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First Person

To Be Young in Michigan

Posted January 7, 2009

It’s difficult for many of us to wrap our brains around the enormity of the crisis facing the global auto industry. There may no more fragile industry on EconoWhiner’s DeathWatch. As the Washington Post recently reported, U.S. auto sales were down by 18% in 2008, which sounds pretty bad until one shines the spotlight on December 2008’s results. (This is what “really bad” looks like: Chrysler’s sales plunged by 53%, compared to December 2007, with Ford down by 32%, and GM down by 31%.)

To get a sense of what it’s like watching this collapse when it’s up close and truly personal, The Whiner turned to Guest Whiner, Andy Kroll, a talented young writer and college student at the University of Michigan. Here’s his story:

It was watching one of my favorite films, the 1979 classic Escape from Alcatraz (starring one of my favorite actors, Clint Eastwood), that got me thinking about life as a soon-to-be college graduate preparing to join the working world in these bleak economic times.

As Frank Morris, played by Eastwood, and his fellow inmates plotted their escape, I thought about young people like me, who will soon graduate from a college or university here in Michigan, and how our understanding isn’t all that different from the sentiment shared by Morris and the inmates of Alcatraz: Get out as soon as you can.

This mass exodus, or brain drain, of young graduates from Michigan is nothing new in a state that’s been mired in recession for at least half a decade and boasts the highest unemployment rate in the country. But now, it seems, the rest of the country is catching up with Michigan. The nation’s infrastructure is crumbling, unemployment is rising, and economists predict job losses in the millions in the upcoming year.

As an upcoming graduate in a liberal arts program, I can’t imagine a worse moment to be looking for a job and striking out on my own.

The economic hardship I once thought concentrated in post-industrial Michigan and a handful of other Midwestern rustbelt states is now a nationwide epidemic, and to begin searching for gainful employment right now is nothing if not daunting.

As Mary Sue Coleman, President of the University of Michigan, where I am entering my final semester, recently told a graduating class, “I have been a university president for 13 years and have had the privilege to address thousands of graduates. But I have never sent them into a world as challenged as the climate you are entering.”

To read that 3.5 million jobs could vanish this year leaves me feeling as if the ground I’m preparing to step out onto will fall away from underneath my feet. It’s challenging enough to land a job when the number of options out there is holding steady; but when jobs are disappearing by the half-million each month, when economists warn of a second Great Depression, it’s nothing if not disheartening and presents an awfully large stumbling block for young people like myself.

I dream of finding a job that not only pays the rent and the bills and that gets me off the parents’ payroll, but one that’s also fulfilling, engaging, and intellectually challenging: a job in which I’m not counting the minutes until I can leave and dreading the time I have to return. But how long should I hope for that kind of job, given that my chosen profession and passion is journalism? Journalism is an industry undergoing seismic changes, with writers getting laid off like it’s going out of style and publications grappling with the brave new digital future.

Then again, to have a paying job would be better than no job at all. I’ve seen enough of my friends graduate to the basements of their parents’ houses in quiet Michigan suburbs to know that boomeranging back home to Mom and Dad isn’t for me.

There’s always the option of putting off the real world for a couple more years. As the economy continues to crumble, many of my classmates and friends have delayed their inevitable entrance into the workforce by going to graduate school. Even those who had no plans beyond a Bachelor’s degree now talk of MFAs and MBAs and the GRE like they’d planned on going to grad school since the beginning.

Still, there’s something to be said for proving to yourself that you can cut it in the real world. A friend of mine who’s also a journalist often reminds me that part of the trade is “the struggle,” the noble act of committing yourself to your writing, to what you believe in and what you believe will impact others. We laugh off the low salaries we’re sure to earn and the small apartments we’ll call home (at least until that first book deal) as part of the struggle. We remind each other that, should the struggle turn out to be much more difficult than anticipated, well, there’s always grad school.

For now, it’s become an unshakeable habit of mine, almost like brushing my teeth or showering, to spend ten or fifteen minutes each day perusing the various journalism-job boards and internship listings scattered across the Internet. I can’t help but wonder how many of the newspapers and magazines with a few, scant job openings will even be around in four or five years.

What’s for certain, however, is that if I do find a job that takes me out of Michigan, I’ll leave behind a state far, far different from the one I moved to as a one-year-old. Growing up in Michigan means the Big Three automakers occupy an almost monolithic place in my childhood memories. Though headquartered in and around Detroit, the reach and influence of the Big Three spread throughout Michigan like a web-I always had friends or teammates with a relative who worked for a Ford parts supplier or sold cars at the local Chevy dealership.

Which is why, when I read about the sweeping layoffs at these companies, the talks of mergers (though anything other than the Big Three — the Big Two? — seems unimaginable) and bankruptcies, the news is personal. It’s an uncle or cousin losing his or her job; a college buddy whose father, a lifelong worker in the auto industry, is now, at 50 years old, looking for a new line of work.

And even though my parents aren’t directly tied to the auto industry (both are educators, and have thankfully avoided much of the financial turmoil of the past several months), I still feel a sense of loss for my state.

Like so many other people in Michigan, with or without direct ties to the Big Three, I prided myself on Michigan’s celebrated automotive history. And that history is felt in any number of different ways. Here in Michigan you’re told to “Buy American.” Here the local auto plant is always in the news, and most people, should you ask, can name every major auto plant for thirty miles in any direction.

And here, most of all, there’s a sense of ownership in these companies, that everyone is a stockholder of sorts and everyone’s emotionally invested in the future of the American auto industry. But to see the Big Three flirting with failure is not only financially crippling to the state but psychologically demoralizing. Without the auto industry, what is there — apart from maybe Bob Seger — to be proud of in Michigan?

Amidst all the ominous predictions for the future of my state — and the country as a whole — I try to remain as optimistic as I can. As a young, middle-class college student, I have plenty to be happy about, even in these bleak times. One of the benefits of being young is that my ideal job need offer only a meager salary, as I don’t have kids to support and, frankly, I can get by with a lot less than any reasonable adult.

For three months this past summer, I lived in a closet-sized apartment in Brooklyn, ate the same $6-dollar dish everyday (half for lunch, half for dinner) from the same Third Avenue Chinese restaurant, and squeezed every last penny out of my unlimited subway cards, each one delivering me to the unexplored far reaches of New York City. At the time I was working for a magazine in Manhattan, and it was one of the most fulfilling and intellectually thrilling experiences of my life. It was certainly worth enduring a summer’s worth of monastic living and an unhealthy drop in body weight.

So where does this leave a young graduate like myself, faced now with an equally grim economic situation both outside of Michigan and within the state?

Perhaps it means envisioning a new kind of struggle, one that involves taking a job that I hadn’t hoped for, but a job that nonetheless pays the bills and brings some form of independence until the economy brightens up a bit (though that’s likely to happen elsewhere in the country before it does in Michigan, where there’s hardly a light at the end of the tunnel).

There are always the evenings and late nights and weekends to write that first novel or to research that investigative story. No matter what the future holds, there’s no escaping the fact that the next year or so will make for tough times in the working world. But if there are those who can best tackle the challenges that lie ahead, I’m pretty confident it’ll be young people like me.

The Whiner wants to know: In states like Michigan, are certain age groups more or less vulnerable? Why?

Reader Comments

  1. Hope

    Greetings from the West side of Michigan, which has, until now, been the more diverse economic area. We have automotive suppliers, of course, but also health care and office furniture, etc. Last night’s news report revealed moving van stats showing 67% of area moves are outbound. While moving companies might have moved 20 families per week last year, this year they’re moving 50+ families per week…most outbound.

    The major office furniture manufacturers are all headquartered here (Steelcase, Herman Miller, Haworth) and they’ve all done layoffs and most are cutting back to 4 day work weeks.

    As for valnerable age groups, my unofficial read is that older workers (50’s and above) are taking buyouts and/or being laid off. People who have 20+ years into their companies are leaving, many trying to beat the layoff curve. As we all know, it’s cheaper to hire/keep a younger worker (lower salary, lower health care costs, etc.) And, make no mistake, the mass layoffs are driving salaries down.

  2. Hope

    Oops…”vulnerable”, not valnerable. :)

  3. Karenza

    Andy–

    I graduated from college in 1989, which seems like yesterday, and am still looking for that intellectually stimulating work where time flies and I never look at the clock. Fortunately, right out of college I found a job at a museum making very little money but my quality of life was very high. I stayed for 14 years before I made a career change in order to earn more money since we now had a mortgage, kids, etc. So, now I take a crowded bus downtown to an okay, but extremely boring job with very little vacation time, etc. I feel like the “grown up” in all the movies, paying my dues in order to offer our kids a comfortable life. I would like to find a different job, but there’s not much out there and the competition is stiff. I know it will all work out sooner or later, but my advice to you is this: Get together with your friends, rent a place together, pull your resources, think entreprenurial. You won’t be living on Easy Street anytime soon, but when you come through on the other side, you will have good stories to tell about how you made it through!

  4. Carolyn W.

    Andy,
    Have you read “Son of the Middle Border” by Hamlin Garland? His father was a civil war veteran who then homesteaded about four times beginning in Wisconsin. “The Soldier” worked his son from childhood with unrelenting manual labor. Hamlin, as a young man, eventually escaped and went to Boston and lived in a garret and became a writer. He managed to meet many of the literati of the time, seeing plays, lectures and got a library card from a sympathetic minister. He couldn’t get one on his own he was so poor. He starved himself literally to stay there as long as he could. OK that’s extreme, but I think you would like his book. (Remember the literary conventions of the time were a lot more flowery and wordy, don’t let that turn you off from the book).

    I come from a region in Southern Illinois where the main industry is coal mining and farming. It had 75% unemployment during the Great Depression. I lived in a university town and all my friends’ parents urged us to also GET OUT! My high school classmates that followed their advice did the best in retrospect all these years later. The ones that stayed have stable but predictable lives, with not a very high income level but a manageable existence. A lot of them have Masters and Doctorates but still work outside of their field of study. My husband and I slowly escaped and finally left the state altogether. We started out newly graduated after the deep recession of the mid-’70’s with 12 jobs between us, (things like house painting, typing dissertations for grad students, cleaning toilets, flipping burgers) with only our bicycles to get around. Our dinners in lean times was based on one carton of eggs for a week, making a two egg omelet base topped with vegetables and cheese each evening.

    This present environment, economically is brutal and I completely relate to your predicament. Being young bestows the advantage of having more resilience and choices, they narrow as you age and get more connections, marriage, children, mortgage, responsibilities. If you go for another degree, try to do it with as little debt as possible, assistantships, part time jobs, scholarships….don’t make things worse for yourself by taking on more debt unless you are willing to get a passport and literally move anytime, anywhere in the world for a high paying job. Good luck!

  5. The Doctor

    I feel for today’s graduates. It was bad enough when I graduated during an earlier recession and eventually stumbled into a field unrelated to my major. At least the cost of living was lower then. The average minimum wage job in 2009 does not cover daily expenses, not to mention any student loans, credit card balances or, horrors, young children to care for. In particular, lodging, transportation, communications and health care are a much higher proportion of household expenses. I wonder if the military will see a big rise in enlistments?

    As for the failing auto industry, it is unfortunate that the financial debacle has helped bring them down so quickly but part of it is their own fault. Instead of investing in innovation and sustainability, they chose to bury their corporate heads in the sand and ride the wave of short-term profit as long as possible. The wave is over and they have little to fall back on.

    As I noted in another post, about one in five jobs in the U.S. is related to the automobile. A major change in auto manufacturing affects the entire economy. The dominoes are crashing down and who knows how it will end. Many industries will need to pick up the pieces and adapt to a very different world where cars are not as important. Interesting times, eh?

  6. paprikapink

    There’s no where to “get out” to, is there? Just go where the climate suits your clothes.

  7. Byline=Myline

    Great post. Andy, I feel for you. The situation in Michigan is terrible. And you’re embarking upon a very very tough profession. I’ve spent years as a journalist myself — and while I brought the same passion to this career choice that you seem to possess, I’ve watched the industry disintegrate all around me. There are very few options right now. Conditions are bleak and I’ve watched many friends and colleagues lose jobs over the years. As with the auto industry, I see no end in sight to these problems. I wish you and all of us a bright future. But big changes may need to take place in order to create this possibility.

  8. david

    The majority of the people that I know have careers that have nothing to do with what we studied in college. I majored in public relations – worked as a hotel/restaurant manager for 15 years, then changed to banking (great choice, huh?) at the ripe old age of 34. In the past year I have bought my first home, and turned it into a type of boarding house for people I know that are in the same situation that I am. We pull our resources and have a pretty good time. At times like these, I look at it as yet another one of life’s adventures. Like all adventures, it can be fun, sad, happy, scary and exciting all at the same time.

    Remember – recessions (and even depressions) end. Keep in mind that “this too shall pass.” Make sure to list out things that you are grateful for EVERY DAY. Keep friends and loved ones close, look out for each other, and tackle each day as it comes.

    Remember – yesterday is history, tomorrow is history, today is a gift; which is why we call it the present.

    David

  9. david

    I meant to say “Yesterday’s history, tomorrow’s a mystery, today is a gift; which is why it’s called “the present”

    damn multitasking…

  10. Novista

    I have empathy for a young person these days — I wouldn’t want to do it again! I was born in the Great Depression, parents were poor folk who never finished high school.

    (Although my mother got her GED at the age of 83, in Florida.)

    So I grew up poor, lived through World War Two, Korea, etc, the Cold War (Doomsday Clock at 11:59), conscription, just a fluke of luck I slipped through the cracks and didn’t encounter Vietnam.

    After army life, and back to a civilian job, I concurrently studied three areas, data processing, evening classes at uni, and an FCC radiotelephone license to get into broadcast television technology. That led me to four station jobs in the U.S., one of which was building a new UHF station from the ground up — then to Saudi Arabia, Samoa, and Australia.

    Along the way, I outlived two wives (sequentially, not concurrently!) who died of cancer. I can look back on a long life — up, down, sideways — and nothing quite like now!

    Presently, I have a son living with me (long story!) looking for work. Nothing I ever expected or intended but it is what it is. And one deals with it.

    In the end, I have to believe “the glass was half full.”

  11. old teacher

    Carolyn W., I must mention that we seem also to have southern Illinois in common, too. Sounds like Carbondale and “Bloody Williamson” county to me where I started a family and a half-assed academic career

    But I wonder whether other people my age (late fifties) can help me perceive the nature of hope or its lack these days. During previous recessions, I worried, and worked my butt off parenting, housekeeping, and working an endless job. Together with friends and family we kept our chins up. By I didn’t experience the frightening lack of hope that comes round my door now more and more frequently. I don’t even wan to be looking back yet to figure this out–I want still to be looking ahead at my life and its prospects. My daughter’s 24 living in a crowded Brooklyn apt working a food-sector job she enjoys with no benefits. I can’t buy her any medical coverage; our retirement fund has tanked andwe have a kid in high school. She has time and she has Obama. If he “reforms” Social Security, I’m not sure what I have besides osteoporosis and sick friends. (Well, I have my happy dauhter!)

  12. jackie

    Andy,
    I love your attitude. I, too, got out of college and lived really really cheap for five years or so, enjoying it every step of the way. I lived in Brooklyn with three college friends, and was amazed to discover how many fun free things there are to do if you don’t mind a little extra time and inconvenience. All of us but one had a bunch of different jobs in the first few years, starting out with something that paid the bills (as long as we ate Kraft mac-n-cheese from the box three days a week) and eventually heading toward jobs that made a little more sense. Or at least internships that took us toward where we wanted to go. You have a great life ahead of you, and the cool thing is, you won’t mind living through hard times as long as you’ve got friends, ambition, and a solid roof over your head. I mean, you don’t sound like a kid who wanted to go work for Morgan Stanley and make a mint right out of school anyway, so now your cheap lifestyle will just kinda be mainstream…