<p>“Minimum wage was originally designed to be a living wage for adults.”</p>
<p>Really? Where I grew up it was $1.65. Nobody was living on that, even then. Nobody.</p>
<p>How old are you anyway?
I also amended it to liveable, but in many areas it bought much more 50 years ago, than it does now.
When my dogs trainer gets $160 an hour, $1.65 seems, ridiculous.</p>
<p>For much of the 1960’s minimum wage was close to 50% of the average production workers earnings.
<a href=“http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/cepr-blog/the-minimum-wage-is-not-what-it-used-to-be”>http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/cepr-blog/the-minimum-wage-is-not-what-it-used-to-be</a>
For that to be true today, minimum wage would need to be set at $12 hr in 2013.</p>
<p>Yeah, I know! But I’m not that old, really. Late 40’s. I grew up in the Midwest and living on minimum wage was not even the remotest of remote possibilities. But, there were lots of teenager jobs available in restaurants and retail. </p>
<p>^I’m going to guess you didn’t grow up in the 30s–when it was originally designed. Otherwise, you might want to check out the great-grandparents cafe. :)</p>
<p>It was the 70’s basically. Minimum wage was $1.65. I will never forget that number. In the mid-70’s it was hiked to $2.00.</p>
<p>In the 70’s, min wage for tip business was 90 cents/hour. </p>
<p>right. not nearly the time period EK referenced. 40 years later, in fact. So the fact remains, and you can google to verify this, it was originally meant to be a living wage.</p>
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<p>I’ve seen multiple studies from emperical economists that say that the “optimal” (not sure in what terms, but presumably overall well-being and productivity) that the minimum wage should be between 40% and 45% of the median wage, which overall in the US would be between $8.29 and $9.33 (using 2012 data, so slightly higher than that today). However, that varies heavily by state. In Mississippi the “optimal” minimum wage would be between $6.49 and $7.30. In Connecticut it would be between $11.55 and $13. It’s not possible for a national minimum wage to work well everywhere in the US. </p>
<p>Not all that relevant to the discussion, but I figured I’d say it. </p>
<p>Anyway
I think the point is that people do relocate to where they want to live, whether it be NYC, Chicago, DC or Seattle, even if they dont have a long term job or even housing lined up.
One daughter of a friend of mine, who just has a high school education, but is smart as a whip, moved from Detroit, where she couldnt find work, to NYC recently, found a job and is having a great time.</p>
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<p>In an attempt to explain the for the last time:</p>
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<li>I just spent two years at a “small, academically unknown college somewhere I hated.” That is a normal length of time for someone to spend at a school in housing, and despite the fact that it was for grad work, I was doing the work of an entry-level professional.</li>
<li>My only “attitude” is one of wanting to be happy where I’m working. If I’m not happy, I’ll be of no use to anyone. I want out of the smaller towns and back to the coast because I am tired of dealing with issues which are much less common in larger cities and on the coast, where there is more diversity (particularly racism and homophobia. Notice that I said much less, not none, because I’m sure someone will jump on that as well.)</li>
<li>I don’t know what you mean about interacting with people different from me. I grew up in one of the most diverse cities in the country and have spent most of my life “bringing valuable things to the human tapestry.” FYI, when I interviewed with Boise State, they actually told me my passion for diversity and social justice would be a disadvantage because they just didn’t have an opportunity to do that kind of work there.</li>
<li>I have interviewed in Ohio, Missouri, California, Washington, Oregon, Kentucky, Virginia, etc. I have been genuinely interested in each job, so don’t judge me for deciding to go closer to home when none of those opportunities panned out.</li>
<li>I am going to be working 24/7. It is vitally important, when you work in housing, to at least be somewhat close to an area that interests you or that enables you to pursue something other than work. Otherwise, the job will eat you up and spit you out. There’s a reason Student Affairs has one of the highest turnover rates for new professionals.</li>
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<p>This is also somewhat a generational thing. Millennial students (myself included) place more importance on job satisfaction than almost anything else. </p>
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<p>Very true. Just by my undergraduate and graduate experiences, I have already been somewhat pigeonholed into the public, medium-sized school. It’s important that I get into my desired “type” of school now so that I can continue in that area.</p>
<p>First job or job #10, nobody can afford being picky in this economy. Just grab a job if offerred and feel like a huge winner!!! I am done it 9 times. Was appreciative of any offere, the job with the 50% cut and hour of travel one way on a daily basis was still a job. Was considering myself very very lucky to be working in the very economically depressed region of the country (always been this way, much worse than Detroit) and not being able to re-locate.
If one does not want to take a position, then I would seriously ask about the reasons for going to college and/or desire to work in general. </p>
<p>…forgot to mention, it is much easier to find a job while working than while not employed at all. So, if somebody is not satisfied, than there is definitely a huge insentive to take any job anyway, knowing that your “dream” job will come much easier to a “working” you than “un-employed” you.</p>
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<p>Unfortunately for job seekers, employers generally do think that currently unemployed people must have something wrong with them, since they probably think that anyone who is any good would have been hired. This is especially true if one has been unemployed for more than a few months.</p>
<p>But that also applies similarly to the situation of having a degree with a major aimed at profession X, but only being able to find jobs outside of X, or which do not need a degree at all. Such a job seeker trying later to get into X will probably result in many employers rejecting without interviewing, since the assumption is that the person is a failure at X because no one else hired him/her.</p>
<p>In other words, bad luck at the initial job search, including graduating during an industry or economic downturn, can have lasting negative implications to one’s future career. Being picky about jobs can make additional bad luck here. Unfavorable aspects like commuting that can be mitigated (e.g. by moving to a better place for commuting to the job, which is more doable for most traditional-age new college graduates than for someone with a spouse and/or kids) or which are generally expected in that type of job would not be a good basis for refusing a job.</p>
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<p>An important difference is that almost all jobs are “rolling-admission”, but with a relatively short deadline to decide. When applying to colleges, one gets to compare all offers in April and decide by May 1 (excluding when voluntarily applying ED). With jobs, if you get an offer for Job 1 on April 24 with a decision deadline by May 1, but you have an interview for Job 2 that looks like it may be better than Job 1 on May 3, do you take Job 1, or do you give up Job 1 for a chance at Job 2?</p>
<p>College admission and financial aid is often rather opaque, but it is much less opaque than job hiring for most kinds of jobs.</p>
<p>Yes, it is true that the job hunter has a lot less information and will need to make a decision on short notice - but part of the ability to make good career choices involves learning when to turn down a job. There can be all sorts of reasons. I do think it helps if the student has more work experience over the years – students who have part time and summer jobs during high school and college will tend to have bad work experiences as well as good ones, and that helps them be more prepared to recognize a potentially bad situation.</p>
<p>There is just a potentially huge opportunity cost that goes along with a commitment to a job that isn’t taking the person in the direction they want to be going with their employment. </p>
<p>I’d also add that looking for work takes time-- looking for openings, networking, arranging informational interviews, preparing and sending out cover letters and resumes, being available for screening interviews, preparing for and attending followup interviews, etc… So even taking alternate employment with the intent that it be temporary can make it potentially more difficult to find the job. </p>
<p>Of course it depends on student goals. If the student has recently earned a bachelors with a liberal arts major and is still fuzzy on career goals, or simply plans to work a year or two before going onto grad school – it’s a very different situation than a student who hopes that first job will be the foundation for their long-term career. </p>
<p>It seems like the consensus is to take the job being offered while continuing to look for the job you want. But what if the job you want comes along 5 or 6 months later? Now your resume has employment at job X for 6 months. How long will that short-term employment impact future job searches? How long will you need to remain at the 2nd job for the short-term employment at Job X not to be seen as a negative? </p>
<p>I got 2.65 an hour for my first job in the early 70s. I’m sure there were people living on $1.65 an hour in 1968 (which is about when that was the minimum wage.) I only paid $75 for my share of an apartment at the time. I know middle class school teachers were making about twice that at the time.</p>
<p>I got $6.40 an hour for my first job as a Computer Programmer in the early 80s. Nope, did not live with no rommates. I had family and we started looking for the house right after I got this job and we actually bought it and never missed the mortgage payment. I was so happy to get the call about this job that I started jumping, fell and luckily did not break anything in my body. It was unheard off to reject the job offer, somebody would be out their mind to do so. I stayed on this low paying job for 3 years. Not a single classmate in my graduating class got an offer when I did. The reason was that I have started looking few months before graduation. Nobody asks question about having another offer in 3 - 5 months. When you have this bird in your hands, then you will think about it, NOT now, not when you have an offer. This one is sooo easy. The hard ones are when you have several offers, you take what seems to be the best and it does not work out. The key here is NEVER ever look back, only forward, the job is always the plus, whatever you took, there is always a positive side to it. This has happened to me also. Many other situations, since I am on my job #9, I have had many various combinations of looking for a job / deciding which one to take. But if I had at least one offer, it never occurred to me to turn it down despite the fact that my husband has been always employed, so finacially I was not in desperation, not like recent graduate who has no means except for his parents, I call this situation financillay desparate.</p>
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<p>No, some of us have numerous posts saying that we feel that approach is short-sighted, and may come with a set of very serious costs in terms of potential career opportunities and advancement. I think there are at least 3 or 4 of us who have been advocating a more goal-oriented approach. </p>
<p>Additionally, I think it is fundamentally dishonest to “continue to look” for a job unless the employer has been informed. My son has recently been in this exact situation, taking on some part time contract work – he felt he could not afford to be tied down to the contract job, and told the employer that he would be happy to take it on with the understanding that he was actively seeking other employment and would have to leave if that happened - and I think in that situation it appears to have worked out well. But my son would have also been very comfortable if the employer had chosen instead to hire someone else. </p>
<p>But I think it would be extremely inappropriate for someone to take on a job with the understanding that it was intended as a permanent, full-time position and then leave after a short time for any reason other than a serious and unanticipated change of circumstances or disparity between the expectations at the time of hiring and actual work experience. In other words, there are good reasons for leaving a job and poor reasons, and I think an employee really owes a certain level of commitment to their employer, unless the job is in a particularly high turnover industry. </p>
<p>If employer #1 does not know that the employee is actively seeking other employment, then there is a certain level of dishonesty – and I would never encourage my kids to take that approach. </p>
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<p>That’s one of the serious costs I’ve referenced above. First of all, jobs don’t “come along”-- so it’s quite possible that the demands of work at job #1 will prevent the employee from being offered job #2. If employer #2 sees that the employee has only been on the job for a few months, that looks pretty bad – I certainly wouldn’t hire that employee without a good explanation as to why the person was leaving the first job. I wouldn’t want to be the #2 employer of a person who was focusing their time and energy looking for job #3 instead of trying to learn about and support my business. </p>
<p>I certainly know people who have taken that serial-employment approach and have seen them do quite well for themselves – I just don’t trust people like that and do not think that is ethical, at least not in the context of the level of employment that a college graduate is likely to be seeking. </p>
<p>I’d also point out that there is a “small world” factor in many fields. Word gets around. - I don’t think most young grads would want to be tagged with the reputation of being unreliable. </p>
<p>A recent grad accepted a job last fall (2013) to start after spring graduation (2014) and successfully passing boards. After working 4 months she received an offered for a job at an institution where she had been an intern several months before graduation. I don’t think there was actually an opening, so I don’t think she actively applied for a position but let it be known that she enjoyed her internship at the institution. She was notified of a recent opening and asked to apply for the position at job2. Of course she considered the 2nd job her dream job and left job1. </p>
<p>How long will she need to remain at the 2nd job for the short-term employment at Job1 not to be seen as a negative? </p>
<p>If she does well at #2, that’s her springboard. Is there some reason she can’t stay at #2 more than a year or two?</p>