Anyone here anxious about finding jobs as an adult?

[MulticulturalFarmer]

Hi there everyone. I'm doing okay-ish working right now. I just am wondering if anyone is anxious about finding a decent paying job with the way the econom(ies). I just worry that every field is kinda saturated, and I won't get paid enough relative to all the years I spent in school. I do believe in learning for the sake of learning, it's just that it sure would be nice to find a job related to what I studied. I also have anxiety that I'll have to settle for a job that doesn't even require my degree or any degree at all, apart from teaching since I'll keep facing rejections for jobs related to my field.

And in one of the countries that I'm in, teaching sucks big time, since you have to deal with kids that are horribly behaved and the pay honestly sucks. Not to mention becuase of certain geopolitical events the cost of living keeps rising and rising all the time.

In the other country, teaching is a lot better, but I'd have to brush up on my French, as I rarely have to use it, and I'm honestly trash at it, and unless they can accept English or German in the areas that are looking for teachers I doubt I can get a position for K-12, though after I do my master's degree I'd have a better chance with teaching at a college. I know this sounds depressing, but I need to let it out, partly because believe it or not my situation is a bit related to aromanticism. You see, people keep telling me (mostly my family but also friends from secondary/high school tell me that if I had a boyfriend worrying about cost of living increases wouldn't be such a big deal and I wouldn't have to live with family, who tend to be complicated in general since they are your parents and tend to want different things than their (adult) children. 

[Nix]

Yeah, the time that people got a job and only left after working there for 40+ years for a nice pension is a distant memory… my parents find it difficult to understand why I would choose to be a freelancer for both my teaching and my artist work and have asked me numerous times if I wouldn’t prefer a desk job at the teaching intitute I freelance for, or some other ‘steady’ job. But as I keep explaining to them, I spent years at those ‘steady’ jobs feeling horrible and then just getting fired anyway when the economy tripped over itself again. They too expressed worry over the fact that I don’t have a financial partner to rely on. But as I see with my partnered friends, as one or both of them get fired from their ‘steady’ jobs, that is also no longer a guarenteed way to live securely. So personally, I decided some two years ago that I was done wasting my energy in those boring as hell ‘secure’ jobs and that I’d rather do what i love (and studied to do) instead. 
So yes, I sometimes worry about the future. But since in this economy no job seems to be truly secure, I’m content with my choice.

[MulticulturalFarmer]

7 hours ago, Nix said:

Yeah, the time that people got a job and only left after working there for 40+ years for a nice pension is a distant memory… my parents find it difficult to understand why I would choose to be a freelancer for both my teaching and my artist work and have asked me numerous times if I wouldn’t prefer a desk job at the teaching intitute I freelance for, or some other ‘steady’ job. But as I keep explaining to them, I spent years at those ‘steady’ jobs feeling horrible and then just getting fired anyway when the economy tripped over itself again. They too expressed worry over the fact that I don’t have a financial partner to rely on. But as I see with my partnered friends, as one or both of them get fired from their ‘steady’ jobs, that is also no longer a guarenteed way to live securely. So personally, I decided some two years ago that I was done wasting my energy in those boring as hell ‘secure’ jobs and that I’d rather do what i love (and studied to do) instead. 
So yes, I sometimes worry about the future. But since in this economy no job seems to be truly secure, I’m content with my choice.

Yup, I know what you mean, I'm also part time/freelance worker in multiple fields as well. But the big problems in my country are the healthcare costs and the lack of rent controls/subsidized housing, there are some areas that are so bad that even people with master's and PhD degrees need subsidized housing from the government but the waiting list for that is several years long, so there's a huge amount of anxiety for people who can't make more than the monthly amount required for rent, especially for an apartment in an area that doesn't have gunshots and stabbings all the time. There's of course student debt crisis, lack of worker's rights, and the list goes on... but in terms of rent, I'm quite lucky that I can live with my parents, though we really don't get along at all.

I grew up in rural areas in two countries, and the first thing I was asked by friends and family, both where I grew up in and by some people in rural areas was why I didn't pick a vocational degree (you know, the degrees that have a linear path to the jobs, like engineering, nursing, medicine (medical doctors), healthcare professions. It's like eh, yeah society can't run if everyone became engineering and doctors, not to mention that those fields would become saturated pretty fast and would drive down the wages dramatically, which is already happening to an extent.

For me, I choose a dual degree option, a natural science (generally pretty theoretical field, as it focuses on artificial intelligence, mathematics, and statistics) another field, public health, which is mostly a social science, with a bit of literature and history mixed as well as some biology given the relvance to health. I finished the public health program but am still doing the coursework for the natural sciences. And I also am a freelancer of sorts, as a substitute teacher who fills in for sick teacher or teachers who just couldn't make it to school that day. I'm planning on being a Pre-K or some other sort of elementary school teacher once I'm done with school due to short work days, usually just from 7 to 12 or 13 to 18 hour (basically 1 to 5 PM) though the pay for that is atrocious in many countries, and especially in the one that I live in, but some urban areas pay just enough to live on, but only if one works in a government school, and that's in the country that i'm right now. Though the pay sucks I sure do like the flexibility to not have to live at work, and staying with family I could save for an apartment or something if I want to do that in the future, but it sure would take a long time to get the money for that, no doubt.

I'm looking into tutoring or working in research institutes if I need more money in the summer. But people sure do wonder why someone who likes difficult science concepts would ever want to spend time chasing kids around in a classroom and trying to get them to learn how to read and write. I really hate hearing the whole, become a doctor, you still have time to make it happen, or you know, you could make a master's degree in engineering, have you heard of nursing? Blah blah blah. 

I guess it's that after doing internships in the industries I wasn't happy with the stability (kinda like what you mentioned, downsizing can happen any time), the lack of any type of free time, very little vacation time (unless one is freelance there's little guarantee of any time to travel around, and employers as well as government are not required to offer any paid vacation either).

Also, unlike many science oriented people I know of (I can't generalize, I can only speak for the people I went to university with so far), I quite enjoy literature, art, and music even if I'm not an expert at those things, and certainly do not think those majors are useless, I mean heck, I have one degree already in a field that utilized history and sociology (not sure if I even want to complete the other degree, but I'll see). I sure like to dabble in liberal arts and humanities, and I very much want the full breadth of human experience, I don't want to see myself as a robot doing repetitive tasks all day without getting to interact with people, just machines and abstract entities I guess. I do want things like promote 'good' mental health, good character, and all the other things that come with learning and with being a functional and 'good' (at least to me) human being. Education has a lot of issues in the country I'm living in, and they are too numerous to mention here, but I do feel good knowing that I wasn't working to just make some corporation better, not to mention if this school sucks in terms of administration there's literally so many other options to choose from that it won't matter much to me.

Edited February 22, 2023 by MulticulturalFarmer
added words

[DeltaAro]

On 2/21/2023 at 4:29 AM, MulticulturalFarmer said:

And in one of the countries that I'm in, teaching sucks big time, since you have to deal with kids that are horribly behaved and the pay honestly sucks. Not to mention becuase of certain geopolitical events the cost of living keeps rising and rising all the time.

Oh, yes...

For me, after I got a real adult job, I still live like I lived in my student years.

I'm a shareholder of a housing coop and the heating in my house is a central heating pump. So rent and heating is very cheap for me. I could even live from €500 a month, all included, though of course that would be very tight. 😬 But normally just for a 30 m² flat you'd pay €500 (without heating) in my city.

So I'm glad, that though many times I wanted to relocate to a nicer flat (with a vicinity that doesn't look like from a cyberpunk dystopia [though some people might like this]), in the end I did not. Now the living costs are through the roof, and it's nice to not have to restrict yourself much otherwise.

On 2/21/2023 at 9:15 PM, Nix said:

Yeah, the time that people got a job and only left after working there for 40+ years for a nice pension is a distant memory… my parents find it difficult to understand why I would choose to be a freelancer for both my teaching and my artist work and have asked me numerous times if I wouldn’t prefer a desk job at the teaching intitute I freelance for, or some other ‘steady’ job. But as I keep explaining to them, I spent years at those ‘steady’ jobs feeling horrible and then just getting fired anyway when the economy tripped over itself again. They too expressed worry over the fact that I don’t have a financial partner to rely on. But as I see with my partnered friends, as one or both of them get fired from their ‘steady’ jobs, that is also no longer a guarenteed way to live securely. So personally, I decided some two years ago that I was done wasting my energy in those boring as hell ‘secure’ jobs and that I’d rather do what i love (and studied to do) instead. 
So yes, I sometimes worry about the future. But since in this economy no job seems to be truly secure, I’m content with my choice.

I admire you.😄I'd like to be a freelancer, but I couldn't deal with the amount of self-promotion. My boss forgot all his coding skills, but he's good at networking, putting on a suit and finishing the deals. I'm so happy that I don't have to deal with this. 😉

[Nix]

14 minutes ago, DeltaAro said:

I admire you.😄I'd like to be a freelancer, but I couldn't deal with the amount of self-promotion. My boss forgot all his coding skills, but he's good at networking, putting on a suit and finishing the deals. I'm so happy that I don't have to deal with this. 😉

Thanks! When I started out the networking part seemed really daunting to me too. But I don’t find it too bad. I guess it helps that I really like talking to people, and that I’ve overcome my fear of camera’s. Because painting walls in public areas means the local newspaper/tv network are going to visit and shove a camera in my face.

[hemogoblin]

Can I chime in with a yes if I'm an adult who's been adulting for a while and still hasn't figured this whole job thing out? Two degrees, and I never even managed to get an interview in my field. It'd be nice to have a career rather than just a job, but at this point, I'm simply desperate for health insurance, which in the US is tied to have a specific job. My job the past few years isn't required to provide insurance because they employ less than 1000 people. =\

[MulticulturalFarmer]

On 3/3/2023 at 5:06 PM, hemogoblin said:

Can I chime in with a yes if I'm an adult who's been adulting for a while and still hasn't figured this whole job thing out? Two degrees, and I never even managed to get an interview in my field. It'd be nice to have a career rather than just a job, but at this point, I'm simply desperate for health insurance, which in the US is tied to have a specific job. My job the past few years isn't required to provide insurance because they employ less than 1000 people. =\

I wish I could tell you to come on over to (one) of my countries... but depending on the health condition you have and how much it'd cost the government (there's a literal amount listed on the website!) they may not even let you in even if you had a business or job skills and experience in a field on the "shortlist" though refugees are exempt.

[roboticanary]

Yeah, its fair to be worried about the thing that is going to put food on your table and a roof over your head.

i got pretty lucky that the thing I studied was physics which seems to be a pretty good thing to do when it comes to getting jobs. so i guess i got very lucky there that i was enjoying a thing which can be made to pay and am in a country where i was able to train in that. at the moment im ok and have recently got a new job, but there is still going to be that worry of what do i do if i get laid off.

I guess this links to living single, one thing i have to accept is that i dont have another partner so if i am out of work there is no-one else with at least some money coming in for basics.

[MulticulturalFarmer]

6 hours ago, roboticanary said:

Yeah, its fair to be worried about the thing that is going to put food on your table and a roof over your head.

i got pretty lucky that the thing I studied was physics which seems to be a pretty good thing to do when it comes to getting jobs. so i guess i got very lucky there that i was enjoying a thing which can be made to pay and am in a country where i was able to train in that. at the moment im ok and have recently got a new job, but there is still going to be that worry of what do i do if i get laid off.

I guess this links to living single, one thing i have to accept is that i dont have another partner so if i am out of work there is no-one else with at least some money coming in for basics.

If I can ask, did you do applied/engineering physics or a more pure physics degree? I've heard this can make a bit of a difference, but that depends on where you are though. Engineering physics in Canada and some European countries seems to be kinda applicable to industry because of the emphasis on engineering concepts as well as using physics to improve stuff in engineering (to give a very rough and general explanation).

Are housing co-ops common in your country?

 

[roboticanary]

21 hours ago, MulticulturalFarmer said:

If I can ask, did you do applied/engineering physics or a more pure physics degree? I've heard this can make a bit of a difference, but that depends on where you are though. Engineering physics in Canada and some European countries seems to be kinda applicable to industry because of the emphasis on engineering concepts as well as using physics to improve stuff in engineering (to give a very rough and general explanation).

 

pure physics.

I'm in the uk and i am not sure about the difference. I think more jobs look for engineering degrees but most also are ok with accepting physics degrees. I think if you write a good cover letter/cv and do well in any online testing they ask for then that makes up for a lot of concerns over lacking the practical knowledge.

 

[hemogoblin]

On 3/4/2023 at 9:06 PM, MulticulturalFarmer said:

I wish I could tell you to come on over to (one) of my countries... but depending on the health condition you have and how much it'd cost the government (there's a literal amount listed on the website!) they may not even let you in even if you had a business or job skills and experience in a field on the "shortlist" though refugees are exempt.

Haha, no worries, but I appreciate the sentiment!

I wish I could help with your teaching anxieties, but all I can say is...don't come to the US. Not a good position for teachers here. D: