The Chicago Bridge and Iron Co. was just a few blocks from my childhood home. It was a big place, a mysterious place, a place of noise and heat and fire. My mother worked there as a secretary. One day she walked into the office and another secretary said something like, "There is a big brown dog in the parking lot."

Although there were undoubtedly many big brown dogs roaming around at any given moment on the south side of Chicago, my mother had a sixth sense. She immediately went to the parking lot and looked around and sure enough, it was our dog. She took the dog home and went back to work.

I doubt that could happen today. For one thing, the factory near my home shut down long ago. The company still exists, but the corporate headquarters are now in the Netherlands. Perhaps there is a tax advantage to that. On the other hand, the Dutch have universal health care, which many people equate with socialism, and I have never suspected socialists of being light on corporate taxes.

At any rate, the key point is that the factory is gone.

So are secretaries.

Oh, there are a few left. But mostly, there are office managers and executive assistants, and they are related to secretaries the way birds are related to dinosaurs. They have evolved. And guess what? During the evolutionary process, the numbers dwindled. There are far fewer office managers and executive assistants than there were secretaries.

Of course, I have no evidence of this. It's all anecdotal.

My evidence is also anecdotal when I say that young people can't find work today. I have seen no statistics, but I am convinced that it's true. Among people my age — that is, people who have children entering the work force — it is the No. 1 topic of conversation.

What are young people supposed to do?

For years, we've known the economy was changing. The factories were closing. Secretaries and switchboard operators were becoming extinct. "What you need today is an education." That was the message we repeated endlessly.

Not that we had to convince them. I often looked at my kids and their friends, and thought, "How accomplished they are."

That was not just me being a goofy father. I remember talking with Jim Talent when he was in the U.S. Senate. He told me about the résumés he was getting from young people who wanted to work in his office. You wouldn't believe the things some of these kids have done, he said. They've written operas, or they've started companies, and they must have been doing it in their spare time because they're still in school. And they're getting straight A's!

Admittedly, my generation didn't set particularly high standards. I remember visiting the journalism department at Arizona State University several years after I had left the place without quite getting a degree. One of the professors saw me. He told me the department had improved. "No offense, Bill, but we wouldn't take somebody like you now."

I didn't take offense. I knew I wasn't a good student. Still, I got a job. That was a good thing about those days. You didn't have to set the world on fire to get a job.

Today even good students are having a difficult time getting jobs. Even good students from good schools are having trouble.

My daughter teaches high school biology in California. Two of her friends are engaged to young men who graduated last May from the law school at the University of California at Berkeley. Both young men had job offers at big firms, and then, shortly before graduation, the offers were rescinded. Delayed for a year, actually, and the young men were offered a portion of their salaries while they waited.

"That's a great deal," I said to my daughter. "You don't understand, Dad," she said. "They've got big law school loans to pay."

I mentioned this recently to a lawyer friend. Nobody's hiring, he said. People can't afford legal work right now. Life is going on, he said. Marriages are still crumbling, people are still getting arrested, but most people can't afford lawyers. Consequently, young people are graduating from law school and are unable to find jobs.

It's bad enough that the factories are closed, bad enough that the secretarial pools have gone dry. But that has been happening for some time now. This other thing is newer — unemployed college graduates, unemployed law school graduates. It's as if some unspoken intergenerational contract has been broken.