How can young people finish the race for a successful, stable career when the finish line keeps moving? Who’s running this race, and why won’t you see us?
At the risk of sounding like the whiny, overeducated millennial I am, finding a job is hard. But perhaps I should rephrase. Jobs are everywhere. They are easy to find on Facebook pages and job sites. They are posted in many storefronts now, at each cash register in big box stores. Large signs with smiling models wave hello and beckon you towards them for a rewarding opportunity.
What’s hard is finding a job with basic medical benefits. A job that lasts longer than a four-month contract. A job that pays a living wage. A job that means you can buy a house, not rent a room in one.
As someone intimately familiar with the job search process, with submitting application after application and coming up blank, I can tell you firsthand that the market is in the toilet. I have waded through said toilet for more than two years with three degrees under my belt, and for all it’s lauded as a flotation device, my education just seems to be pulling me under (thank you, rising debt crisis).
‘Indeed’ is clogged with part-time positions in retail and food service because no one wants to do that anymore. No one wants to be undervalued, worked to the bone, yelled at by customers, and then paid $14 an hour when the average cost of rent for a one-bedroom in the city is $1,000 at best.
I’ve had my fair share of that experience, and I want it no longer. I see these jobs, and I tell myself I have an MA. Something better will come along, I think. But then I look at the other ads.
Three years ago, I had a job in my field, though it was on a contract. At the end of my second contract renewal, I decided to leave the position and get another degree. A great plan in theory. Leave the contract position, update your education, improve your résumé, and rejoin the race better equipped. You’ll be guaranteed an even better position.
In the year it took me to complete the MA, the finish line moved. The same jobs that used to only require a master’s degree now require a doctorate. Full-time jobs are even more scarce than before. These “better”, non-minimum wage jobs ask you to have several years of experience and a doctorate, then offer to hire you on a temporary basis at a pay rate that equals no more than $20-$25 an hour. Without benefits. The thing is, had I stayed in that contract position, I wouldn’t be much better off.
And I’m not the only one struggling. While I worked my contracts with this unnamed institution, I shared my office with a woman who couldn’t buy a house because she’d been stuck in contract work for eight years.
So, what’s to be done? I don’t have an answer. If I did, I wouldn’t be living at home at 27. I wouldn’t be looking at job sites every day and sending out applications every week only to never hear back from employers. I wouldn’t be $30,000 in debt.
At this point, there is nothing else for me to do, because who’s to say that if I went and got a doctorate (never mind how I would pay my way through those years) the finish line wouldn’t move again? Who’s to say there wouldn’t be some new qualification I’m missing? I feel stuck. I feel hopeless. I feel like a failure even though I know I’m not.
This is the reality of so many young people like me today. There are more stories like mine than I can count, and that’s only among the people I know.
The race goes on. The finish line, though within my sights, seems to be getting farther from me with each step. At this point, I’m starting to think it’s a mirage, and I’ll be stuck running, tired, out of breath, on the verge collapse, my whole life.
Carlie Chabot lives in Greater Sudbury.
