9 ms·

You find similarly grim numbers in Western Europe too. I mean youth unemployment was over 50% in Spain during the post-Great Recession crisis and is at 38% now.

• joelbluminator 5y ago
  It sucks but it seems to be where we are anyway headed in a few decades, you simply do not need so many workers, at least not in how the job market is shaped now.
  • stjohnswarts 5y ago
    You don't really need more people than we have currently. We're deplete resources faster than making them.
    • KirillPanov 5y ago
      It's really, really weird that nobody ever talks about this (your first sentence).
  • pmastela 5y ago
    Yuval Noah Harari argues the same [1]. Whereas the 20th century was a century of workers fighting exploitation, now the 21st century might be workers — or more generally people — fighting irrelevance. When so much work can be performed by machines, human labor will not be necessary like it was before. 1: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/10/yuval-noah-harari-technology-tyranny/568330/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/10/yuval-n...
    • joelbluminator 5y ago
      Many experts are predicting declining job rates. I do think we can create jobs though as a society. For example instead of one teacher handling 12 toddlers we can pay for 4 teachers to do it. Or improve the care old people get by increasing staff. These are jobs automation cant replace easily...but there needs to be a will to make the investment.
      • lotsofpulp 5y ago
        > we can pay The problem is when “we” wants lower taxes or regulations to enable more consumption of tropical island vacations or recreational vehicles, or any other individual consumption item. The political will is unfortunately not there. On this very forum, someone was claiming that a 1 adult to 4 infant ratio was too restrictive!
        • spywaregorilla 5y ago
          > On this very forum, someone was claiming that a 1 adult to 4 infant ratio was too restrictive! I mean... that sounds pretty extreme tbh. Literal infants, sure, but for any actual grade of school a 1:4 ratio sounds like too much to me.
          • lotsofpulp 5y ago
            What sounds extreme? The person I responded to mentioned toddlers. I mentioned infants. No one suggested any ratios for actual “grade of school”.
            • spywaregorilla 5y ago
              Sure, but they also mentioned "teachers". Do you call infant daycare staff teachers?
              • lotsofpulp 5y ago
  • gedy 5y ago
    That's true, and relatedly it would be nice for developed countries to stop discouraging single income two spouse families as some sort of oppressive relic of the past.
• ido 5y ago
  Germany has some of the best youth employment numbers (see chart at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27393190 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27393190) and yet birth rates are similarly low.
  • noobermin 5y ago
    Yes, low birthrates seem to be a feature or developed states generally.
    • usrusr 5y ago
      Just imagine the alternative... a combination of high development and birth rate is how you end up with an early 20th century.
    • stjohnswarts 5y ago
      I think it's the way things need to go to be honest. We need fewer people on this planet, not more. Attrition is one way of doing that.
  • pcbro141 5y ago
    Yeah, low birth rates aren't all about money even though that's important. A lot of it is about culture, which affects women's age at first child which affects how many children a woman will ultimately have. Even with all the incentives (subsidize childcare etc.) you'd still have to modify the harder to modify cultural reasons like people valuing independence, "casual dating"/FWB relationships for years that go nowhere is more common instead of dating with intent to marry, hustle culture/emphasis on career progress, less social pressure/shaming from parents ("why don't you have a husband/wife/kids yet?!"), freedom to "find yourself/travel" or "get sexually experienced/have a ho phase before settling" for years after college, etc. Most people don't want to go from college to marriage and kids right away these days, and a few years of this type of casual dating/exploration after college eats up a lot of prime reproductive years. But these cultural factors are very hard to change especially with the absence of religion/strong communities these days.
    • 5y ago
• shrimp_emoji 5y ago
  Excellent comfort zones. Total social atomization. You can't have children through Discord. And why would you? With whom?
  • hh3k0 5y ago
    Why would you, indeed? Peter Wessel Zapffe comes to mind: "To bear children into this world is like carrying wood to a burning house."
    • devtul 5y ago
      I can't stand this dooms day view. I bet there were children conceived during the siege of Stalingrad, or any other thoughout history.
      • TacticalCoder 5y ago
        But there's lots of truth in it. We thought a long time before having one kid. It doesn't make me happy to bring a kid in a world of state-surveillance, capitalism-surveillance, worldwide resource depletion and ever growing amount (at an alarming rate) of rules and laws. We don't have high hope and I'm raising my kid telling him and preparing him for a world that may not be as easy as my boomers parent generation had it. We still have some hope that said and I believe some places on earth shall be better than others. So I'm raising my kid in english so that at least it should be easier to live an expat life (like I do). And I gotta say: when the states fuck up too much, that's the ultimate resistance. The last stand: saying "screw that, I'm not making kids in this broken state". I cannot fault these people.
      • watwut 5y ago
        Historically, less kids are born during war times or other crisis times. People avoid having kids in dangerous situations. And if you have baby in Stalingrad, you are significantly more likely to die or get raped etc. Along with the baby.
    • simonsarris 5y ago
      Your ancestors traveled over glacial passes in search of the next 8,000lb mammal to eat. Strangely insulting to think life right now is really too difficult to have a child.
• wott 5y ago
  > You find similarly grim numbers in Western Europe too. I mean youth unemployment was over 50% in Spain during the post-Great Recession crisis and is at 38% now.[1] No, you don't measure the same thing. Those unemployment rates are calculated not on the whole set of youths, but on the relatively small subset which is not in various types of schools, i.e. it is the ratio of the youths which don't work over the youths which are or could be looking for a job. The South-African figure is against the whole set. If you were to apply the same method for the Spanish and other European countries, the resulting figure would be much smaller than your 38%. > far below the replacement rate of 2.1 births per woman The magically fixed 2.1 figure has been there for decades, but it doesn't factor in many factors, the most obvious one being the changing survival rate (from birth to making the next generation).
  • oblio 5y ago
    It does, it's per woman. You need 2 people to have a baby so you need 2 babies per woman to replace them and something extra to cover attrition, that's where the .1 comes from.
    • BeFlatXIII 5y ago
      If humans were highly polygamous, the replacement fertility could be between 1 and 2.
      • mensetmanusman 5y ago
        No, because the non paired males eventually die.
• vne 5y ago
  Same situation in Nigeria. With unemployment rate at 33.3%, underemployment at 22.8%, and youth unemployment at 42.5%, Nigeria is sitting on a time bomb. Youth unemployment is actually worse than it's projected. Nigeria is currently the world's poverty capital, and also, with the highest number of out-of-school children who roam the streets begging. Is there any future for the country? Nigeria has a long road of redemption to travel.
• jmrm 5y ago
  As an Spaniard, I can say we have a lot of problems: - Low industry and industrial market focused to make profit saving in wages, not selling an interesting product or an advanced one, and usually risking the minimum possible. A lot of big companies of different sectors are here because you can pay nearly minimum wage to a trained employee without problem. Most of the people would accept because at least they can have a work. - Low technology industry, based on giant companies who make cheap and big software, with nearly zero R&D, and wanting the cheapest people possible (they don't want nor need talent or good people). Most of the talented Spaniards that work abroad and get experience and knowledge have trouble getting back to Spain because they are overqualified for most of the jobs. The past two problems make a physicist, a chemist, or a biologist (for example) hard to find a work in their field, and when they find earn less than working in a fast food restaurant. And that's why there are a lot of then working in sectors who doesn't need a degree (or even high school), or emigrate. That last thing make really difficult to find trained professional here when they are needed. - An investor market who would only invest in things that could give a lot of money in a really short time period (pubs, home renting, real estate, small companies that are currently in the market and profitable). They won't give an euro to any startup that haven't sold successfully a product already. - A population that doesn't want to be a freelance worker or making a small company outside some professional groups that have been in that way for decades, like some construction workers, carpenters, smiths, or plumbers, people who have a small shop, etc. - To worsen the previous problem, is expensive to be a freelance worker or to make a small company. You have to pay taxes even when your professional expenses and profits are zero. The first year isn't too bad (because you only have to pay a small quantity in comparison to the next years, but anyway most people decide to work illegally the firsts months or years to at least have some amount of money when the need to make it legally and start to pay. - Working on your own not only needs more money, also more time. Depending on where on Spain are you living, the local or regional government will help you less or more, and the procedure will need more or less time, reaching about 10 to 12 months in the worst cases to being able to pay your own taxes to work on your own. - Corruption in all layers of the society. What politicians care about is how can get more votes, and if they offer something positive for the country in a long term, that won't affect people in actuality, they are gone to lose. Is a vicious circle difficult to find an exit. - People without education and current difficulties to access it. Some people without education from a few years ago have trouble entering to "Professional training", what could be called "technical school" in the USA, because sometimes there isn't any vacancy to attend it (in public and even in private centres) due to so many people trying to improve their lives in that way. - An inflated unemployment rate because are people who are working illegally, and this isn't uncommon because they earn their salary and also can access to the unemployment benefit. It's totally illegal, employer and employees could be easily in jail for this, and employees would have to return all the money received, but there isn't any watching this. Other times is accepted in that way because there is the only way to find a job. With that panorama, how can somebody could have happily a child here? There are going to be other Spaniard that had some better experiences and actually are happy with what he/she have (this is possible in some parts of the north of the country or in bigger cities like Madrid), and I'm happy that not everybody experience this kind of problems, but that is what I have seen and what I have heard from other people in my circles and the Internet.
• saddlerustle 5y ago
  This is not a valid comparison. "Youth Unemployment" is calculated differently than "Youth not in employment, education or training". The equivalent statistic for Spain per the OECD is ~17% now, not 38%.