END OF THE GOOD LIFE

What will the future hold when the best-educated generation ever can't find the employment for which it is qualified? Brussels-based Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires reporter Froymovich debuts with an impressive presentation of the challenges raised by this question.

The author argues that if policies are not changed internationally, those individuals born between 1976 and 2000, known in the United States as “Generation Y,” could well become a lost generation. Generation Y member Froymovich examines the stories of a wide variety of people, including a graduate of Middlebury College now teaching in New York City and dealing with student debts and a 25-year-old Spanish journalist unable to find regular employment in his occupation. The author also cogently explains the underlying financial, economic and demographic trends currently under way. The daughter of immigrants who arrived in Brooklyn in the early 1980s, Froymovich compares her own experiences with those who entered the job market in the previous generation. In the U.S., the previous decade was the first since the 1940s when more jobs were lost than created. More than 17 million college graduates are working in jobs that do not require a college degree. In both the U.S. and Europe, unpaid internships, contingency contracts, temporary work and reduced salaries are replacing the higher-paid, longer-lasting jobs of just a few years ago, and many are choosing to delay household formation and marriage. Like others, Froymovich points to the counter-trend of half the world's labor force being located in Brazil, Russia, India and China and the foreseeable growth of a global middle class. She insists that maintaining America’s competitive edge depends “on the construction of better policies” in education and the workplace.

A forcefully written treatment of the plight in which an increasing number of people find themselves.