【社会科学-经济】
Youngsters’ job preferences and prospects are mismatched
（717字 精读 必做篇）
The world of work is changing. Are people ready for the new job outlook? A survey of 15-year-olds across 41 countries by the OECD, a club of mostly rich countries, found that teenagers may have unrealistic expectations about the kind of work that will be available.
Four of the five most popular choices were traditional professional roles: doctors, teachers, business managers and lawyers. Teenagers clustered around the most popular jobs, with the top ten being chosen by 47% of boys and 53% of girls. Those shares were significantly higher than when the survey was conducted back in 2000.
The rationale for this selection was partly down to wishful thinking on the part of those surveyed (designers, actors and musical performers were three of the top 15 jobs). Youth must be allowed a bit of hope. When Bartleby was a teenager, his ambitions were to play cricket for England and become prime minister; neither ambition was achieved (a lucky escape for the country on both counts).
Furthermore, teenagers can hardly be expected to have an in-depth knowledge of the minutiae of labour-market trends. They will have encountered doctors and teachers in their daily lives. Other popular professions, such as lawyers and police officers, will be familiar from films and social media. But many people end up in jobs they would not have heard of in their school years. You settle for what is available.
The OECD points out that some of the fastest-growing occupations are rarely mentioned by young people. But surely the surprise is not that “user support technician” is ranked only 158th out of 543 professions and “computer user support specialist” appears in 229th place. Rather, it is astonishing that young people know that such jobs exist at all.
At least teenagers who want to tackle climate change, as many profess to, are in luck. America’s Bureau of Labour Statistics (BLS) predicts that the two fastest-growing occupations over the next few years will be solar-photovoltaic installers and wind-turbine technicians.
Some parts of the OECD survey are disturbing. Even though top performers in maths or science are evenly matched among males and females, a gender gap persists in terms of aspiration. More boys than girls expect to work in science or engineering—the average gap across the OECD is more than ten percentage points. The problem continues in higher education; with the exception of biological and biomedical sciences, degrees in stem subjects (science, technology, engineering and maths) are male-dominated. In America women earn just 35.5% of undergraduate stem degrees and 33.7% of PhDs.
Things are even worse in technology. In Britain only one in five computer-science university students is a woman—a big problem at a time when the World Economic Forum predicts that technology will create more than a quarter of all jobs in newly emerging professions. But women are underrepresented in some important fields of technology; they have only 12% of jobs in cloud computing, for example. Something about the tech industry puts off female applicants.
Women play a much bigger role in the health- and social-care sectors, which are also poised for expansion. The BLS forecasts that eight of the 12 fastest-growing jobs in America over the next few years will be in those areas, with roles ranging from occupational-therapy assistants to genetic counsellors. The snag is that some of these jobs are not very well paid. Home-health and personal-care aides (with the third- and fourth-fastest growth rates, respectively) had median annual salaries in 2018 of just over $24,000.
Some jobs in health care are extremely lucrative, of course. But another gender imbalance emerges here: women make up only one-third of American health-care executives. In contrast, they tend to dominate the poorly paid social-care workforce. In Britain 83% of social-care workers are female. That suggests men shun the field, perhaps because they do not perceive caring to be a masculine trait.
The biggest problem in the labour market, then, may not be that teenagers are focusing on a few well-known jobs. It could be a mismatch: not enough talented women move into technology and not enough men take jobs in social care. Any economist will recognise this as an inefficient use of resources. Wherever the root of the problem lies—be it the education system, government policy or corporate recruiting practices—it needs to be identified and fixed.
Source: The Economist
【社会科学-科技】
Kids Are Not Hurt by Screen Time
（473字 3分1秒 精听 必做篇）
先做精听再核对原文哦~
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Kids spend a lot of time looking at screens. And some parents worry. But a new study argues against the apprehension parents may feel.
“The danger is that they’re hearing a message that social media, digital technology use is causing very serious and harmful problems like depression, like suicide-related behaviors.”
Candice Odgers, professor of psychological science at the University of California, Irvine.
“And the idea is that if you shut off social media, which lots of kids use to connect with each other, their friends, find out information about health, you could be making a situation worse. Parents are really being sent a message that is not supported by anything scientifically.”
Odgers and her colleagues looked at the screen-related behavior of 400 public-school students in North Carolina ages 10 to 14. This group was picked as a representative sample of race and socioeconomic status for the entire U.S. The researchers found that—even not counting time doing schoolwork on screens—the kids spent between almost five hours to seven hours per day on their devices, with the older kids online the most. That’s a lot of hours, but:
“Overall, what we find is no connection between the amount of time that young people spend online using digital technologies and mental health symptoms like depression, anxiety. When we do find associations, they were actually quite surprising to us. We found that young people who sent more text messages actually reported better mental health. Now, again, this was a small association, but it reflects what other people have found: that people who are very connected off-line, that use technology in the positive ways to stay connected often, are more connected online as well and experiencing better mental health.”
The new study is in the journal Clinical Psychological Science.
So why the fears about screen time? Odgers argues that the methodologies for older studies may have led to false conclusions.
“One of the issues with the research that’s been done to date has been that youth are, you know, in school. They have a survey put in front of them, and they’re asked to recall, over the past six months, ‘How often are you online?’ and ‘Have you ever felt depressed?’ And the correlation between those two things has been used to spread a lot of fear around this connection between social media use and things like depression—99.5 percent of the reasons that kids differ in their depression is due to something other than the time they spend online.”
Parents get a lot of advice, and some of it always seems to conflict. But Odgers suggests there’s one place you can always go to get information.
“The hope is that more parents will hear this message and relax and spend kind of less time worrying about smartphones and more time just talking to their kids.”
Source: Scientific American
【社会科学-经济】
Millions Unemployed as Coronavirus Pulls US Economy Down
（518字 5分24秒 精听 选做篇）
先做精听再核对原文哦~
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About 26.5 million jobless Americans have asked the government for financial assistance over the last five weeks. The number confirms that all the job gains in the United States over the past 10 years have been lost during the coronavirus pandemic.
The rising levels of unemployment provide evidence for economists’ claims that the U.S. economy entered recession in March. They also point to a collapse in retail and home sales, manufacturing production and homebuilding.
As the economic slowdown deepens, some Americans are protesting nationwide measures to control the spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus. President Donald Trump is worried and wants to restart the economy as soon as possible. He is seeking a second term in elections later this year.
On Wednesday, Trump praised decisions made by some states to begin reopening their economies. Those states are governed by members of his Republican Party. U.S. health experts have warned of a possible increase in infections if areas reopen before the disease is under control.
The labor market is pushing into “new territory,” notes Daniel Zhao, an economist with Glassdoor, a company that helps jobseekers. He added that the unemployment rate is already greater than during the Great Recession.
The federal government reported Thursday that in the week ending April 18, more than 4.4 million unemployed Americans sought benefits from the government. Since March 21, over 26 million people have asked for government assistance. That represents 16.2 percent of the work force.
The U.S. economy created 22 million jobs between September 2010 and February 2020. That represents the longest increase in job growth in U.S. history.
The Labor Department said the high numbers of unemployed were because of “the COVID-19 virus.”
Economists are saying as many as 25 million jobs were lost in April, which was the largest decrease in 11 years.
Although the number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits is high, it is decreasing. The number appeared to have reached a peak -- a record 6.867 million -- in the week ending March 28.
Job losses are likely “to continue across a number of industries in coming weeks, said Andrew Hollenhorst, an economist at Citigroup in New York.
The decrease in unemployment claims is partly a result of congressional legislation. Under a $2.3 trillion program, small businesses are offered loans that could be partially forgiven if they are used to pay their workers.
The U.S. Senate on Tuesday approved $484 billion in additional aid. If it becomes law, the measure would mostly expand loans for small businesses.
The government aid is designed to prevent additional unemployment.
Economists will continue to study the number of Americans who asked the government for jobless benefits. This number is considered a truer picture of total unemployment nationwide. In the week ending April 11, the number was nearly 16 million.
Economists believe the unemployment rate this month will be the highest since the end of World War II. The old record -- of 10.8 percent – was set in November 1982. The April totals will not, however, come near the 25 percent unemployment rate in 1933 during the Great Depression.
Source: VOA
【笔记格式要求】
精读笔记格式要求：
1.总结文章中心大意
2.总结分论点或每段段落大意
3.摘抄印象深刻或者觉得优美的句子
4.总结文章中的生词
5.记录阅读时间、总结时间、总时间
精听笔记格式要求：
1.逐句听写整篇文章
2.对照原文修改听写稿，标记出错原因
3.总结文章中心大意
4.总结精听过程中的生词
5.记录听写时间、总结时间、总时间
这里也给大家两点学习小建议哦~
精读：如遇到读不懂的复杂句，建议找出句子主干，分析句子成分，也可以尝试翻译句子来帮助理解~
精听：建议每句不要反复纠结听，如果听 5 遍都没听出来，那就跳过，等完成后再回听总结原因，时间宝贵，不要过于执着哦~
