The New Whippersnappers: Unemployed and Tweeting

The Pew Research Center came out with a wide-scale examination of America's newest generation, the 50 million Millennials. Edsters, I think this means most of us.

The good news is that Millennials are way more web savvy than any other age group (even Ed is tweeting!) and we're also set to be the most educated in American History. That's no small feat.

• Three-quarters have created a profile on a social networking site
• One-in-five have posted a video of themselves online
• Millions of 20-somethings are enrolling in graduate schools, colleges or community colleges. Among 18-to-24 year olds, 39.6% were enrolled in college as of 2008, according to census data.

But the downside of being such a talented pool of applicants is that we've also happened to graduate in a recession. The competition among us is so fierce that many of us are unemployed — at an alarmingly high rate.

At the moment, 37% of 18- to 29-year-olds are unemployed or out of the workforce, the highest share among this age group in more than three decades. Research shows that young people who graduate from college in a bad economy typically suffer long-term consequences, with effects on their careers and earnings that can linger as long as 15 years. 

Newsweek reported on a few struggling whippersnappers, including 24-year-old Adrian Muniz who moved to New York after graduating from Brown University in '07, "expecting to easily find work at a magazine." He's been expecting to easily find work at a magazine for the past three years while interning and working in retail.

We've all been there: working dead-end jobs while trying to build up our resumes, make some connections, and maybe one day earn a paycheck with the golden ticket: a name on the masthead. 

The one piece of inspiration you can take away? It seems like the times are changing in our favor. President Barack Obama is looking for an official Twitterer. Get on it, Edsters!

How long have you been on the job hunt? Share your tales of down and out (or short and sweet) unemployment in the comments!