You are in:
- Archives » 2008 » May 2008
Baby Losers
More on the educated, middle class Europeans facing tough times and low pay in the Guardian this weekend.
Last week EURSOC reported on how a generation of Europeans are discovering that jobs and degrees which previously offered a comfortable existence now barely keep them above the poverty line. Thirtysomethings in France, Spain and Germany are becoming aware that they are likely to belong to the first generation to be worse off than their parents in recent European history. Following on from their parents' "Baby Boomer" generation, they're calling themselves the "Babylosers."
"With inflation soaring, property prices sky high, wages relatively static, labour markets gridlocked and sluggish or slowing economies, (the Guardian's interviewees) are among tens of millions of Europeans raised to expect that their degrees and diplomas will assure them a relatively high quality of life who are now realising that the world has changed. The disappointment is a shock with big political, social, cultural, even demographic consequences," the newspaper reports.
One interviewee complains that he is not being rewarded for his qualifications; another says he is "hardly doing the work he dreamed of."
On the face of it, they have our sympathy, but the Guardian holds the violins: One thirty year old Roman student lives in a flat his parents bought for him, while a 24 year old working as a stagaire in a Paris publishing house spends her weekends in her parents' country house by the sea in Brittany - an experience she claims will "leave a bitter taste in her mouth."
There are probably American EURSOC readers, possibly the sons and daughters of impoverished immigrants, who are reading this and spitting their morning coffee.
Someone whose parents bought him a flat complains? A girl who wants to be in the notoriously competitive and low-paid publishing field takes free holidays at her parents' expense, then complains she feels bad because she won't be able to afford a second home by the sea?
It's difficult to get worked up about their plight. Presumably our French publisher stands to inherit the country pile when her parents die, as well as their city home. Perhaps this inheritance will help her to buy a flat in Paris, where property prices have skyrocketed in the past decade. Even modest family apartments in the 20th arrondisement where our publishing stagaire lives can cost over 400,000 euros; choose a less gritty neighbourhood and the price can double.
This has certainly hit those who work in the cultural world and those at the modest end of state employment, such as schoolteachers. But state employees can balance their sometimes meagre incomes against the free childcare they enjoy as fonctionnaires, plus France's enviable education and health coverage. Pensions are better than those in the private sector, too.
Despite these complaints, around 80 percent of schoolchildren claim they want to grow up to work for the state. One understands the appeal of a guaranteed job for life in uncertain times, but there simply isn't enough money in the state's coffers to ensure these people enjoy the same standard of living as their parents.
As for those apartments in Paris, well, someone must be buying them. The Guardian quotes a Catalan economist who says that the credit crunch could make homes more affordable for those who can persuade banks to lend them money, but "What is needed is a model of growth based on greater productivity and new industries primarily service-based such as IT, financial services and new technology which can raise salaries." Indeed, it's people in those businesses who are doing well, and one might suggest to the various state employees and media stagaires that the path to middle class prosperity might be via IT or the stock exchange.
A London School of Economics analyst is even tougher on the babylosers generation:
"Analysts also point out that the 'hardship' of the middle classes is relative - according to the European Commission, there are an estimated 16 million people in the EU at risk of poverty. 'The decline in standards of living for young middle class people is pretty moderate when compared with the very dramatic situation of their counterparts in totally marginalised communities such as the poor French suburbs,' said Professor Ian Begg of the London School of Economics.
"'And it is an extremely varied picture. New service sector jobs can be low grade and badly paid - such as night shifts for an IT company - or very lucrative. Collectively, Europe is richer than it has ever been. Average income has been going up pretty well without a blip since 1945 and whatever the disparities some of that has filtered down to pretty much everybody.'
"Begg pointed out that, with economic and social changes, a certain amount of 'blurring' was inevitable. 'There is a trend towards a certain classlessness and some win and some lose. Jobs that were previously passports to stable middle-class incomes and wealth no longer are. And those who lose out most tend to shout loudest.'"
