Nowhere to the same degree. If anything, the atty market was so much better many law graduates who attended local regional/public law schools below the t-14 and not graduated anywhere near the top of their respective graduating law classes managed to land well-paid law jobs and defray much lower debt loads within a decade.
Many HS classmates and a few relatives who graduated a few years later all graduated into gainful employment and not only defrayed their law school debts, but had no trouble maintaining continuous employment with promotions, pay raises, and advantageous job/career changes.
Thatâs far from the case with most millennial law grads Iâve known with comparable/better academic/job experience records.
That has NOT been my experience. It took me years and several âunderemploymentâ positions to get going, and many in my class did as well.
The difference here is the number of kids in law school keeps going up, and they are in the beginning of their careers, where these types of issues are not uncommon.
Basically, everytime we have an economic downturn, itâs like itâs the worst ever. Having lived through several downturns now, and actually being in that position, I think I can say this is not necessarily true^. And their debt loads were lighter bc tuition was lower.
You would be the exception compared to everyone Iâve knownâŠwhether friends, relatives, or attorneys Iâve worked with who graduated law school in the early '90s. And that includes some who graduated in lower-tiered law schools in the bottom half of their graduating law school classes.
Most of those when conversation gets to the current state of the legal market for law school graduates/recent graduates agreed on one thing. If they had graduated from law school post-2008, thereâs no way theyâd have had the career successes theyâve experienced due to the stark differences in the attorney job market and the economy.
Many of those opened up well after I graduated college in the late '90s.
And the post-2008 economyâs and the consequent implosion of the attorney market is such that even long established biglaw firms have collapsed with others substantially cutting back on hires while laying off many experienced attorneys.
This aspect of the post-2008 economyâs effects on millennials aspiring to attorney careers wasnât the case in the '90s.
Speaking as a 20 year old college student, I think a lot of our habits come from our parents and how we want to be different or similar to them. A lot of this thread seems to be chastising millennials for wanting better benefits, a more flexible work arrangement, what have you. Call me a snowflake if you want, but I donât see any of those as silly requests especially seeing how hard the U.S. works compared to other countries. On top of that, many of us have grown up with parents who lament spending too much time at work, wishing they could be with their families more often or travel when they were younger. Then baby boomers sneer at any young person who actually heeds their advice. Uh, what?
Maybe getting repetitive, but I also think that some of it is just going to be how kids are raised and itâs hard to make sweeping generalizations about any generation. For example, I go to a co-op school where we all essentially take 6 months off of school each year to work a full-time internship. The way I was raised, Iâd never miss a day of work, ask to leave early, etc. etc. (at least as an intern)⊠One of my closest friends frequently took sick days just because she was âdrainedâ (tired), and asked her employer if she could end the internship 2 weeks early so she could join her family on their beach vacation. Her employer granted that request but asked her to come back after the vacation to work her last week and train the new intern. She was deeply upset by this. I know plenty of adults like this as well, and donât think work ethic is defined by the year you were born.
There are law schools with in-state tuition of $20k-$30k/year. If they live frugally and have a summer job doing anything, racking up $60k-$90k in debt for living expenses seems high. I wonder what attorney job pays $30k/year. Even most public defender and legal aid jobs start higher than that. Now, if you canât find a job as an attorney, then law school would obviously be a waste.
I graduated from a top-tier college in '94, and employment problems then pale in comparison to what current grads are facingâoh, and tuition was much lower back then as well.
Yep for sureâthatâs one of the things that happen when employment in general is terrible. People shift to âpre-professionalâ majors, then they get overcrowded (see petroleum engineering!). Young people today really do have it roughâthe employment climate is pretty unforgiving, and many of the places where the jobs are have prohibitive wage:rent ratios.
Indeed. One year of tuition, fees, and estimated expenses at Oberlin just a few years later was ~$27k/year. And that would have been a non-starter if there wasnât a near-full ride FA/scholarship package to defray the vast majority of that.
Also, no one I knewâŠincluding yours truly had problems finding part-time/summer jobs even without previous working experience. Competition for even service sector/retail jobs is much keener nowadaysâŠespecially considering many displaced older folks have been competing for those very same jobs post-2008.
Petroleum engineering jobs are highly dependent on oil prices. Since oil prices are not really predictable, that job market can be a wild ride â and college frosh have no idea what oil prices will be like when they graduate.
Yes, @ucbalumnus , and add to that info the fact that for a while (10-15 years ago? My memory fails me haha), it was a very active industry with a dearth of qualified grads, thus appealing to students looking for a smooth path to a stable, reasonably lucrative career. PetEng programs started getting more applicants, the job market got filled, the industry also slipped, and now many PetEng majors from outside the top few programs are settling for careers in other industries entirely.
2008 to 2014 was a good time to be a petroleum engineer. But the greater supply of fracking oil and OPECâs attempt to drive the frackers out of business resulted in much lower oil prices since then (though there has been some increase recently ). But some of the frackers did go out of business or cut back on activity, cutting jobs.
My experience mostly matches that of @romanigypsyeyes. Most of my classmates from high school are working low skill or low paying jobs, often both. Think working at a fast-food restaurant, bartender, cashier, etc. The lucky ones are working at call centers and warehouses, and if theyâre really ambitious, theyâll be a nurse or a teacher. Iâm starting to see more and more post pictures of their kidâs first day at school - for reference most of my former classmates are 25/26. Maybe they are still coddled, but I definitely am happy that I am not in their position.