Making Sure Your Kids Develop Practical Skills

With an iffy economy and an uncertain economic future, you can't go wrong teaching your kids practical skills. But if you don't have the time or the experience to do this, there's another way to make sure the job gets done. This blog post has the answers you need to raise kids with practical skills if you can't do it yourself.

Making Sure Our Kids Will Have Options...and Hope

Just watched the heartbreaking PBS special "Close to Home" (watch free here), which describes what people are going through in this recession.

Especially striking is the fact that most of the people looking for work are looking to work for someone else, yet sending out hundred of resumes with no luck. The only person with some semblance of security (albeit reduced, thanks to the poor financial shape of her customers) is the person who is self-employed.

It's sad to see people without hope. When you rely on others (employers, the government), you have that sinking sense of having no control over your situation. Those who aren't afraid to try self-employment (admittedly a scary proposition after 20 or 30 years of working for others) are the ones who still have options, and hope. We need to plant the idea of self-employment in our kids' heads so they'll always understand that they have that option!

Even China Has Unemployed New College Grads

That's right; we're not the only ones churning out college grads who can't find work. China has the same problem, and these young people are caught in a bind: they can't find work in the city, but they don't want to return to the country, where there is nothing for them.

The moral of the story? A college degree is no guarantee of work. It's a new world, and there are no automatic solutions to finding work that pays enough money to live comfortably....even in the world's biggest booming economy.

Young Entrepreneurs Finding Success

Here's a great article you'll want to share with the young people in your life. It describes young adults who have decided to bypass the traditional (and currently bleak) world of working for someone else by starting their own businesses. Using today's technological tools, many are finding financial success, and all are learning to rely on themselves instead of an employer. Smart kids!

Just Because a College Offers a Certain Major....

....doesn't mean the major provides a degree in an industry that offers any hope of growth, or a future job.

This article made me so sad because I was once a journalism student. While I don’t believe I was as idealistic as some of the students quoted, I enjoyed every bit of my journalism education, and looked forward to a career in journalism. A lousy economy at the time of my graduation ruined that dream for me back then.

Today, these kids are graduating into a lousy economy and a deteriorating journalism scene (the original version of this article included comments from recent journalism grads who can’t find work). The rise of the Internet and the clear bias of American media have resulted in newspapers dropping like flies. Yes, there are far more writing opportunities online than in print, but they pay less, too. It’s much harder to make a living as a journalist now than it was 30 years ago when I graduated during the Carter years.

Yet the professors quoted in the article let the students believe that “it’s all going to be ok” when they surely know better. Gotta keep those paychecks coming in, I guess. (Same reason so many colleges and universities inflate grades these days, but I digress….)

The moral of this story? Just because a college offers a specific major does not mean your child will be able to find work after obtaining that degree. Help your child make a wise career choice. Check out specific careers and their predicted futures at http://www.bls.gov/. Most of all, don’t believe the hype of colleges that need to keep a certain number of warm bodies coming through their departments in order to maintain their own employment.

College Grads and Unemployment: Will This Affect Them for Life?

The rate of unemployment among recent college grads has doubled, and many of those who have jobs are not working in their chosen field, or even in a job that requires a degree. Will this experience scar them for life or make them stronger? You decide.

Our Kids’ Competition for Future Jobs

When I hear that the unemployment rate is still going up, my immediate thought is for our kids and their future. We’ve been told that many of the jobs that were lost aren’t coming back due to technological change and offshoring. So how will our kids make a living? Will they have to deal with long periods of unemployment in their lives?

Those concerns are why I’ve written my new book, but talking to two of my children who are working adults has given me hope that things won’t be as bad as they seem. Both of them tell me that despite the high unemployment rate, it’s still hard to find good workers. They’ve expressed frustration with job applicants who barely speak during interviews and lazy new employees who spend their time texting instead of working. (These aren’t isolated incidences; they say it’s a pattern they see every day.)

These young employees have some ethical issues beyond laziness. One new employee borrowed a customer’s coupon during a transaction to get an additional discount on her own purchase. A self-identified Christian young man hired as a manager flunked his drug test.

As a result of experiences like these, my kids (who live in different states, by the way) think the high unemployment rate reflects a large number of incompetent people who can’t hold a job. That wouldn’t apply to several people over 40 I know who are among the long-term (2 years +) unemployed. But I think they’re having a hard time getting hired because they’re used to higher pay, and their age makes offering them health insurance a more expensive proposition. As for the younger people, maybe my kids are right.

In that case, we don’t have to worry as much about tough competition for our kids. If we raise them with moral character and a good work ethic along with the skills needed to compete in the 21st century, they should be ahead of most of their peers from the start.

Note: Simulposted at Barbara Frank Online.

Self-Reliance is Necessary Now

This man submitted nearly 2,000 job applications but was never hired. So he wised up and started his own business, which is doing well. He used his personal experience to come up with the idea for his business. Smart! This is the kind of thinking that pays off in the new economy. It's how our children will need to think.

The Delicate Balance Between Tech-Savvy and Tech-Addiction

One of the Seven Strengths for the 21st century that our kids will need is to be tech-savvy. This means they need to be very comfortable with computers and how they work.

Difficulties arise when kids go beyond tech-savvy to become tech-addicted, particularly to social media. This article does a great job of showing that too much time spend on computers and other tech toys is likely causing changes in kids' brains that make them very distractible. It also takes time away from other important activities that are vital to their development, particularly reading.

How do you maintain the delicate balance between tech-savvy and tech-addiction? You'll find out in early 2011 when Thriving in the 21st Century is published. Stay tuned!

Help Your Teen Understand the Enormous Federal Debt

Most of us don’t understand the extent of our government’s indebtedness, but we do know that we’re saddling our kids and grandchildren with a ton of debt. No one’s happy about that, but what can we do?

Here’s an interesting interactive graphic that will help you and your teen get a handle on exactly what can be done to reduce deficits. It’ll get you both talking about where cuts should be made and/or taxes should be increased. Each decision you make reduces the debt….but also has repercussions.

Try it and see what I mean. It will help your teen (and you) understand what kind of tough decisions need to be made to get us back on track.

Why Jobs are Disappearing

Here's a short but informative video that explains why jobs are disappearing. Note how few people are needed to build a car these days. The location of the factory is another red flag. Automation and off-shoring are changing the U.S. employment situation.

We need to be aware of things like this. No, it's not good for American jobs. But it's better to prepare our children for the future as we see it, instead of the past that we were prepared for. Telling our kids what we were told ("Get good grades and a college diploma and you'll always have a job") isn't going to be very helpful.

Best and Worst U.S. Industries

Here's an interesting post that lists best and worst industries in the U.S. in terms of revenue growth or lack of it. When combined with my post last week regarding career areas that are growing (or not), you should get a clearer picture of job areas that are worth considering for your older children who will face the world of work in the next decade.

Which Career Areas are Growing?

Here's an excellent resource: a spreadsheet that shows the change in the number of jobs in a variety of careers; stats are for the time period May 2008 to May 2009.

The first page shows general career areas; click on the link "all job catagories(sic)" to see specific jobs. Note that frequently off-shored jobs are italicized. Numbers are from the BLS.

Paints a bleak picture, doesn't it? But some areas are doing better than others, which gives you an idea of where the least affected areas are, i.e. those to encourage your kids to look into for future employment.

Here's Your Diploma....and Your Bill for $24K

According to a recent survey, the average new college grad owes $24,000 in student loan debt at a time when the unemployment rate for college grads has set a record by jumping from 5.8% to 8.7%....in one year!

Keep in mind that the lower-than-average unemployment rate of college grads is partly due to them taking jobs that don't require a college degree because they need something to help pay back the loans that come due within a year after graduation. That explains why there are an awful lot of college-educated truck drivers and burger flippers at work these days.

Entrepreneurism vs. College

The writer of this article makes the case that increased entrepreneurism is what our country will need in the future, and that a college education is highly overrated when it comes to preparing people to fix what ails us economically.

There are many interesting points in this article, and some thought-provoking comments after it, adding up to more evidence that we need to be raising entrepreneurial kids!