Lucia

de Vernai

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June 17, 2009

Unemployment ‘Only’ 7.2 Percent in Phoenix? If Only That Were the Whole Story

I’ve been told that you should not trust everything you read on Huffington Post, but their well-balanced coverage of Michelle Obama’s choice of twinsets and waterboarding has held my loyalty. After all, who would you rather get your editorials from? Some dry guy in the New York Times or John Cusack himself?

My faith was shaken when the HuffPo ran an article about the best place for recent grads to find work: Phoenix. Yes, it’s dirt cheap to live in (compared to New York or San Francisco) and our unemployment rate is low at 7.2 percent. And there are allegedly jobs, posted by 190 employers! The Fortune 500 and corporate recruiting representatives from Phoenix concurred: This place is where you want to be.

What Arianna’s brilliant minion penning the article failed to do is meet the basic requirement of legitimate journalism: Get both sides of the story.

And it would not be hard – there are thousands of unemployed grads, elbowing for a chance to fold sweaters for $7.50 an hour and living with mom and dad, who would love to talk to you – about student loans; about parents losing their jobs; about the reality of the job search: Career fairs filled with engineering and business stands, leaving the English, political science, and yes, journalism graduates to less-than-living-wage, 18-hours-a-week employment with no benefits and or job security.

That’s if we are lucky – those of us with degrees are considered “flight risks” – they know that as soon as we can find something with a salary we’re going to book it. So the restaurant jobs, retail jobs et al. are filled with high school kids off for the summer or folks with no nasty initials after their name. 

It’s nothing personal, each business for itself, and this is really not the time to waste money on unnecessary trainings. Please keep us in mind in the future. Let me also mention – since I have all the time in the world – that companies want experience. If there is an opening for a social worker, your transcripts and high energy won’t cut it. They want a work record spanning back to your fourth birthday.

This raises the question: What the hell do you care?

Well for one, you may be, or know someone who is diligently looking for employment and comes across a “Move to Phoenix! We have more jobs than people!” article statistically showing that there is employment and you can easily make it on your own. It worked in the Gold Rush, why wouldn’t it work now? 

But before you buy your kid a one-way ticket to the Promised Land (be it Denver or Atlanta or another one of the less-screwed-than-here cities in the U.S.), go beyond the simplistic articles and find out what life is really like for our demographic. They can start packing when they get a written offer from an employer. Blog articles are not enough.

Reality for recent grads, even in cities less hit by the recession, including Phoenix, is still bleak. Optimistic Arizonan’s like to say, “It’s a dry heat!”

Maybe so, but it’s still hell. 

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