LOST
GENERATION
HUFFINGTON
10.20.13
SINCE GRADUATING IN JUNE, SHE HAS
APPLIED FOR SOME 75 JOBS PER WEEK,
SHE SAYS, WHILE RECEIVING A DISHEARTENING NUMBER OF RESPONSES: ZERO.
market. She now works between
20 and 40 hours a week. With
food stamps and paychecks, she
gets by, but she can’t look ahead.
So many of her friends face
the same predicament, she says.
They’ve all begun to question the
basic premise that a college degree
is the gateway to a middle-class life.
“For a lot of my peers, it’s just
become the norm,” she says. “You
have this mind-boggling amount
of debt, not really knowing how
or when you’re going to pay it off.
You just anticipate that it’s this
debt you’re going to have for the
rest of your life.”
NO LIFE PLAN
Across a continent and an ocean,
Thomas Palot sums up his own
reality using similar words. “I get
by,” he says. “I have no choice.”
What once seemed a reasonable
aspiration now seems like a moon
shot: He wants a job as a computer technician, one that matches
his qualifications and pays per-
haps as much as 1,500 euros after
taxes each month.
Back when he was nearing the
end of his studies, “I never imagined
it would be so hard,” he says. “But
when I saw the economic situation
deteriorate, I immediately understood it was going to be difficult.”
To make ends meet, Palot takes
assignments from temporary employment agencies. One day, he
distributes flyers. The next, he
lifts boxes. He lives on 580 euros
per month, 300 of which goes to
pay his rent.
As in much of the developed
world, in France a degree is supposed to provide some insurance
against hard times. To a considerable extent, it has. The unemployment rate among French workers
under 25 is just below 25 percent,
according to the government;
among young workers with Palot’s
credentials — a high school baccalaureate diploma plus two years of
further study — about 10 percent
are unemployed.
But those figures come as no
consolation to those struggling to
find work. Despite his degree, and