What do we do with an “unneeded generation?”
Our
economy faces a growing problem with the younger generation – we simply don’t
need them. Even jobs for graduating seniors from college are
drying up, let alone jobs those who didn’t go to college. I think this is not a temporary situation
that can be solved by a President or congress—I think it is “the new normal”
for most of the next decade.
As
for manufacturing jobs—they’re never coming back. Its not just china’s low
wages. American manufacturing has simply become so efficient it doesn’t
need workers, as any program of the science channel’s “How its
made” illustrates. These companies are not going to fire their robots an replace them with young employees who need health
care. The mortgage and banking crisis gave
companies an excuse to lay off excess workers they really didn’t need anyway.
And they slowed down new hiring, as they became more efficient even in non-manufacturing work
too—when is the last time you used a bank teller, or dictated a letter for a “secretary”
to type?
It
has happened in the church too. Jobs are out there but they are fewer and the
competition is more fierce. Many churches have
followed the lead of business. They have become more efficient. They have
eliminated some jobs altogether, recruiting lay volunteers to do what they used
to hire a staff minister to do. Others have hired their own laity as part or full
time staffers–often laity who sensed a call when they became unemployed themselves.
Other churches have chosen not to replace staffers who left the church
determining “we didn’t really need that ministry anyway, after all we don’t get
much back from it” (this is especially true for young adult ministers). It isn’t
because the church can’t afford it—church giving is not down in most cases—it is
because of the general climate of belt-tightening and economic fear. Churches
don’t want to hire somebody then turn around and have to lay them off six
months later. The result has been we now have a whole “unneeded generation.”
This
tightening job market for ministerial students has beer exacerbated by boomers
reaching retirement age who feel they can’t retire. Some boomers simply didn’t save
enough for retirement. But even those who did are fearful that their economic
future is tentative due to talk about potential cuts in Social Security and
Medicare. They did their pencil work and could retire now, but who knows what
they’ll lose in the future when “everything comes tumbling down.” So many
healthy boomers are quietly deciding to stay on “until they’re 70 or more” when
they hope things will stabilize. Usually the retiring generation makes space
for the middle aged ministers who move up into the vacated jobs which then makes space for the younger generation. This process will be
clogged at the top in the coming decade due to economics.
All
this brings us new challenge in the church, and for people like me who work with
this largely unneeded generation. Sure,
some graduates still get full time jobs, but the demand of jobs is smaller than
the supply of seniors. I wrote last spring
about the resulting “sale on Seniors” and how “the unneeded generation” is
coping with this. They are biding their time figuring the “clog at the top”
will eventually unclog in a decade or so. What’s a graduating senior ministerial
student supposed
to do when they are mostly unneeded? What would YOU tell these seniors this
coming spring?
Here’s
what I say: Take an internship or go to
seminary so you’re better prepared to compete when the jobs do come back in a
decade. Work part time in a church and the rest of the time at Starbucks and
pay off your debt in eight years so you’ll be debt-free and 30 years old when
you land your first full time ministry job. Go overseas for a few years on the
cheap and get some global ministry experience. Plant a church on your own—don’t
expect any financial help but figure out how to start a church small and cheap
and reinvent the small church again. And as a last resort, I even sometimes
recommend moving back in with mom and dad.
So,
what do you think? What are the
unintended consequences of having an unneeded generation? What might actually
be good about this situation? Bad? How does it feel to be an unneeded? If we in the church
don’t need this generation for jobs, what else do we need them for? Certainly
we don’t want to simply tell them they are completely unneeded?
That’s
what I’m thinking about this week.
So, what do you think?
The discussion of this column is on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/profile.php?id=161502633
Keith Drury
www.TuesdayColumn.