Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Financial like Whoa!

Scrolling through the postings on Media Bistro, I can’t help but notice that about 70% of the ‘job’ postings are actually for unpaid internships, 20% require at least five years of experience in the relevant field, and the other 10% seem too sketchy to possibly be legitimate.

I fully realize that times are tough now. Many companies are laying off people by the hoards and replacing them with 19 year old unpaid interns. I am by no means an economic expert, but I wonder how things are ever going to get better if people keep getting laid off from work. Seems to me like more people having no money will lead to a worse economic situation, which will in turn lead to more lay offs, etc.

What the heck is a recent college graduate to do? Join a commune? Run away with the circus? Continue taking unpaid internships until he/she has that five years of experience (all while struggling to keep a crap minimum wage job and babysitting during the non-existent free time?

Can I run away to Sweden yet? Do you have any better ideas?


4 comments:

Tom said...

From what I understand, tax cuts would have put money into the economy faster (avoided job losses), but would not have provided the opportunity to fund some the projects that the Obama administration wants to start. So that's the trade-off.

As for better ideas... at least libraries are free...

Tom said...

(obama's mehtod will work, and hopefully with better results but it just takes a little longer than tax cuts would have)
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/10/tax-cuts-vs-government-spending/

Anonymous said...

Hej Rachel,

why Sweden and not Denmark?

Markus

Rachel said...

Markus, it is kind of a running joke with many of my friends that we'll all move to Sweden. To us, Sweden is like the European version of Canada. People just end up moving to Canada when they get fed up with the situation here... but why move to Canada when you can move to Sweden? Nothing against DK! I'd move back to Copenhagen in a heartbeat if I could get a job.