One of the top reasons I decided to get off the sidelines and into this race was when I watched my daughter Tyler and her friends graduate from college last year and start their careers.   Tyler was one of the lucky ones able to find a job in her field, but for many of her friends and peers still searching, the promise of the American Dream feels like it’s slipping away.  We need to implement pro-growth policies to get our economy back on track and make sure our children have the same opportunities that we did to succeed. 

More Hampton Roads college grads end up back home

The Virginian Pilot

By Philip Walzer

August 7, 2011

Henna Nadeem and Odessa Knipp met on the bus to middle school in Virginia Beach a decade ago.

Knipp was a grade older. They had different tastes in music and movies; Nadeem could do without musicals. But they were drawn to each other, partly because of their shared work ethic – “just getting ahead, doing as much as we can,” Nadeem said.

Knipp enrolled in Virginia Wesleyan College. Nadeem followed a year later. They chose different majors – religious studies for Knipp, criminal justice for Nadeem – but they’d study together. Both maintained averages between A and B.

Now graduates, they are partners in thwarted hopes and broken dreams.

Knipp, who received her degree in 2010, works at a day care center. Nadeem, who graduated from Virginia Wesleyan this year, could find only a temporary summer job on campus paying little above minimum wage.

Both are living at home with their parents 

“I thought that I’d find a job with a nice starting salary and have my own apartment,” said Knipp, 24. “I was delusional up until the time I graduated.”

About 53 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds lived at home last year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The number may be higher for new college graduates. Eighty-five percent of seniors polled in 2010 by Twentysomething Inc., a marketing firm outside Philadelphia targeting young adults, expected to move home after graduation for financial reasons.

“Now you don’t ask, ‘Where do you live?’ but, ‘Where are you from?’ because you know they’re probably still there,” said Steven Hawthorne, a recent Virginia Tech graduate who plans to live with his parents in Chesapeake until he starts law school next year.

They’re called the boomerang generation, bouncing back to where they started.

“You come back to the same bed, same pictures, same atmosphere, but you’re a different person,” Hawthorne said.

“It’s physically taking a step back, but you can’t look it at it like that. It’s more of an adaptation to the world around us. 

Nadeem and Knipp didn’t boomerang. They stayed home during college to cut costs. That eliminated the transition from freedom to dependence. But for Knipp, who will marry next year, it also deprived her of “a very important phase.”

“I’m dependent on my parents and then I’ll be pretty much dependent on him, so I feel almost like a 1950s housewife,” she said. “I’m missing that in-between place where you grow up and decide to do things on your own.”

For Nadeem’s parents, Pakistani immigrants who sought a better life, their daughter’s troubles have burst their faith in the American dream.

Her father, Ahmad, has advised her to look for jobs in other countries. “Once upon a time,” he said, “you come to the U.S. and there is a piece of the pie. Not anymore.”

The U.S. unemployment rate for 20- to 24-year-olds was 14.6 percent in July, higher than any other adult age bracket, according to data released Friday. The overall rate was 9.1 percent.

Even in good times, that age group has a higher unemployment rate, said William Johnson, a professor of economics at the University of Virginia, because “people at the beginning of their careers are more likely to move between jobs.”

The economic slump has magnified that trend, he said, because older workers are delaying retirement, reducing the number of openings for graduates.

Knipp had hoped to get a job at a library or museum and eventually get a master’s in library science. “I like being by myself and with books and helping people do research,” she said.

She widened her search to include coffee shops, nursing homes, retail stores. “I was passing my resumes out everywhere,” she said. Mostly, she was told she didn’t have enough experience.

She got the day care job, supervising 1-year-olds, last summer. It’s OK, but it’s not what she went to school for.

Nadeem, 22, thought she’d benefit from an internship last winter with the Virginia State Police. She’s applied for more than 30 government and human resources jobs. Her part-time clerical position at the college will end this month.

Hawthorne studied history and psychology at Tech, graduating with an average between an A and B. He had three computer-related internships with the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, so he’s zeroed in on information technology jobs.

He’s applied for more than 50 jobs. He expects to get his first interview this month.

Until he lands a job, he’s doing chores around the house – painting, cutting the grass: “My father is the type of guy who, when you ask him, ‘What do you need me to do?’ can reel off five things. Each day I do as many as I can.”

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