Common Wealth, Common Wisdom

Everybody is talking about the economy these days- it's a topic of instant distress for people of all ages across the US, but especially for teens. Something all of my friends are wondering is: how will I pay for college? It's not an easy question to answer. While college tuition is increasing, the job market is decreasing, as illustrated by this article in The New York Times, which notes that teen unemployment is at its highest point ever. The article says that over a quarter of teens looking for work were unsuccessful this summer. I can't say I'm surprised, knowing how hard it is to find work in the North Country. It's weird to think that teens, usually stereotyped as wanting to laze around and watch t.v. all day, are actually trying to get jobs, and aren't working through no fault of their own.

Jobs are getting harder and harder to get for people my age- it's a domino effect. College graduates, young and old, are having an impossible job of finding work that meets their qualifications, and they have to take the work usually reserved for people my age- restaurant jobs, fast food joints, working at gas stations, etc. And what's left for us? Nada, because what is left is grabbed by local colleges kids, and considering there are four colleges within a twenty minute radius of me, there are a whole lot of them to be hired. Moreover, a large portion of the jobs young people get in the North Country are acquired through knowing the owner or already having your best friend work there.

What does this mean for people my age?

It means we'll have an even more difficult a time paying for college. Universities are starting to turn people down because they just don't have the resources to provide students with sufficient financial aid. We need jobs in order to go into our first year without totally floundering. SATs, ACTs, and AP tests aren't cheap; AP tests are $86 each, and like a lot of people I know, I've got four or five to take in the spring. Colleges charge between fifty and seventy dollars to just apply. And we can't just rely on our parents to cover these costs, as they're having a hard enough time getting and keeping jobs.

Jobs are getting increasingly difficult to get after one graduates from college as well. And then what happens with that massive college debt? If a person can't get the high paying job they expected, because those jobs just aren't as readily available any more, that debt sits, grows, and becomes almost impossible to pay off.

Interviewing Ruth Garner this summer, I realized just how privileged my life is. During the Great Depression, kids were lucky if they had more than a few different outfits and usually just had one pair of shoes. A job for them was helping a neighbor garden or cleaning someone's house and earning ten cents. Though the work was sporadic and low-paying, purchases were few and far between. The majority of high school graduates didn't go to college and so didn't have to pay outrageous tuition. Furthermore, while my peers feel entitled to own the latest iPod and xbox, teens in the Great Depression didn't have those things to buy. And in our instant gratification society, it's not a matter of just wanting it anymore, owning those things has become the norm. But what happens when we can't afford them anymore?

Will the economy miraculously improve soon, and the job market open up?
Will those "gotta have it" items get less expensive?
Will we simply stop caring about owning absolutely everything?
Or will we continue without jobs?

It's impossible to predict the future, but with so few jobs available, I think we can predict a rise of teens who look at their skill set and create their own work- a rise in entrepreneurship. When people are down and out of luck, creativity is at its best.

Labels: Brenna, jobs, New York Times, North Country, Teens, Work

Sharing Canton Farmers' Market peanut butter cookies and coffee, the CWCW crew sits in a circle, as if around a campfire. We begin at the roots of our own entrepreneurial lives by sharing our first memory earning a dollar. Roger Huntley leans forward with a grin and asks, "Maybe these two elderly ladies remember a Reverend Charles McVay of Crary Mills?" At this Ruth Garner and Mickey Williams erupt into a fit of laughter. "Yea…I thought maybe," Roger says. His first job weed-whacking the Reverend’s lawn earned him ten cents, and with his money Roger walked a mile and a half to the Crary Mills grocery store to buy a candy bar. "I put my ten cents on the counter and he gave it right back to me; it was a Canadian!"

Intern Chelsea Ross remembers building her first lemonade stand with a friend. "I'm not sure if we really did make money," she begins with a laugh. After Chelsea and her friend put in the designated man-hours brewing lemonade for profit she admits, "We actually didn’t have a lot of people and then when the mailman or any sort of person working went by we gave them free lemonade because they were working - we felt bad for them."

As I wonder if any of our stories will result in actual profits, Bill Cullen tells the group about his first job as a very un-ambitious paperboy. "With my bicycle I peddled around and delivered papers every day. My job, on top of delivering more papers, was to get more customers." In Bill’s eyes I see a hint of resentment toward his long lost part-time profession. And the task of getting more customers? "I could not get one," Bill exclaims, "I was no salesman, it was terrible. So, sooner or later they sent another representative of the [Watertown] Times to get more customers. They went right at the job and got them of course so I had more people to deliver papers to."

Our stories are exchanged freely and are surprisingly similar to one another. Despite our different ages, all our stories easily could belong to any member of the group. As youth we all enjoyed working and being rewarded for that work, now the value of that labor is dwarfed by a complicated financial mess among banks, hedge funds, and financial groups. If we were to revert back to the spirit of our first work effort, and combine that simplicity with the technology of the future, would we prevent future depressions and recessions?

Labels: Crary Mills, economy, Jennifer, jobs, paperboy, Reverend Charles McVay, Watertown Daily Times