A difficult job market and rising costs are making it harder for young adults to enter adulthood
Young people are already facing the worst entry-level job market since the start of the pandemic and significant economic instability.
But overall economic conditions are making it more challenging for those just entering adulthood. More than eight in 10 young adults rate the economy as “bad” or “terrible”, according to a recent survey conducted with more than 1,000 18- to 34-year-olds around the US by Generation Lab, a research firm studying young people. While young adulthood is known as a time for establishing independence and responsibility, many are attempting to do so amid cuts to social safety net programs and the ever-increasing costs of basic needs like gas and groceries.
“It’s been rough for a long time,” said Nia West-Bey, executive director of the National Collaborative for Transformative Youth Policy. “But I think we particularly have a confluence of long-term economic challenges on the income side and support side, now coupled with an increase in expenses on everything.”
This is not just in the US.
In fact it’s exactly the same in the very country where The Guardian is based, where the present day income supposedly equivalent to the wage of a factory worker in the 60s that was enough to pay for a house, a car and a family of 5, is now barelly enough for 1 person to rent a small place.
Ditto in at least the rest of Europe.
This is the end stage of Neoliberalism - a time of wealth concentration, maximized income from the pure ownership of Assets and no regulation, where life essentials that people have no choice but to pay for are provided by monopolies or cartels who aren’t restricted from extracting outsides rents from such dominant positions: people are paying what are de facto “taxes paid to the private sector” at the same time as they keep getting fed the swindle that the State should be smaller so that we pay less taxes.
We live in Peak Fraud times.