Waiting for That One Job

A few years out of college, my younger brother has been unable to find a full-time job working in early childhood education, so he has cobbled together employment with three part-time jobs: working with pre-schoolers at a private school, doing administrative work at a non-profit, and retail work. He lives at home, and the majority of his money goes to car payments, health care and student loans. “I’m trying to save, but it’s hard,” he told me. He was mostly at his a-few-dollars-above-minimum-wage retail job during the holidays, working early shifts in the stock room (“people buy a lot of stuff, and then they return a lot of stuff,” he explained). I bought him dinner and we talked about his career prospects. “I’ve been looking for that one job, but it hasn’t appeared yet,” he said. “I’m mostly just tired.”

The full-time jobs that did appear didn’t pay enough, so here he was, juggling three part-time positions. His predicament appeared to be one of the consequences of a bad labor market: lots of low-wage work to go around; not enough ones that paid a decent salary, and often no benefits.

In 2011, the Times wrote about how the median starting salary for those graduating in 2009 and 2010 was $27,000 — down from $30,000 pre-Recession:

“Young college graduates working multiple jobs is a natural consequence of a bad labor market and having, on average, $20,000 worth of student loans to pay off,” said Carl E. Van Horn, director of the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers.

“There are two types of people in this position: the graduate who can’t get a full-time job, and the person whose income isn’t sufficient to meet their expenses,” he said. “The only cure for young people in this position is an economic recovery of robust proportions.”

In October, contributor John Sherman (pre-tuxedo), wrote a piece for us about some of the people he knew who worked a second job for extra income.

My brother’s predicament felt even more commonplace when I picked up a copy of the Los Angeles Times and read about 29-year-old Jonathan Ng, a millennial who is part of a generation that’s the “first in the modern era to be burdened with more student loan debt, higher unemployment and lower levels of wealth than their two immediate predecessor generations,” according to a study by the Pew Research Center. Ng was cobbling together work as a graphic designer, and though he was saving for retirement (he had $45,000 in a retirement account), he was engaged and had little in savings for his upcoming wedding and for other goals like buying a house. A financial planner named Jennifer Hartman suggested that he and his fiancee should start tracking their spending, buy a reasonable car (they both leased), and start saving. The career development would take some time: “He’s got good goals and plans,” Hartman said. “It will just take time to bring them to fruition”.

It would take time for my brother as well, and I told him as much. After dinner, I asked him if there was anything he needed. “I’m here,” I said. “Now is the time to take advantage.” He asked for a pair of sneakers, and I bought them. It’d be one less thing for him to worry about buying.

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