A friend of mine works for a childcare facility making minimum wage. She attends the local community college, paying for the classes, books and supplies on her own. Due to being denied scholarships and grants, she pays for her tuition via the payment plan offered by the school. She lives in a house with roommates and often struggles to pay her bills on time.
As I was browsing job listings in an effort to help her find a better paying job, I came across something that sincerely rattled my brain.
The position listed was a full time Administrative Assistant for an early childcare facility. It required occasional travel, as well as extra weekend hours for traveling and special events. Some duties included general office tasks like filing, answering phones, contacting applicants and sending and receiving applicant mail. In addition, accounting duties would be required such as payable requests, reimbursements, registry of expenditures, accounting spreadsheets, merchant account statements and related paperwork, monitoring purchases, mass mailings and more.
Due to these position requirements the education and experience requirements include childcare facility experience, accounting experience, administrative experience, as well as a bachelors degree in early childhood development, family studies, or a related degree path, all for the measly wage of $12 an hour.
Are you kidding me?
All too often I see companies looking to hire experienced, intelligent applicants who have a degree in a field related to the job listed. Although those preferences are not unrealistic, they are if the company is only willing to pay $12 per hour to hire an applicant with such qualifications.
The problem starts with a company listing a position with requirements like that of the childcare facility and stamping it with a value of $12 per hour. The problem then continues when a prospective employee accepts the position at the posted wage, signaling to other companies that offering such a low wage is acceptable.
The problem is due, in large part, to this idea that all students who graduate college immediately adopt an entitled mindset and attitude where they feel they are owed a larger sum of money than those who have not graduated college. And although there are a handful of people who fit this stereotype, it is not an accurate description of the group as a whole and the description is used much too loosely.
While I personally feel this problem affects more students than just the twenty-somethings, I am going to focus on the group of people who fit the twenty-something description for this discussion.
The graduated students of the Gen-Y or Millennial communities are no strangers to descriptors like lazy, entitled, and high-maintenence. Our hard working, ambitious generation has been unfairly labeled at the hands of a few.
Believe it or not, beyond those students who skate through college on their parents' dime, care more about their summer tans than their school grades and whose only contribution to the community was the philanthropic efforts led by their sororities or fraternities, are the students who work hard outside school, often times at more than one establishment, so they can continue working hard throughout their college career, gaining as much experience and knowledge as possible before they enter the post-graduate, working world.
Those students deserve more than an entitled label, undervalued wages and society's erroneously perceived value of their efforts. After all, it was the preceding generation who pushed us toward the collegiate path, often times without highlighting the dangers of student loans and degrees that lacked demand. Federal grants and loans allowed more students to attend college, and as fortunate as we were to have such opportunities, it severely reduced the value of a degree in addition to reducing the number of jobs in the midst of a financial crisis.
So, due to the lack of jobs, devalued degrees and an olympic-sized pool of applicants to choose from, students are being forced to accept low-paying jobs from companies that have a choice to fairly compensate their employees.
Is it truly laziness and entitled attitudes that earn us jobs with unfair wages? Sure, that may be true for some, but companies have a choice. We should not discount the current state of our economy and unfortunate circumstances these graduates were catapulted into, nor should we discount the hard work and dedication it took for these students to get to the job-seeker point despite those circumstances.
That is assuming a graduate can even find a job after obtaining that proverbial piece of paper. Graduates in today's society are faced with the prospect of not only earning wages below what their experience and education should garner, but of not being able to secure a job at all.
To quote a friend who discussed this same topic with me, "I do not feel entitled to a high paying job. I do, however, think that if I am told to work my ass off in college and do so, that I deserve a chance to prove my worth;" Our worth being defined by our individual efforts to succeed in the field we are working toward, not the perceived effort based on a generational stereotype.
According to an
article published in the Huffington Post last summer, half of recent graduates are working jobs that don't require a degree, which is presumable related to the overall unemployment rate for recent graduates of 7.9%. These facts can be easily circled back to the olympic-sized pool of applicants I referred to earlier and the push our generation felt to walk down the collegiate path.
Now, some of you might be thinking "at least you have a job," or "$12 per hour is better than nothing," and you would be correct. However, with the rising costs of college tuition and the declining dollar amount of wages, many of the jobs these college-educated applicants are able to obtain are not worth the price of their degrees.
A
January 2013 report by the Center for College Affordability and Productivity states that increasing numbers of college graduates are ending up in positions that require less than a four-year college education. In addition, about five million college graduates are in jobs that the Bureau of Labor Statistics says require less than a high school education.
How are college graduates suppose to cover the cost of their four-year education or pay off their student loans with wages from jobs that don't even require that education? Similarly, how are college graduates suppose to pay off those debts with unfair wages in the positions they worked so hard to obtain?
Employment, and everything needed to be offered employment, (education, experience, training, etc.) is not cheap, especially for Gen-Ys and Millennials. Those who put the work in should be compensated fairly.
Although I respect opposing opinions, please do not mistake this for an entitled rant about low wages and tough jobs. This is about working hard and
earning our right to a position we deserve and making a fair wage.
The most recent adventure was a full day in the sun. In the morning we had surf lessons with our hostel coworker. It is much harder than it looks but very rewarding when you stand up on the board! I never realized how tough you have to be to take the waves though. We were beaten up, bruised and Niesha came home with a busted lip, but we are absolutely going to try it again! After surfing we headed for the catamaran booze cruise, which, as the name states, was full of booze, Costa Rican food, snorkeling, swimming, and a beautiful sunset cruise back to the bay (pictured left). This is a tour company we suggest to our guests here at the hostel and after experiencing it ourselves, we are full supporters and promoters. 
