How does a young person make it in today’s economy? How does someone just getting out of college with an education financed by students loans get a job that leaves them enough money to pay their loans, eat and drive to work.  The economic slowdown is affecting young people. Finding a job has become harder. And getting that first job is more important as costs of basic goods and services are rising. Food is more expensive and the price of gas has gone up dramatically. Despite the decrease in home values due to the mortgage market crisis housing is still very expensive.

Moreover, how do young people without a college education move forward in today’s society? The short answer is that too many don’t. How do young people on minimum wage survive, too many don’t. It seems that fewer young people will obtain the American dream that their parents did.

What made me realize how awful things have gotten was an article I read on college students that are visiting food pantries or applying for food stamps in order to be able to eat. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25851896/Costs of groceries have gone up 5% in the past year while the costs of basic staples of a college student’s diet like milk and bread have gone up more than 30%. It occurred to me how people who have historically tended to be the children of the middle class are now living in poverty or near poverty as they try to pay for their education and still put food on their plate.

Then there are the stories of the “twixters” sometimes defined as those between the ages of 18-25 or even beyond, who are in a transitional period betwixt and between adolescence and adulthood. http://www.public.iastate.edu/~sjwong/twixters.pdf

I have been reading about this segment within our age group throughout George W. Bush’s administration, I do not know if he can claim the credit for the creation of twixters, but I wonder, after reading the article cited above, how many of the people referenced in the article, due to the economic climate we all have been forced to live, are glued to their parents for quite some time, and may be blamed for failing to launch and claim their independence. In short, some adults may never leave the nest, the worse the economy becomes the more this is true.

There is euphoria about having younger voters increasing their participation in the political process in proportions not seen before, but I do not see from the candidates running for president a social and economic agenda tailored to help this segment of the population achieve at least the same level of economic stability that their parents were able to a generation ago.