Which Economy

It's a simple enough question:

I mean, have you SEEN the economy these new adults have graduated into?

And I understand the reason for asking it. It's a plea for understanding and grace to be extended to young people, who, having put in the time and effort to undertake a college education, now find themselves in a situation in which jobs, especially entry-level jobs, have become scarce. And I understand the invocations of "the economy" or "this economy," as way of explaining it. It's a simple shorthand for the position that the United States finds itself in now, with depressed demand for labor.

But hasn't this been the goal of "the economy" all along? The modern United States is very good, and has been for some time, at creating all of the goods and services that people are ready, willing and able to pay for without need of the entirety of its labor force. And while many people seem to value their own vocations quite highly, it doesn't take much to reveal that any number of them begrudge others theirs; if putting some number of people out of work is what it takes to feel wealthier, then so be it. Couple this with the understanding, expressed to me by a small number of people I know, that the demand for labor moves, but never really goes away, and one can see the dilemma that many people over the years have found themselves in; the fact that they can't find work that's valuable enough to support them, in a society that believes that there's enough valuable work for anyone who wants it.

Which leaves out the fact that the government has taken it upon itself to prevent labor from becoming scarce enough that employers are forced to raise wages (and thus, presumably, prices). And that means that somewhere in the area of one in twenty to one in twenty-five people who are actively engaged in looking for work (remember the Unemployment Rate is dependent on the Participation Rate).

For people in that 4 or 5 percent (which can be a few million people or so). every economy is a bad economy, simply due to the perception that government interventions or none, there's enough work out there for everyone who wants it. And this leaves people wondering both what's wrong with them, and what they need to in order to fix it.

And that leaves aside the efficiency gains that businesses chase as a matter of daily operations. Because every dollar paid to an employee is a dollar that isn't going to shareholders, some of whom can become quite upset about that fact.

So there are always going to be new adults who graduate into a world that's actively hostile to them making enough money in for the formal employment sector to support themselves, even in the "good" times. It's the nature of the beast. It's receiving a lot of attention right now, because the overall consume outlook doesn't seem rosy for anyone. But maybe the problem is that it's seen as actively bad for it to be rosy for everyone.