Am I the only one that thinks entry level jobs are there as a stepping stone and that hard work still pays off in America? It certainly has for me and others I know.
I'm going to generalize here, I warn you - but let me guess (correct me if I am wrong) - lower-middle to middle class upbringing, white, male, and went to college before the cost of a 4-year degree was the equivalent of the price of a home mortgage?
Now, I am not saying all that as a pejorative - because all of those things apply to me, too.
The thing is, that just isn't typical of America today. The middle class, and even lower-middle class, has all but disappeared. We were sold this "everyone can go up the ladder" fallacy that never made sense to begin with - when everyone is hanging on to the ladder, we still need folks to build the ladder, maintain the ladder, and provide services to the folks on that ladder. And eventually, the ladder gets backed up because there aren't enough stops to step off.
As a society we have decided that service and similar jobs are "entry level" when this country was not built like that. It's an invention of post-war America and the optimism of the mid-century that conveniently forgot that by saying that lower-tier pay jobs aren't "careers" when for much of our development, they were, and folks could live a modest living at, and without that - well, that's what we are learning now in the 21st century.
Gone are the days when you went to a 4-year college, and could walk out and find a job right after, work there for 30 years, and then retire. That's the crisis that Gen X/Y is having right now - there are way too many college educated folks than we have jobs for, and end up working 2 or 3 jobs just to keep up with the massive debt of that college education.
Folks that are in their late-20's, early-30's who are still living with roommates when before they'd have a home of their own and kids. I'd say about half the folks in my age group that I keep up with from high school/college (I'm 35) have kids now, the other half don't, and most of those folks who do have kids have only done so in the last few years. Studies show that most folks in that age group have had something like a half dozen different jobs since college, vs. making a career somewhere as was the norm before. There is this massive shift in society happening because of this, because it trickles on down to everything - from the future of Social Security, to property values (eventually, home values are going to drop because demand will go down as the population cycles).
There are so many factors it's incredible - but they all lead back to the fact that the traditional "start at the bottom and work your way up" view point is not in line with the reality of America in the 21st century.
