Insurance for the future: a grown child with a great job.

• Author: Cote, Mike
• Position: COTE'S colorado

THE U.S. ECONOMY EKED OUT A MERE 18,000 new jobs in June. Employment in the private sector stayed about the same while government cut 39,000 jobs, the Labor Department reported.

In that environment, with unemployment at 9.2 percent, my youngest son snagged a great job, beginning work almost immediately after graduation (He got married and went on a honeymoon first.)

In another time, when earning a college degree offered a reasonably strong chance a graduate would secure employment, bragging about a child's new job wasn't that much of a boast, perhaps a minor annoyance to friends who had grown tired hearing tales of Wonder about your offspring.

Now, for me to tell you that my 22-year-old math major was hired by a fast-growing technology company that added 26 full-time workers in May and June alone and pays them well, you might want to hunt me down and smack me.

And I wouldn't blame you. Three years into this mess, life is still looking pretty rough out there. Baby boomers fortunate to be employed are constantly looking over their shoulder as companies continue to shed jobs. Those who were cast adrift over the past few years as real estate, retail, law firms, auto dealers, education, architects, landscapers, contractors, restaurants, media--damn near everything--drastically reduced their payrolls or shut down altogether wonder whether they will ever gain full employment doing something that doesn't involve wearing an apron and knowing how to point customers to the correct aisle.

Not that there's any shame in such jobs--they just don't pay like the ones the boomers left behind when companies closed, governments trimmed staff, divisions outsourced or their own small businesses failed when their customers could no longer afford their goods and services and banks no longer were willing to lend them money to squeeze through the tough times.

My son, Eric, landed at Fast Enterprises, a company with a name so generic yet so symbolic of what we all hope to see more of in this shaky economy. Fast anything sounds good to me. The Greenwood Village-based business which employees 375 people, develops tax software systems to track revenue for state and municipal...