For sure it depends greatly where you're at. I had the opportunity to get out of Silicon Valley a few years ago and visit most of the country and it was eye opening how much of a bubble I’d been living in. That said, I found a lot of dynamic entrepreneurial stuff happening in not only the usual bicoastal areas but some of the places you don’t hear about as well, like Pittsburgh, Philly, Charlotte, Raleigh Durham, Birmingham, San Antonio, Austin, Phoenix, the Denver area, Minneapolis… In a broad swath of the “new south” huge manufacturing plants are going up as fast as they can be built, all of which have pretty decent skilled labor jobs that don’t require a college education. By the same token it was clear to me that if you’re in Macon, Akron, Detroit…. or in a small isolated spot in Nebraska/Kansas… the opportunities would be limited, and if circumstances didn’t allow you to leave life would suck.
I can tell you that I have difficulty hiring for anyone that requires a technical degree, not just engineers but also finance or econ major types, I just don’t get very many applicants. This is something I’ve experienced both in CA and in the broad mid-Atlantic region, and I’m paying well for an interesting job with little/no downside, which tells me that millennials are doing just fine, at least the one’s willing to move to the mid-Atlantic or CA. And us Gen Xers have been doing fine for the last 20 years, this coming from someone who came from solid lower middle class, and while successful I certainly don’t move in the country club circles.
