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Li Yuan looks at the poor job prospects in China for young people over the age of 35 years whose work can be done by new university graduates at lower pay. Jobs in government are given before a person reaches 35 years. Employees laid off during the pandemic have difficulty finding work. This affects marraige prospects and starting a family, or buying a home. There is also hidden discrimination for job seekers over age 35. For women there are questions from employers about if and when they will have children.

Hidden discrimination takes place in the workplace in France where the protests against raising the pension age are fueled in addition to other reasons about its timing after the pandemic and inflation, by people over 40 years who cannot find jobs, with the burden falling harder on women. 

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In 1998 at the beginning of the effort by President Zemin to boost higher education, Chinese universities and colleges produced 800,000 college graduates. The number is now 6 million and growing. The economy does not produce enough professional jobs in fields like finance, accounting, computer programming. And graduates from third tier schools fare worse in the job market. Between 2003 and 2009 wages for migrant workers increased 80%, yet wages for college graduates actually decreased after inflation. About 100,000 graduates crowd into parts of Beijing struggling with the jobs they can find. One political scientist says college education has provided these people with nothing and they could be a source of instability in an economic crisis.

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Since 2011 democracy protests Tunisia's unemployment rate has increased from 13% to 18%, with an estimated 750,000 people unemployed. About one third of the unemployed are college graduates. By 2015 about 100,000 new college graduates will be looking for jobs each year. Tunisia's economy contracted 1.8% in 2011 with a 30% drop in tourists, according to the World Bank, which predicts 2.2% growth in GDP in 2012 and 4.6% by 2014. The democracy struggle in the Middle East started in Tunisia and demographics in Tunisia are similiar to that of the rest of the Middle East, with a surging number of young people and college graduates looking for jobs.

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Here is someone in the UK who got is degree a BSc. in economics and is now working in finance in London. He borrowed 44 thousand pounds. He paid back 7000 pounds. How much does he owe? 54,000 pounds that's because at interest of 7.3% instead of 8% he still cannot keep up with interest costs. This is the problem not that young people don't want to pay back their loans. The setup is faulty. The problem is Plan 2 Loans in England And Wales which charge an additional 3 percent over and above the Retail Prices Index which was 4.3% in March. All Plan 1 Loans charge only the RPI 4.3%. At 4.3% this borrower would at least have paid back some of the principal so he knows he is making progress with the student loan.  The Labour government has said -"government could reduce the monthly repayments for every single new graduate without adding a penny to government borrowing or general taxation". But nothing new is expected this year's Budget.  ...

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This podcast in the SWI swissinfo.ch explains what the UN agency International Telecommunications Union is and why it is important. The ITU is responsible for governance of the world internet and broadcasting. It is based in Geneva, Switzerland. It is the oldest UN agency as it was founded in 1865 as the International Telegraph Union. The US Biden administration has nominated Doreen Bogdan-Martin to the key position of head of this important UN agency to maintain a free and open internet. Doreen Bogdan-Martin is from New Jersey, US, and graduated with a Masters degree in International Communications Policy from American University. She joined the ITU as a Policy Analyst in 1994, and is head of the Telecommunications Development Bureau of the ITU.

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With more women getting higher education and pursuing careers, young Chinese women now prefer to be independent and postpone marraige. This has important consequences including smaller households and lower demand for some products. Women now make up more than half of all undergraduate students and half of graduate students in China. Beyond pursuing a career many women also see the importance of a loving relationship before marraige as opposed to being introduced to someone and finding a partner to go through life.

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Mohamed Bin Zayed was educated at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst in the UK and graduated in 1979. He is a strong proponent of US leadership in the Gulf region and Asia. He is now the third president of the United Arab Emirates with which India has significant trade and economic relations with 8 million Indians living in the Gulf region. Of the approximately 10.1 million people in UAE about 1.1 million are citizens and the rest are foreign workers. Mr. Modi has thanked Mr. Zayed for the good treatment given to Indians in the Gulf region by Zayed and his administration. 

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Biden picks as his running mate a former prosecutor, Attorney General and Senator from California, Kamala Harris. Her parents one a Jamaican father and the mother from Madras, now called Chennai in India, met as graduate students at Berkeley campus. In the period before his illness, as Attorney General Mr. Biden's oldest son Beau Biden and Kamala Harris had worked closely together and formed a bond that continued during the period Beau Biden suffered from brain cancer.

 

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Young people in China express their anxiety about the economic situation in China on social media sites Weibo and WeChat. People compare the situation today in China with the situation in Japan after 1987. Young people worry about job security, some car-pool to save on gas, and others reduce expenses to increase savings. Lin Mo runs a financial column offering advice to readers on WeChat online site. In 2015 7.5 million new graduates will come out of Chinese universities, up 3% from 2014. There is a great deal of anxiety for these graduates as new job opportunities will be fewer for those not well connected or having skills in high demand.

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The number of student loan borrowers in the U.S with loans over $100,000 has surged from about 1 million in 2010 to 1.82 million in 2014, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Th borrowers are graduate students who have piled up so much debt in the last decade that 40% of student debt of $1.19 trillion in 2015 is from graduate student debt. A major problem is that there are no limits to graduate student borrowing and the rates are higher because of bad loans in the system, increasing the size of the burden of student debt on individual borrowers rapidly, ironically at a time of low interest rates. This leaves borrowers worse off with unpayable student debt affecting them all their lives, taxpayers paying more, prudent student loan borrowers paying higher rates, and all the time reducing the pressure on universities and colleges to reduce costs for affordable graduate education. This is now a major problem in the U.S. and a major issue in the 2016 presidential election.

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High unemployment estimated at about 30% in Algeria and a stagnant economy. About 300,000 graduates come out of universities each year and the economy is not creating jobs for new graduates. Political life is at a standstill during the long rule of the current president Bouteflika who is 76.

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All sectors of the U.S. economy see an increase in hiring, including retail, transportation, healthcare and manufacturing, as the economy adds 288,000 jobs in June, according to the Labor Department. Manufacturing added 16,000 jobs, transportation 17,000 and the public sector increased jobs by 26,000. Hiring also picked up for high school graduates compared to the poor record in 2013. In 2013 one Barclays economist says the jobs for high school graduates at this point were declining by 16,000 a month on yearly basis. He says employers are now adding 29,000 jobs for high school graduates a month in 2014. The unemployment for high school graduates declined to 5.8% in June 2014, for persons with some college education or an associate degree 5.0%, for college graduates 3.3%. Barclay's estimate is that the U.S. added an average of 231,000 jobs a month for the first half of 2014. The inflation rate remains at about 2%, giving the U.S. Fed more flexibility in setting rates to support jobs growth. The lower unemployment rate of 6.1% understates the underemployment, as a more accurate measure of employment which includes people working part time because they cannot find jobs is at 12.1%. The proportion of Americans in the labor force is also at a 36 year low of 62.8%. These two indicators for unemployment, unemployment including people working parttime, and the proportion of Americans in the labor force, combined with inflation, are the main indicators Fed chairmam Yellen is looking at....

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Emma Tucker describes the elation in the News Desk and for reporters of the WSJ on August 1, 2024  following the release of a young reporter Evan Gershkovich held by Russia for coverage in sensitive Russian regions. Emma Tucker said-    "We are grateful to President Biden and his administration for working with persistence and determination to bring Evan home rather than see him shipped off to a Russian work camp for a crime he didn’t commit. We are also grateful to the other governments that helped bring an end to Evan’s nightmare, in particular the German government that played such a critical role." Who is Emma Tucker and why does it matter?-   It matters because of monopolistic/oligopolistic hold over communication of news in the public space that belongs to public service since Lincoln, TR, FDR, Kennedy in the US, and it's shaping of public perceptions such as no action needed on climate change fires/floods, or on infrastructure investment in a dilapidated US. Emma Tucker studied in Sussex and in New Mexico before studying philosophy, economics and politics at Oxford. She becomes a graduate trainee at the Financial Times  in 1990 continuing for 30 years right into Covid years (FT now owned by employee owned Nikkei since 2015 acquired from Pearson for $1.32 billion). In 2022 she was selected to run Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal acquired by him for $5 billion- including $2.25 billion premium- from the Bancroft family that owned it and Dow Jones since 1928.   ...

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About 727,000 fewer students signed up for undergraduate programs to go to college in 2021 compared to 2020. This is bad for Ameirca, bad for upward mobility, as these students missing in college are missing an opportunity for better education and the income gains that go with it. Only 63% of high school graduates signed up for college in fall 2020 the lowest in 20 years. This is alarming news.

This report in WSJ says schools are not giving up- they are trying to get back as many as possible. Some call it working to the point of exhaustion to have that conversation with students on where they are at and where they want to go. If we can't get it right its a huge failure, says one organization doing this in Tennessee.

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Problems in graduate education, too many people taking on lstudent loans that are burdensome, over $100,000, to do research under faculty who are working on more and micrto detail fields that have less and less relevance, so that few jobs exist when they graduate. And faculty jobs are available in small numbers as tenured professors have to retire before their are new openings. Which is why in the situation where faculty work in small cloistered fields doing thier own thing, even important subjects as the role of religion in international relations happen to have been left out. It all suggests that we have asystem of graudate education out of synch with whats required.

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With unemployment at 13.8% and 170,000 jobs disappearing in 2009, and one in 3 Irish persons below the age of 25 unemployed, a whole generation of Irish are now headed out to other countries like Australia. At colleges like Trinity College in Dublin most of this years and last years graduates have no jobs. One think tank estimates net emigration at 40,000 in 2010.

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S. Korea's Ministry of Science, ICT, and Future Planning setup in 2013 and the 15 year plan to promote internet startups. The purpose of the plan is to persuade new graduates that opportunities exist outside the big conglomerates like Samsung and provide new resources for startups. Five ministries in S. Korea are engaged in this effort and have budgeted a total of $3 billion to help tech developers.

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Over 100 women scientists are part of the Chandrayan moon missions of Indian space agency ISRO. Many are leader of project teams and head key parts of the scientific efforts of ISRO. Prime minister Modi says the moon mission shows the strength of women or 'nari shakti' and the potential of the younger generation of women for careers in science and technology. About 25% of the 16,000 employees of ISRO space agency are women, and Modi says "they will inspire women for generations to come." Women make up 43% of graduates in STEM scientific fields, yet when it comes to being part of scientific institutes or universities this drops to 14%, an imbalance that prime minister Modi and ISRO women seek to address. DW.com looks at the work of women in the moon, mars and solar missions including Ritu Karidhal, Nidhi Porwal, Reema Ghosh, Kalpana Kalahasti. Kalahasti is deputy project director and has overseen the satellite imaging that will be done from Chandrayan 3. Reema Ghosh worked on the "Pragyan" rover that is now exploring the moon's surface. ...

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Mary Barra, 51, head of global product development, is the new CEO of GM following Dan Akerson. Akerson will retire. She is a electrical engineer who started as a co-op student at GM in 1980. Her experience includes engineering positions, managing a assembly plant, and heading the human resources department in 2009. The president's position goes to CFO Dan Ammann, 41. Former Cummins CEO and chairman, Mr. Solso, will take up the chairman's position at GM. Mark Reuss will assume Mary Barra's position. This completes the transition planned by Akerson as the government sells its remaining shares in GM following the bailout. Akerson says he felt as if he was seeing a daughter graduate from college. It is a significant moment for the U.S. auto industry as a younger leadership looks to the future.

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Law Schools in the USA operate as a business like any other business. A class of 25 students at a mediocre school with $43,000 in fees can bring in a million dollars for the law school. Jobs are scarce for new graduates, but law schools try to fudge the numbers to present a rosy future when it is just the opposite. Young students without jobs can have loans upwards of $250,000.

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Poland has a huge shortage of doctors and nurses. The ratio of doctors to every 100,000 of population is the lowest in the European Union. It is twice that in Germany whose relative success in tackling covid pandemic comes from having foreign doctors and nurses treat patients. Consider that the average age of Polish doctors is 53, only a few years from retirement. The situation in terms of immigration reminds pone of East Germany and its depopulation of young people who left for West Germany. Something like this has happened in Poland in health care.  In similar ways other countries in the EU, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania stocked up on ventilators but now have few doctors and nurses left to operate them. It is stretching the limits of human endurance as this report shows in WSJ, with doctors working 36 hour shifts and working 73 hours a week.  Here we see Dr. Rotnicki, who works these long hours at a hospital in western Poland and says that it is like the Second World War, that it is hard times in Poland for health care workers. This report says Italian and British hospitals, not just German ones, are tackling coronavirus with Polish, Hungarian and Romanian doctors and nurses. This report shows that headhunters in Germany drive in to western Poland blanketing windshields with pamphlets promising 5 times more pay, 2 years of free language classes and housing. In Slovakia a third of all nursing graduates leave the coutnry immediately after graduation. In Poland not nursing pay has lagged behind with fewer going into nursing schools. Staff remaining in the region are older and educated under communism when less English was taught, or have returned back home from years overseas. Forcing doctors to give up private practice and work in public hospitals during coronavirus pandemic is not working in Hungary, where surveys find 6 out of ten medical school graduates intending to leave Hungary. These doctors say they are better off working at Aldi and Tesco if needed and making more pay, plus getting weekends off. Poland only recently increased pay for healthcare workers, some even survived on cash given to them by patients. Not a good situation for a country to be in and reflecting the wrong priorities not just in the U.S. and western Europe, but also in eastern Europe, during the last 3 decades. These priorities shifted money away from health care, education and infrastructure priorities. The people simply lost control of their spending allocation to "financial markets" that shifted money in a way that benefited only small group in society neglecting others and national interests. ...

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Buried in the Pew Trust study in 2017 showing that only 9% of French, 24% of British, 36% of Germans and 37% of Americans feel their children would be better off financially, is the divide between college educated and those with a high school diploma. Only one third of Americans are college graduates, and 69% of them are satisfied with the economy's condition. Of the high school diploma holders or the rest of the population, only 55% think so. This is likely to take a long time to correct, particularly with the loss of good manufacturing jobs and drop in wages in manufacturing of the last two decades,  the need for more technology and skills in the jobs environment, failing schools and families in the social environment.

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Connors and Magalhaes provide an exceptional account of the work of nine young prosecutors in Brazil, including Deltan Dallagnol, a Harvard trained law graduate, Carlos Santos Lima, a Cornell law graduate, and Paulo de Carvalho, in looking into the corruption and money laundering at Petrobras. Contracts for work given out by Petrobras to construction firms were inflated in value, and 3% of the inflated value was given to executives at Petrobras, or to the fund of the ruling Workers Party of Brazil. Dallagnol is a prosecutor in Curitiba, a small provincial city. He detected unusual movement of money, where a local car wash showed a new Land Rover being gifted to a Petrobras executive, in an apparent money laundering effort. Appointments at high levels are made by the government, and the current president who has not been implicated, was at one time chairman of Petrobras. In Brazil, as in India, Nigeria, and other developing countries, politicians were known to have misused public funds, but were able to act with impunity because the legal system made it difficult to impose strict penalties. The effort by the young prosecutors in Brazil is an effort to bring changes to the legal system so that this type of near impunity no longer exists. It is the first step to bringing serious changes and increasing public awareness for change. The result in Nigeria is a huge loss in Africa, with the electricity system for the entire country the size of what it would take to light up one medium sized American city. In India with the lack of roads and electricity in rural areas of many states, the misuse of public funds is a similiar burden on the people. Brazil is coming out of a borrowing binge in the last ten years which is leading to a credit crunch in the country and near junk bond status for Petrobras, Brazil's largest company, which experts predict will lead to a contraction in the economy in 2015-2016. ...

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A comprehensive study on immigration's impact on the U.S. by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine in 2016, looks at the broad fiscal and economic impacts of immigration. On the drawbacks the new immigrants can lead to lower wages for earlier waves of immigrants and high school dropouts. It can also burden government finances, education budgets at local and state levels. On the plus side it leads to more innovation, entrepreneurship and technological change in the economy. Other facts that are new in the report and run against the popular narrative are that 53% of immigrants had at least some college, including 16% with graduate education, as of 2012- which explains the technological impact of being open to immigrants. It is this that helps lift overall growth says the report- "the prospects for long run economic growth in the United States would be considerably dimmed without the contributions of high-skilled immigrants." About 42.3 million immigrants live in the U.S. in 2014, 13% of the population, increasing from 24.5 million or 9% in 1995. Unauthorized immigrants doubled in this period to 11 million.  A surprising result considering the popular idea of anti-immigrant sentiment in the U.S. is that a WSJ/NBC poll shows 54% of respondents saying immigration helps more than it hurts. In 2006 only 45% to 42%, considered immigration as beneficial to the country. Immigration is an issue today even though in recent years the large scale deportations under the Obama administration and difficulty finding jobs have reduced the flow of immigrants - since 2009 about 300,000-400,000 new unauthorized immigrants arriving and similar number leaving.   ...

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David Calhoun, CEO of Boeing, replaced CEO Muilenberg in 2020 so that Boing could address problems with it's 737 aircraft. A piece of a Boeing jet 737 9 has a piece of the aircraft blow off on an Alaska Airlines flight in January 2024. Calhoun was with GE running its engine business for two decades, joined Blackstone, before becoming the new CEO at Boeing. The 737 9 aircraft emergency evacuation shows that the safety culture at Boeing rooted in manufacturing practices at Boeing factories and supplier factories is weak. The problem for this plane was a door and a plug made at a supplier in Wichita, Kansas, and assembly at Boeing factory in Renton, Washington, says this report in WSJ. Airlines are voicing their concerns. Southwest and Alaska Airlines have entirely Boeing fleets and do not source from Airbus. A look at Calhoun's background shows that he worked with GE till 2006 and has since then worked for Blackstone private equity, without the manufacturing experience that would be needed to tackle the factory operations and work culture and practices at the Renton factory and its suppliers. Calhoun graduated with a Bachelors degree in Accounting from Virginia Tech in 1979 and is from the Philadelphia area.  ...