; although, this number has dropped since.
Bremmer wrote that the anticipated “economic misery” is one that few living people have experienced.
“These factors lead us toward the third definition of depression: a slowdown that will last longer than recessions of the past 80 years,” said Brenner. This means that younger generations will be entering the workforce at the worst time.
Many college students are concerned about this economically grim prognosis, especially those that are currently working towards degrees that may not guarantee them a job post-graduation.
Taylor Mabuni, a senior interdisciplinary major, thinks the future job market will either undergo a temporary adjustment or experience a permanent shift.
Mabuni has switched majors five times throughout his academic career because of his interests in different fields, one of them being aviation.
“That’s an industry that will be disrupted for years at a minimum,” Mabuni said. “Airlines are one example of an industry that will suffer and alter employment opportunities.”
Mabuni thinks his interdisciplinary studies degree will leave him with more job options in the future. He also feels relieved of the struggles that a narrow subject matter like aviation could bring.
However, students with very specific areas of interest don’t have much wiggle room to make adjustments like Mabuni.
Derek Thompson from The Atlantic predicts that the workforce will become only “telepresent” or remote. Thompson says that working from home will indirectly impact other businesses. So, businesses that depend on income from people going to and from work are going to suffer. For example, a coffee shop will lose business from the regulars that stop for their morning perk before work. That also means that the students who seek those jobs in college towns will be forced to find work elsewhere.
Comparison to the Great Depression
College degrees have traditionally resulted in students receiving well-paying jobs post-graduation. However, dropping enrollment rates indicate that many are no longer seeing the value that a college education can bring.
With a bleak future job market and rising costs of tuition, many are choosing to go to a trade school or starting to work right after they graduate from high school. The prospect of Zoom University has added an additional layer of concern for those who do not think that their tuition money is worth an online education.
Additionally, the role that higher education has played in society has been shifting for years, with frontrunning companies like Google and Apple on track to change their higher education requirements and eliminating the need for a degree. Thus, many high school graduates are now reconsidering whether getting a degree is worth the student loans they may accumulate if the option of starting to work right out of high school is on the table.
The Great Depression saw a similar shift in attitudes and behaviors towards a college education, although tuition was much cheaper back in the day. According to the Washington Post, national tuition rates have risen by 50% since 1939.
Additionally, many students that decide to attend university rely on part-time jobs to sustain them. This can be difficult considering that it is hard to find any kind of employment in the first place.
Back during the time of the Great Depression, Pennsylvania State University warned its incoming students that “Opportunities for earning money about the College and in town … are few in numbers and are rarely available to new students.” They advised those that were entering college without the means of paying off tuition against attending university.
Although student loans have since alleviated some of the burdens of steep tuition rates, the anxiety of paying off debt remains.
Potential in remote work
One clear difference between the Great Depression and 2020 is the advancement of technology. In the 1900s, working or learning from home was not an option. CRSR reports that during the Great Depression young students were searching for factory and labor work instead — a stark contrast to today’s workforce being in front of a screen. If remote work continues to be a normal part of job descriptions, the increased flexibility for job hunters will provide some hope in otherwise uncharted territory.
Senior English major Cora O’Sullivan currently holds two remote work positions. She was already looking into remote options before the pandemic because most employers in the English field were already offering remote work.
The flexibility that comes with working from home has provided O’Sullivan with even more opportunities. However, even with a potential rise in remote freelance work, O’Sullivan is wary of being able to find a high ranking position post-graduation.
“It has made me rethink if I want to go get a job in English right after graduating college,” said O’Sullivan. “It might be more beneficial to stay at home and work a day job unrelated to my field.”
As Bremmer wrote, “The next global depression is coming and optimism won’t slow it down.”
What we can do is prepare for it.