Boomerang Boys

I find it fortunate that my oldest son landed a railroad job in 2006, just before the economic downturn, while my youngest son is only fourteen and may well be able to join the economy in 2014 with much less comparable difficulty than if he were to try to find a job today.

With sons (and daughters) maturing every month, we need to be creating 100,000 jobs every month just to absorb them, less those exiting the workforce at the old end...let alone trying to re-employ the millions who've lost their jobs. So we created 110,000 jobs last month, which was just enough to keep the total number unemployed still unemployed.

What I'm wondering is if my youngest son will become a boomerang kid, someone between the age of 18-34 still living at home, particularly if the economy continues its piss-poor profile, if it takes a decade or longer to "recover." He's not currently primed for college, so a working existence is calling, but what happens if there simply isn't anything available at eighteen, or if what is available is really mediocre?

And why wouldn't it be mediocre? What sorts of things are occurring today that makes you think tomorrow's economy will be bright and beautiful? What are the odds that the bulk of future jobs more belong in the freelance tranche, considered temporary or contract, rather than be classified permanent? With such a massive labor pool, what are the odds that jobs pay more tomorrow than they do today? With expectations for greater payroll taxes to pay for health-care-for-all and greater taxes period to pay back all this accumulated debt, why would employers employ more?

Will there be this supposed green economy? Wouldn't we first need to re-employ those millions in the existing brown economy (oil, gas, diesel trucking, etc.) before hiring millions more? Will there only be service jobs, seeing how comparative advantages have sent every manufacturing job elsewhere? Will he work in finance, insurance, or real estate? Jobs that don't produce anything? Jobs which we've excelled at creating over the past two decades?

Suppose we are only entering our first years of a protracted economic slowdown...suppose we are just now entering our own lost decade. Isn't this at least plausible? Does your own survival plan at least contemplate a long-term shitty economic environment? Or is your own forecast as rosy as CALPERS, assuming 8% return until the end of time on your housal unit, on your stocks, your CDs, where borrowing costs are in the dirt, where inflation is moderate to non-existent, and where health-care/electricity/higher education/cable television/gasoline/streaming wifi costs rise at only 1.4% per year?