I graduated 2008, it was not a picnic. I had to travel to work, ND, SD, Iowa, Montana, Etc, been there, climbed windtowers in all of em.

About that labor shortage... Yes everyone needs workers but lets use local dairy's for an example. Myself and my friends all worked on dairy farms as teens, many of us wanted to farm, there was no way to work to ownership because the dairy's have grown to 5,000-20,000 cows using Mexican labor, we were all forced to go find different careers and a few of us made enough to buy our way back into farming. Now I see those large Dairy farms complaining about immigration crackdowns scaring their workforce off and how "no one wants to work anymore" milking someone else's cows for $18 a hour. When you take away the path to ownership suddenly you need slav... "immigrant" labor again.

I've done fine for myself, I don't have a playstation and I don't live in my moms basement. That said I can see why some are struggling and I think its naive to dismiss it all as laziness or "avocado toast".

… you’re wasting your time … she’ll just say they should start their own company or something lol

The world is still an oyster, opening it depends on the tools you obtained.

and your WILLINGNESS to pursue your goals.

You are right Dirt. The jobs report from yesterday included numbers from April's JOLTS survey. It showed that in April there were 731,000 NEW job openings unfilled. Most of those in professional and service related work

A lot of the things pointed out by others are exactly what our youngest and his fiancée are utilizing. They both have chosen a field that is pretty secure. They are moving away from the area to make the money necessary to start a family. The world is still an oyster, opening it depends on the tools you obtained.

If you don't mind my asking what career field is your youngest employed in.

In my opinion, if AI stays on its current track nothing is secure to a degree.

Yote30. Not wanting to speak for Donner, but I believe what he is referring to is generational farms. Where the farm was passed from Father to another family member. Was not that long ago that a family could do ok 50 cows and a couple hundred acres. However once the bigger operations start growing it becomes a domino effect, and they need to get bigger and bigger. At a certain point they get to be so big that they have no competition. Real hard for a younger person to try to compete, and get started. Younger guy needs to "borrow " to even get started, and big operator needs to "spend" so he doesn't have to pay taxes. G.

Yes, generational farms that were bankrupted by cheap labor on massive farms. It was also realistic to make a living with 30 cows on a 160, a guy could buy into that and make it work. That's pretty much gone, all the rural families along with it