This kid has a promising career as a consultant. These are great ideas.
This Philadelphia student, who signs their name as Unemployed and Over It, decided that instead of replying one-by-one to ads for jobs on Craigslist, he or she would respond to all of them at once with this PSA, entitled "Dear Employers," about the current state of American employment. It's the kind of creative idea that could eventually land them an internship if they kept working hard and giving away ideas like this for free for a few years—maybe they could get a gig at an advertising firm making major brands seem like they're counter-culture.
Everything about this is great, except for the typo in the first sentence. Unless this letter really is addressed to "you job listings."
For the record, employers: I am desperate people. Just sayin'.
Now, of course, he or she is a kid (most likely) and there may be certain subtleties about the $15 trillion system known as the US economy that they're missing. For example, if you train as an electrician, it's a lot easier to get a pretty good job (much harder to become a billionaire, though). But overall, the kid yelling about how the adults have reneged on their economic promises is right—as annoying kids who point out that things are unfair have an annoying tendency to be. Pay for those at the tops of companies has gone up by many multiples since 1980, yet pay for everyone else has gone down during the same period (all while GDP grew strongly and corporate profits did wonderfully, thanks to productivity gains). The former CEO of JC Penney got paid 1,795 times what his average employee got—and JC Penney isn't even profitable. Getting a bachelor's degree has become so expensive that it's no longer worth it, and there aren't even jobs to be found at the end. Even the minimum wage has gone down—when it was raised to $3.35/hr in 1981, it would be worth $8.61 in in today's dollars, higher than the current federal minimum wage of $7.25.
Now, if you'll excuse me, someone forgot to let the interns out of the basement for food this morning, and their wailing and gnashing of teeth is making it hard to get work done.
(by Johnny McNulty)