There's Plenty of Career Opportunities for Millennials ... Just Not on U.S. Soil

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http://www.alternet.org/economy/millenials-are-finding-career-opportunities-just-not-us-soil



A millennial is, roughly speaking, a human being born between 1982 and 1992 who has been called everything under the sun. They are accused of being sex-crazed, or sex-deprived, or if you’re lucky, just sex-positive. They are called infinitely marketable, yet they are often impossibly indebted. They are digital natives who just can’t seem to, like, actually talk to one another. And, the latest, they are citizens of the world and the fact that so many of them work abroad speaks to a freedom, perhaps even a flippancy, not afforded to any previous generation.

In reality, what’s happening around 20- and 30-somethings traveling across borders for employment is not the Eurotrip pleasure tour. The truth is that Generation Y and millennials are more likely than Gen X was to seek employment abroad because there simply are no jobs to be had in the land of the plenty and the free.

According to the International Labour Organization, the rate of unemployment for young people worldwide is three times that of adults. In the US, 5.6 million 18- to 34-year-olds are looking for work, but haven’t yet found any and another 4.7 million are underemployed. These young people who are unemployed constitute 45% of all unemployed Americans. The numbers are far worse for Latinos and blacks—25% and 50% higher unemployment, respectively.

A recent Gallup poll tracking global migration patterns found that desire to move abroad increases with education level everywhere in the world, except in Australia and in North America, where 13% of those with primary education or less, 11% of those with secondary education, and only 9% of those with a college degree want to move abroad. An even wider gap exists for the poorest 20% and the richest 20% of North Americans.