"Double dip" blues got you down?

The global financial system certainly had a case of “the Mondays” this morning.

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Unless you found yourself disconnected in the far reaches of a national park today, you woke up to another healthy serving of bleak reports about economies worldwide. “Second Recession in U.S. Could be Worst than First” was one headline splashed across the homepage of the New York Times.  “North American Markets Plunge” was another in this morning’s Globe and Mail.

If you’re playing the stock market, today was worse than most. But for youth who are simply trying to balance tuition fees with textbook prices and phone bills, what does the potential of a “double dip” recession mean? For one thing, it certainly doesn’t bolster the youth employment rate. In Canada, unemployment among 20- to 24-year-olds hovers around 15 percent, while in the U.S. it sits closer to 20 percent. To be sure, neither of these even begins to approach Spain’s whopping 44 percent, but both rates are far worse than the rosy days of the previous decade.

Maclean’s magazine recently dubbed Millennials, “the Screwed Generation,” especially as baby boomers seem more determined than ever to remain in the workforce indefinitely. While the lucky cohort of 2008 graduates entered a seemingly abundant job market, less than a year later, recent grads found themselves faced with scant employment prospects. Last year, for instance, the National Association of Colleges and Employers in the U.S. reported that less than 25 percent of 2010 graduates who applied for a job had one lined up by the time they finished their degree. Worryingly, the threat of a second - even deeper - recession is not promising for the class of 2012.

So what’s a student to do? Wait it out in grad school? Check out the job board at the local fast food joint? Take one unpaid internship after another with the hope that one will offer up an entry-level position?

At OOHLALA, we certainly don’t have all the answers. But we can help ease the pain with services like rewards at your favourite pubs and clubs, not to mention a student life calendar that will alert you to those all-important career fairs.

So here’s to attaining that elusive corner office…even if we have to survive another recession to get there.

Cheers,

Meg