Broken Hopes of a Spanish Generation

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1909486,00.html

Broken Hopes of a Spanish Generation

Summary: This generation is financially worse off than their parents. This situation is prevalent even among college educated individuals. 

When a country enters a manufacturing stage, good jobs can be created to allow people to live a comfortable middle class lifestyle without a whole lot of education (ie. 4 year university). The classic example is being an autoworker.

Now however, even those people with 4 year degrees are jobless in a recession or have to resort to service jobs that don't require much education (waitress, cashier, etc).

The article focuses on Spain and Europe but this problem is the same in the USA. You will have a generation of people left behind by the recession and that will impact their entire life. Boom and bust for the sake of analogy happen in 10 year cycles in the USA. 70s bust. 1989-93 recession. 94-2000 boom. 2000-2003 bust, 2005-2008 boom. Ok, maybe that's more like 7 year but you get the point. However, this is the first time in a generation where the entire world is down (so more comparable to the 70s) therefore called it the first time in 30 years.

If you read, this generation (call it young adults 23-30) have a sense of entitlement to spend and consume and for the first time, they are realizing without a good stable job in a good stable sector, they cant afford IPODs, vacations, shopping on a whim, and especially not mortgages. The danger is that it will lead to a generation of lowered expectation and hopelessness. This on top of the obvious financial regression.