Shalom, poor and scornful Gen Z readers! It is I, your adoptive older-millennial Jewish mum-of-two-and-counting, come to bestow my hard-won economic wisdom upon you!
I know exactly what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, ‘Why on Earth would I take career advice from a broke-ass millennial who doesn’t even have a TikTok?’ (…Okay, I don’t actually know what you’re thinking, because I am hopelessly out of touch. Humour me, just like you do your boomer grandparents.)
Well, children. As someone who’s been skiving for pretty much my entire post-2008-crash career despite a relatively decent CV and a not insignificant amount of higher education, I feel I am uniquely qualified (let’s just pretend like I didn’t lapse into job-application-speak there) to offer you advice on this New Economy(TM).
So, first question: what is this New Economy in which we find ourselves?
Great question. The New Economy can be summarised as follows:
- There is no such thing as a stable job anymore, anywhere, ever. It doesn’t matter how smart you are, how highly-qualified or skilled, what financial obligations you have. Your job is basically your industry’s version of Deliveroo, and if you don’t like it, you will get sacked and management will find somebody even more miserable and desperate for your shitty job to take your place.
- Oh, you’re an unattached white twentysomething and Daddy knows the CEO? The above doesn’t apply.
The median wage in 2020 for both full- and part-time workers in the UK was around £30,000pa. Now don’t get too excited – that means that half of workers in this country make below £30,000 per year, and while that sum looks like a lot from, say, Lincoln or Newcastle, it won’t get you jack shit in London or Oxford, or for that matter any city where rent eats up well over half your pay packet.
And let me tell you what life’s like when you make over £30,000 per year, from the brief halcyon (not really) days when I made a decent wage. The benefits and/or tax credits you’d come to rely on to make up for the laughable salary you previously earned? All gone, now pay full council tax to your do-nothing council and rent to your absent landlord, please. And those debts you accrued whilst on a nothing wage? All the debt collectors now have their hands out from the minute you poke your head above the £30k parapet, pay up! Oh now you lost your extremely demanding job due to stress burnout, I guess it’s Universal Credit time for you, enjoy that benefit cap in an expensive non-London area!
Am I bitter? Ha-ha! Yes.
So with my hard-won experience in this glorious New Economy in mind, I would like to share with you, Gen-Z reader, the same career advice I will be giving my children when they approach employment age.
- DO NOT GO TO UNI. NO. NO NO NO.
- All you are doing is throwing money at a glorified degree mill with absolutely fuck-all guarantee that there’s any kind of decent job at the end of it for you. This applies even up to Masters-level study. And if you’re really so deluded that you think a doctorate is going to streamline you into the good wages, well, I know a looot of postdocs and burnouts who would like a word with you.
- If you are going to commit the monumental folly of higher education, make sure that a) your parents can foot the bill without the expectation of a worthwhile job at the end of it (‘Expand your mind, honey!’), or b) you have a genuine desire to enter a profession which has a BA as prerequisite, such as – and please pardon the Jewish trope – a doctor or lawyer. And if this sub-bullet point applies to you, then you really don’t need my career advice.
- You really wanna make money in the New Economy? Learn a trade.
- If you’re Ashkenazi like me, then your great-grandparents probably emigrated out of the shtetl on the strength of their trade. Mine were tailors and picture-frame-makers when they passed through Ellis Island. Not that tailors and picture-frame-makers would have much luck in the New Economy, but you know who’s making money right now? Plumbers. Electricians. Hairdressers, if you don’t mind the local competition. If you don’t mind working as an apprentice for a bit, you’ll be qualified for a decent job at the end of it – and one where you could probably freelance if you wanted.
- NB: THIS DOES NOT APPLY TO CODING. Software engineering is going to be a barely-above-minimum-wage job in twenty years, as it proliferates like malware across every damn industry. It doesn’t hurt to know a little code, but DO NOT bank on software engineering as a trade. NO.
- Oh, you’re a creative like me? There are three options for you to make it in the arts:
- Have rich parents.
- Get a dull, menial job that doesn’t eat at too much of your mind. Admin is a great one – fast typing, learning your way around MS Office and copying machines, occasionally bumming cigarettes off the jaded boomers/Gen-Xers who have been trudging round this office for a solid 20 years, lucky bastards.
- Learn your way around the welfare state. The government can damn well pay you to make your magnum opus. Think about it as a trade-off: the state gives you money, and you don’t commit any major crimes to speak of. Win-win!
And there you have it, authentic Jewish-mum advice for attempting to make money ‘in this economy’ (a phrase I have heard since 2008 and which I fucking hate). I don’t think I’ll ever make any real money again, but you might have a shot. Courage, and bonne chance! I’m going back to sleep.
Sonya Blanck writings 