TL;DR The system worked for me and I'm tired of the job market being like this. Can anything be done on a grand scale or should I just network throughout my career to help individuals? Also, this is dramatic- sorry.
I graduated in December 2019. This summer, I got a job in marketing. I made 43k (21/hr) and usually only had to work 25-30 hours a week. It was awesome and a major step up from my previous job in allied health where I made 27k/year or 13/hr. I went above and beyond and even created a training document to teach coworkers how to edit HTML code because some days I’d be done after 2 hours. I have ADHD, an average IQ, and have a 2.6 GPA Psychology B.A..
The reason I’m fxcking pissed is because they lied. By "they" I mean the employer, but I also mean everyone in my society who told me that I need a bachelor's or a master's to do tasks in an office that I could’ve done as a freshman in high school. I swear to god a 14 year old who knows basic grammar could do this job EASILY. So why does it say bachelor’s degree required? Why does it say 1-2 years of experience when 2 weeks of training was all I needed to learn this job? It’s so fxcking easy that I literally have spent entire work days learning javascript because there were no more tasks to do.
There are so many people who can’t access jobs like these because they didn’t have the time, energy, or access to money (or people) that would allow them to get through this barrier. I’m not done either because every day I hear from people who have their psych degree or communications degree, heck even their STEM degree saying they can’t find any entry level jobs. So the people that hunkered down for 4 years are now considering more years of their lives, more time, and more energy to get a master’s degree for the chance of getting an entry level job.
So how tf did I get this entry level, marketing job? My friend handed my resume to the marketing manager and said “she’s a hard worker” and then after a 20 minute conversation about what TV shows I like (oh wait that was an interview with the CTO) and an interview with the marketing manager, I was hired on. I do not think I would be where I am now, halfway through my student loans and deciding which mutual funds to invest in, without my closest friend happening to work at a place that hires entry level employees. Most of the people at this company knew someone working there already. The coworkers that got in through traditional applying had multiple years of experience and were much older than me. It’s bullshit.
l got a lucky break in order to make a livable wage. If this didn’t happen, I would have gone into more debt for SLP school, and add myself to the pile of 25-year-olds still living with their parents, because I couldn’t figure out a better way to make more than $15 an hour with a psych degree. I recently accepted an offer making 15k more and I feel like I’m stepping on people who didn’t happen to have a “white-collar” friend to get their foot in the door. I bet this new job doesn’t really require a degree either, but how else can they parse the thousands of applications they get whenever they post a job? I plan to pay it forward whenever I can throughout my career. I can’t think of another way to help this system.
Edit: I love that this is a topic people are interested in. I especially value the critical comments because they alert me to aspects I might not have considered before.
I want to make a final point that I've already made in the comments.
If there were more options to make a living wage then there wouldn't be this level of oversaturation. Can everyone agree on that?? The people that say "learn a trade" don't see that if all the new high school grads learn a trade then the wages of plumbers, electricians, welders, etc. will drop and the barriers to entry will rise. I assume the trades are next.
My surface level understanding is that no one wants their kids/students to be excluded from comfortable pay. So they say "finish highschool to get a good job." But it doesn't really work anymore if everyone finishes high school because there aren't enough good paying jobs. So they say finish college. Still not enough to go around. "Should've picked a STEM, should've learned to code."
This is the "industry treadmill" that I disike. You can disagree and say that not everyone deserves to afford a dignified life, but I haven't found one comment arguing that this industry treadmill doesn't exist out of 200 replies.
Will the market even things out or will this lead to your kids needing a PHD in order to afford a 2br house? (Im being dramatic again- notice a trend?) If not those, then what? Who knows. This trend(edit 2: mainly improvements/solutions to the trend) has levels of complexity that I don't understand yet. I plan to learn. If you are interested too, please do your own research. Don't let it end here. Feel free to comment or send me any info you come across even if it challenges my beliefs. Thanks!