Search For the Disappearing Jobs

The beginning, middle, and end. These are the stages of education we go through from the day we are born to we graduate from college. However, once we graduate, what do we do after that? We can’t make a living by just sitting on the couch. So as young adults many of us will go out and try to find a job. But, with the number of companies filing for bankruptcy and others not recruiting college seniors or recent college graduates, the once vast job market for college graduates is becoming the disappearing job market and provides little opportunity for us to survive in this cruel society where the cost of living is continuing to climb. No one is quite sure as to why this sudden fall of once thriving companies is occurring, but if the trend continues, there will not be a credible job market for the younger generation, which we are a part of.

In the beginning, we learn from our parents that we must prepare for our future. In the middle, we enter the educational system to learn specific skills that are suppose to help us along the way. And then after high school, most of us go on to college or to a trade school to gain more knowledge to help us further our career choice. We are taught to believe that if we follow this path we will be successful if we work hard at it, do well in school, and keep our grade point average high. Most parents tell their children that their parents will support them through college, but after college, the now young adult is completely on his or her own. We also consider ourselves to be independent at this stage. If we were living with our parents through the years of college, upon graduation, the end point, we would want to go out on our own and pursue our dreams. But if there is no longer a successful job market out there for us, we can’t become independent, as we desire. Junior Oscar Ogaldez stated, “In the unrealistic event that no jobs are available, then I believe that we’ll revert back to our instincts and mooch off mom and dad and we would rely on grandma’s birthday money.” If major companies and corporations continue to go out of business, file for bankruptcy, merge, and continue downsizing through layoffs, what will happen to those everyday businesses such as Kmart, Sears, McDonalds, and Burger King, that most high school and struggling college students rely on for jobs? We all know that the money earned in the big companies such as Boeing, Raytheon, Norththrop, IBM, and many other Aerospace and major corporations support smaller businesses through buyer seller spending. But with corporate downsizing and the significant number of jobs that are being lost or eliminated, our generation is faced with a severe case of the disappearing job.

The Los Angeles Times stated that Kmart was struggling to compete with Wal-Mart and Target and failed to pay its top food supplier $78 million after a disappointing holiday season. Kmart filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy, however, they said that they were only going to close weak stores and that they expected to emerge from Chapter 11 next year.

Boeing has planned to eliminate as many as 30,000 jobs with most of them being in the commercial airplane division by the middle of the year. About 15,000 jobs have been cut nationwide and nearly 9,000 of those jobs are in the Puget Sound Area. Since October, about 19,000 workers nationwide have received 60-day layoff notices, but not all of them have been put into effect.

Raytheon is selling its military aircraft integration systems to L-3 Communications Holding Inc. for $1.13 billion to pay off some of its heavy debt. Think of the number of people that will be put out of work when this happens.

There are hundreds of companies not mentioned that are experiencing financial problems. It seem that as either high school or college graduates, we are going to be faced with a serious problem of finding a good or the right job. What does this mean to us? Junior Klarissa Garcia said, “If there were no jobs left for us, I would be broke and what it does is put those of us who are getting ready to enter the job market in a bad position and leaves in the dark as to our future.” Seniors and graduates now think that finding a decent job has become a serious issue for them. Many graduates still look for work six months to a year after graduating and stated that prospects were getting scarcer. So, with the job market thinning and corporations becoming more reluctant to recruit college students/graduates, students just out of college or in college are left without the successful opportunity of finding a good job that will provide them the ability make it on their own. What happens is when we should be starting our careers, we are still dependent on others to help us make it through the first major step of going out into the world. If companies such as McDonald’s are having complaints and losing costumers, it’s possible that this is happening with such other companies. If we begin losing the lower paying jobs like McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC, and KMart, which most often cater to hiring the high school and first and second year college students, our chances of being hired by major companies may become slimmer than they are now. We all know that what starts at the top flows downhill. Therefore, if major companies are going out of business and are laying off employees in significant numbers, what do we think is going to happen at the lower levels where the smaller companies exist? What will happen to us if there are no jobs out there for us? Sophomore Breanna Mulligan stated, “With or without jobs I would still ask my parents for money.”

We have the fourth highest unemployment rate and it is increasing. Should we be rethinking our career choices? Today’s society is not like it used to be one or two decades ago. At that time, once you graduated from high school or college, you had a positive chance of finding a decent job, but today, that is not the case. Out of every ten college graduates, only two are likely to be hired in the job of their choice. These are not very good odds. Now we must obtain worldly knowledge and experience and learn from it. We should move to a higher level of knowledge and understanding of the world around us. What will happen to companies or corporations we desire to work for in the future must not be the center of our focus. What we must focus on is becoming more critical and smart about planning our future because we may never find the desired jobs that have vanished. We must strongly consider creating our own jobs and business because what happens to the society that follows us depends on what we do as employees, employers, supervisors, or leaders of the future. If we can’t help ourselves, we can’t help others, and whatever happens in this world of Corporate America, depends on a power much greater than we can imagine. Nevertheless, if we start planning now, we will be better equipped to pursue and obtain our future dreams.

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