But full-time jobs don’t suit everyone. Ms. Gassman, for example, has been offered a full-time job at SoulCycle, complete with full benefits, but she doesn’t want it. “I wouldn’t be able to go on auditions in the middle of the day,” she explained. “Of course, it stresses me out not to have health insurance, but what is my choice? Work in an office and be unhappy? Being happy is a superhigh value to me.But, as it turns out, a studio on the Upper West Side is also a "superhigh value" to her.
In case readers persist against all reason in finding their motives puzzling, anthropological experts on the native habits of this exotic tribe are available to answer your questions:
Professor Snyder at Southern Cal doesn’t see multiple job-holding as a trend that will disappear anytime soon. “The likelihood of this generation devoting their professional life to just one job or career at the same time is simply counterintuitive to their worldview,” he said. “I think we would be seeing this generation pursuing multiple jobs and careers at once even in a robust economy.”Oh, it's counterintuitive to their worldview. Ok then. "The Economy Sucks" is the evident pretext of this article, but the actual argument is, maybe the economy sucks, but more importantly, some people prefer to be full-time visionaries (or, “aesthetic consultants”) and only part-time employees, even if that equation doesn't quite resolve in favor of their savings account, whatev.
I realize this is kind of a Styles style piece, but what are we to learn from all these laments about the supposed predations of "the economy" that are actually about the poor decision-making skills of twentysomethings. Is the economy bad, or are the people who volunteer themselves for these articles morons? Does the NYT really want to pose this as a mutually exclusive proposition? This is undermining my effort to argue that labor ought to be compensated (isn't the NYT onboard with that? it is unionized, after all) so that vapid people who don't want real jobs can navel-gaze about their difficult trade-offs.
9 comments:
Yeah, I was surprised when the author wrote,
"Try living on $27,000 a year — before taxes — in a city like New York, Washington or Chicago."
27-32k is the default training income level for 20-something age people in the academic biomedical research machine in those cities, and most consider this to be enough money to live comfortably, if not lavishly. In particular, people tend to say 'I spend so much time in the lab ... what do I have to spend money on?' How is this chick burning through money while working so many hours a week?
I guess the girl in the story spends a lot of money on her Adams Morgan apartment, even though she can live like, three metro stops away for significantly less. Although even 700-800 isn't an unreasonable amount to pay for an apartment.
Basically, I think that the financial constraints profiled don't make that much sense, and are quite possibly influence by the fact that these peoples' parents are going to read this article and it's therefore best to present an image of 'super stretched and hardworking' in preparation for the next time that they have to make that "horrible phone call" about the rent.
I like your article! But I don't think the quality of the internship is necessarily the issue, although it would be nice if one got substantial "training" rather than envelope stuffing experience. The issue is that work should be paid, whether it's instructional or not, and you absolutely shouldn't pay FOR the privilege of working. If it's just an issue of whether the work is useful and educational, I think you can pretty easily argue that any experience learning how to conduct yourself in an office environment, attending meetings, and spending time with the employees is useful to becoming a better worker.
Like Alex, I liked your article. And 100% agreed with Alex's comment.
I do have a question about one bit at the end of your article, though:
"Perhaps this will allow (or force) some college students to return to relatively sane if not prestigious summers of lifeguarding and camp-counseling."
I feel like we've had this conversation before, so apologies in advance for repeating myself, but these jobs are often very hard to come by, and all the more so for young people who haven't done a sufficiently convincing job of hiding the fact that they're students at four-year colleges, perhaps living at home, who don't need the money. I mean, they could use the money to help pay for school, but they're not supporting their families, they won't be homeless but for the lifeguarding position, and they come across as comparatively rich and insufficiently desperate for work in, I'd imagine, many labor markets. Then there's the fact that even these jobs - and not just in NY - often have to be secured through connections - knowing the manager of the supermarket, to paraphrase my anecdata.
If all the kids/college students who don't need-need the money and are currently going the internship route were to take existing wholesome-traditional-summer-job positions, this would in all likelihood mean a net loss for those for whom food service is, well, it. But again, I think the greatest obstacle to a return to the traditional summer job isn't a sense among (upper-)middle-class families that this takes work away from the needy, or even a snobbish attitude among college students, but rather the reluctance of employers to hire from a demographic that won't stay put and that, at least as employers will see it, is still being supported by their parents.
What?! You have a problem? Sometimes it's HARD to be a first world Gen Y-er. Like, for instance, sometimes you wake up and don't feel like doing anything: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLexgOxsZu0&feature=grec_index
If you don't feel like doing anything, and just feel like laying in your bed, it's really nice to be unemployed. Sheesh. I'm going to go read a Judy Blume book and eat food out of my parents' refrigerator to make myself feel better. Then maybe I'll lay in my bed for awhile.
- Jen
Guarav: Yes, that seems to be one of the issues here. They work many jobs to maintain a hip lifestyle, not merely to survive. There are probably people who do this to survive, but I guess they are not cool enough to make an NYT trend story.
Alex: Well, the author's argument was about the Fair Labor Standards Act, which defines what kind of work requires compensation and makes an exemption for "training," which is supposed to mean tasks that don't increase revenue. That seems like a reasonable exception except that most internships don't fall into it unless interns are, like, making the office copier explode on a regular basis and need substantial, revenue-diminishing instruction in the task. To say that simply being in an office constitutes training might undermine your point, since most interns don't just sit in offices and attend meetings--they also do, if not substantial, at least revenue-generating work for their employers (since clerical work is also revenue-generating). That's where the compensation would come in. If you say that simply being in an office is training, then potentially even full-time secretaries can be unpaid since they benefit from the experience by learning to be better workers.
Phoebe: Although some of the sources of adolescent employment have dried up since I popped movie theater popcorn epochs ago, lifeguarding and camp-counseling remain jobs reserved for high school and college kids, and they're seasonal (pools and camps are only open in summer), so leaving in August isn't a problem. Also, if the number of unpaid internships were reduced, that wouldn't affect all the Junior I-bankers interning at Goldman Sachs for $10k, and would only enlarge the pool of summer job seekers by several thousand thwarted theater and magazine interns. It's not entirely clear that these people have a huge edge over poor kids who really need jobs at the Gap or whatever, since a job at the Gap isn't contingent on your poetry skills. My anecdatum is that the summer after my first year of college, I was turned down by the Gap and also every other habitual employer of adolescents despite my perfectly respectable GPA. Turns out, that doesn't help you fold sweaters or deal with cranky customers.
MSI,
My main point was that I don't think there are traditional summer jobs waiting for terribly many of the kids who'd otherwise be unpaid interns. That, and I think that snobbery among that set is not the main thing channeling them into unpaid work. Rather, it's that unpaid internships want to hire college students, while paid jobs do not. This is supported by my own inability to get hired at Gap, and many other such "habitual employer[s] of adolescents."
So, agreed that they don't care about GPA, poetry skills, etc. My point re: connections isn't that it gives rich kids an edge at the Gap, but that these jobs are not exactly lined up for college kids if they'd only deign to work them. The jobs that used to go to kids now in many places go to those either desperate for work or, in NY and perhaps L.A. (and, from the article you link to, perhaps Chicago), those looking to make it in glamorous professions and working those jobs on the side.
"lifeguarding and camp-counseling remain jobs reserved for high school and college kids"
To the extent that that's true, they're already filled by such kids. But seasonal jobs are still jobs, and even if leaving in August poses no problem, being insufficiently desperate for work does.
All of this is separate from my other point, which is that I don't know how delighted everyone in the real-summer-job brigade would be if those slots at the Gap were taken by kids whose room and board is provided for by their parents, or even kids with all kinds of family money, but whose parents think (correctly!) that work builds character. But it's a non-issue, because the Gap doesn't want them.
I don't think I understand what the problem is here. Is it that there are not enough summer jobs for all the kids who otherwise take unpaid internships if every one of them tried to get one? That's probably true, but I'd imagine there are still enough to cover a very large number of those who try to secure one--between office work, retail, food service, seasonal things like camps and pools, and university summer employment. I can think of only one or two people from high school and college who failed to secure some kind of summer income after seeking it (my one unemployed summer aside, I had four employed ones before and after). Some would-be interns would choose to do other things anyway--travel, take summer courses, etc. That would be fine too.
Or is the problem that summer jobs exist but are impossible to get on a seasonal basis? The prospect of your leaving in a couple months does turn some employers off, but not all since many service sectors hire seasonal workers specifically to deal with increased summer demand (for example, more people go to the movies in summer, ergo there need to be more popcorn poppers employed just for that time). In addition, most college students live at home during the school year and can stay on at a summer job if they want to.
Or is the problem that summer jobs are or should be only for the poor and not parent-supported? They certainly aren't de facto that way, since no job application I've ever filled out asks about your financial situation or how desperate you are for work. Gap is not more likely to hire a desperately poor person than a wealthy one if the wealthy one appears to be a better shirt-folder and customer-servicer. They're not a charity. Certain work is exclusively for younger employees (summer camps, places like Abercrombie) b/c old people turn off the customer base, so it excludes potential employees regardless of their level of desperation. I understand that some of the low-wage labor market has been captured by out-of-work and overqualified adults, but I'm just not sure that this shift has been so total that it makes summer employment impossible and unpaid internships necessary for students. Students may have to look harder, but it's not hopeless. At least in the Chicago suburbs, the malls are still staffed almost entirely by the under-30 this summer. Moreover, the expansion of higher ed has opened up thousands of new jobs specifically for college students in things like running college summer programs for schoolkids, tutoring programs, staffing university offices in the summer, and so on, and these aren't available to out-of-work factory workers.
I guess you wouldn't get a one-for-one job-for-internship substitution, but I don't really think that matters so much, since there would still be enough for most students to do over the summer. And those who sometimes fail (like me) can, since they're supported by their parents anyway, sit around the house and mope for three months rather than moping in Washington while fetching coffee and paying $5-6k for the opportunity. I'm not of the view that working crappy jobs in the summer builds necessary character, so I don't think there is a moral imperative to get such a job or to give over scarce jobs to the neediest. I just assume most would prefer work+pay to boredom+no pay, and the means for achieving the former remain broadly available.
The main thing I'm arguing against here is the notion that college kids are too snooty to deign to accept these perfectly good, traditional summer jobs that are essentially waiting for them. One hears this argument every so often, and it's worth pointing out that the way things work structurally, an unpaid, low-paid, or at times even decently-paid internship ends up being easier for a student to get simply by applying. The bulk of good, old-fashioned work-work held in high school or college, by me and by anyone I know, came via connections, after many attempts at applying to likely hirers failed. And this was when the economy was considered strong.
This matters, not in terms of OMG what will these kids do in their summers, but in terms of how we're discussing the phenomenon. That is, it matters from a college student anti-defamation league angle. The internship is always being presented as something students are opting for because they think they're too good to work at the ice-cream shop, so it's worth pointing out if the ice-cream shop's not going to hire them. The internship replacing summer jobs might increase class stratification, but it's not necessarily about college students being snooty. Perhaps some of the time, but often, not.
Oh, I don't think that college kids are too snooty for these jobs, at least not in general. Almost everyone I knew at Chicago worked odd jobs in offices and coffee shops and stores during the summers or school years to make a few extra bucks. I think they're making a calculation with the unpaid internship--possible future earnings boost vs. guaranteed present small earnings. The problem is that the future earnings boost is a hope and not a reality, it costs money to try for, and as I tried to say in the review, in certain fields, starting salaries are low and advancement is impossible or extremely difficult from entry level work. It becomes a rather substantial gamble, especially if you have to pay to make it (to live in NY or DC for a summer is not cheap unless you happen to be from there). So even if the unpaid internship is easier to obtain in some cases, it's not necessarily easier to take. It's not clear to me that, if you want to "be a writer," a summer unpaid at the Paris Review is better training or preparation than a summer shelving library books at the Reg and studying French, or reading novels.
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