May 24, 2017

Move Over, Men: Millennial Women Are Winning the Job Market

For decades, young men overshadowed young women in the job market, boasting higher education levels and grabbing the better-paying entry level jobs with more opportunities for advancement. With more than half of younger women out of the labor force and raising families, the job market of 40 or 50 years ago was largely a man's world.
But that reality quietly changed, and in recent years, millennial women have surged ahead of many of their male counterparts. Close to 60 percent of all college students are women, demonstrating a growing gender gap in higher education--the so-called "ticket" to a high-paying job. A recent U.S. Census Bureau analysis shows that as more young women obtained college degrees, delayed having children, and joined the workforce, they edged out millennial men for better-paying jobs.
Strikingly, more young men "are falling to the bottom of the income ladder," as young women beat them out for jobs, the study concluded. Frequently, men have struggled to land even modest-paying blue collar jobs.
For example, in 1975 only 25 percent of men aged 25 to 34 had incomes of less than $30,000 per year, the data shows. Yet by 2016, the share of young men with incomes of less than $30,000 rose to 41 percent. By contrast, the share of young women earning less than $30,000 during that same period plummeted from 79.6 percent to 58.1 percent.
The Census Bureau analysis, highlighted on Monday by The Boston Globe, showed that many young men have been forced into low-wage service jobs or pushed out of the job market altogether, despite having college educations.
>During the past three to four decades, the median income of young women who were working increased from $23,000 to $29,000 today, while the median income for men in the same age group plateaued or began to slip.
>Indeed, between 1975 and 2016, the share of young men with incomes in the middle range of $30,000 to roughly $60,000 dropped from 49 percent to 35 percent, while their share of high-end salaries of $100,000 or more crept up from three percent to eight percent.
More than a third of young women today have a college degree or higher compared to less than a quarter of young women in 1975. And 57 percent of them have full-time, year-round jobs now, compared to just 46 percent in 1975.
Some experts warn that these income and employment trends among millennials could ultimately put a politically important cohort of society at a distinct economic disadvantage that could force many to delay the realization of the "American Dream," including buying a car, getting married and buying a home.
A telling indicator of the economic problems of many millennials is the large number who are still living with their parents.
Of the 28 million young millennials aged 18 to 24, more than half -- or 16 million -- live in their parents' home. That is a group of young people that is more likely to be enrolled in school and out of the labor force.
Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, told The Boston Globe that "This has an effect on their entire lives," adding, "Those first jobs are going to set you up for your lifetime of earnings."

https://www.inc.com/the-fiscal-times/millennial-women-dominate-job-market-men-overshadowed.html

May 19, 2017

Thanks to global warming, Antarctica is beginning to turn green

https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=

Researchers in Antarctica have discovered rapidly growing banks of mosses on the ice continent’s northern peninsula, providing striking evidence of climate change in the coldest and most remote parts of the planet.

Amid the warming of the last 50 years, the scientists found two different species of mosses undergoing the equivalent of growth spurts, with mosses that once grew less than a millimeter per year now growing over 3 millimeters per year on average.

“People will think of Antarctica quite rightly as a very icy place, but our work shows that parts of it are green, and are likely to be getting greener,” said Matthew Amesbury, a researcher with the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom and lead author of the new study. “Even these relatively remote ecosystems, that people might think are relatively untouched by human kind, are showing the effects of human induced climate change.”

The study was published Thursday in Current Biology, by Amesbury and colleagues with the University of Cambridge, the British Antarctic Survey and the University of Durham.

May 16, 2017

Oxford student who stabbed boyfriend could be spared jail 'because of her extraordinary talent'

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/16/oxford-student-spared-jail-extraordinary-talent/

An Oxford University student could be spared jail after a judge said she had an "extraordinary" talent for medicine.

Lavinia Woodward, 24, who studied at Christ Church College, Oxford, stabbed her Cambridge-educated boyfriend in the leg on December 30 last year following a row.

The pair had a drink and drug-fuelled argument, and Woodward punched and swiped at the victim with a bread knife.

She then stabbed the man before hurling a laptop, glass and a jam jar at him.

...

She admitted a charge of unlawful wounding at Oxford Crown Court and Judge Ian Pringle said the offence would normally mean a custodial sentence.

But he then deferred sentencing for a period of four months and hinted that she would not be jailed - because of her ''extraordinary'' talent.

He said: "It seems to me that if this was a one-off, a complete one-off, to prevent this extraordinarily able young lady from not following her long-held desire to enter the profession she wishes to, would be a sentence which would be too severe.

"What you did will never, I know, leave you but it was pretty awful, and normally it would attract a custodial sentence, whether it is immediate or suspended."

The court was told her college will allow her to return to in October because she "is that bright" and has had articles published in medical journals.