First and perhaps largest difference is exactly what sort of economy and labor market you are looking at. 1920-30's Labor market was dominated by Manufacturing and Agriculture where even a high school degree was not needed. The 20XX Economy is focused to a much higher degree on Service, Technology, and Industry where the right sort of degrees beyond High School are desirable and the wrong sort represent a lesser value (particularly compared to the cost of degree).

I can't particularly speak to the Manufacturing/Urban experience, but I can speak to the Agricultural worker experience based on some interviews I did with family members and other research done specifically focused on the experience in the Dust Bowl areas of Kansas and the migration of "Okies" to California.

So I want to set a little background to the story. WW1 and the Spanish Flu outbreak were both interesting factors in the area that I studied. First nearly everyone lost a friend, neighbor, or family member to the Flu and like many other wars before and since, they almost all had pockets of veterans and KIA's. The 1920's saw a sort of mini baby boom coupled with economic good times as agricultural markets were high on demand after the war and this area had good weather to provide. Part of the boom in supply came about in part to a change over from horses to mechanical for powering the equipment. Fewer young people were needed to help keep the farm running, but a lot of profits were being "plowed" back into modernizing and expanding the farms to keep up. The demand for cash crops also pushed farming into more marginal grounds and a reduction in crops grown for foodstuff. Add in better medical facilities/improving infant mortality/longer life expectancy coupled with families still having larger numbers of children (Families in most of the areas I studied typically had more children than the national average but fewer that either survived to adulthood or remained on the family farm).

All of these factors led to a slightly larger generation than previous with parents/families/farms leveraged a bit more than previous generations, but they all seem to feel they were poised to make good money when the weather dry turned first. The first dry years were hard times. Crops were seriously damaged or failed entirely crippling income for entire communities. Even families who were careful in the finances found themselves needing to borrow money from the banks just to keep afloat.

As the drought on the Great Plains (and to some extent the South) intensifies, the second disaster hits: The Stock Market Crashes. Overnight many banks are suddenly in perilous positions. In particular in these areas their customers are needing to both withdraw their money to cover ballooning expenses with decreasing revenue and the customers also need loans to stay afloat. Many of these banks could take on that sort of pressure from their customers if the other markets/banks were still up and running, but now there was no money to move around to/from other banks and markets. What happens when the banks can't pay their customers? They close and have their assets (loans, property, accounts, etc.) sold to other banks in an attempt to make customers whole (or at least pay back whatever debts they had). So not only were these assets being sold for pennies on the dollar they were going out of the city/area/state/region. In several instances this meant that the owners didn't care as much about the community as long as they were able to get return on what they bought. Often this meant foreclosure and sale of property for loans that were delinquent/defaulted.

So now to the meat of the actual answer here. Again this is based more on the experience of people who lived it and not particular to media portrayal.

First a great deal depended on the situation your greater family found itself in. The areas I'm talking about the family homestead farm was the backbone of the extended family farms of the subsequent generations. What I mean by this is often the original homestead farm was the nucleus that spawned off several other surrounding family farms run by the sons (or sons in law) of the original homesteaders. At this point (2nd/3rd generation) the family farms have become bigger operations, but there is some crowding as the next generation is looking to move out of the nest and start the next step. Many may have borrowed money from a bank to buy a bit of somewhat marginal farmland (all that was left/attainable/affordable at this point) that had produce decent yields over the last few years in the hopes that they would have a place of their own. Others were perhaps hoping that they could do so or were planning on inheriting and running the farm from the previous generation. Maybe you lived in these communities and your family either moved off the farms or were always involved in the other industries involved in the community (grocer, mechanic, hardware store, general store, equipment sales/repair, banker, etc.), your primary custom still involved these farm families. When their incomes started to dry up with the weather so did yours.

Where did this leave the person who was coming of age in the 1930s? The prospect of farming looked bleak. If your greater family was in a strong position you might have hope to work a few years more on the farm with the safety net of family to keep you afloat. If you were on your own, if you or your greater family was foreclosed and lost your cash crop land you were lucky to be left with a roof over your head. The job market is/was already flooded and prospects in the area look grim. To make matters worse some are predicting that the land may never recover as the top soil begins to blow away. Time to pull up stakes and move on much like your ancestors did.

Where can you go from here? California has a need for ag workers if you can get there. Bigger cities might have some jobs. Work programs from the New Deal were starting to come in if you could find a way in.

Of the California route there were some options available for some. Some that I talked to had some extended family established out there from a generation or two further back. They for the most part were able to eventually secure better jobs/job prospects and had a bit of a safety net to lean on. They found themselves integrated into "regular California society" after a reasonable amount of time due to those connections.

Others weren't as lucky and found themselves quasi-homeless as they followed the various harvest cycles up and down the coast working from farm to farm. They were very much like the Okies as portrayed in the Grapes of Wrath or Of Mice and Men. When I talked with them (these interviews happened in the 1990s) they often expressed that they had a lot of sympathy for "the Mexicans" who they saw doing the same jobs at the time. I actually feel that there are several parallels between their experience and the experience that many migrants (legal and illegal) feel in this country to this very day. Terrible working conditions, fear of arrest, harsh/judgmental treatment from the general public, and lack of resources to better themselves were a big part of what they faced.

For those who "escaped" rural life for the city, they often found themselves in similar situations as the "Okies". Resources, job, and housing was hard to come by. Bums, vagrants, hicks, rednecks, shiftless, and other such terms faced by others I talked to. However, many had some skills and hard work ethics developed on the farm and at least the ones that I talked to were able to persist through hard times working odd jobs and gaining reputations as being the guy who could get things done/fix anything in the neighborhood.

So far I've talked mainly about the experiences of the young men. For young women, they faced a completely different set of challenges. This was an era that feature few working women in the sense that they worked at a career outside of being a wife at home or other "domestic" work. The experiences of those who were young women that I talked to ranged from the mostly domestic sort of jobs of nanny work, cook, baker, etc. to a few who became successful nurses and even an accountant. I have to put in a caveat here, I interviewed a few exception women who were real pioneers being some of the first women to graduate from colleges (not only in the family, but from the college itself) who I was blessed to call family. So as I said some personal bias in who I interviewed.

On the difficult end of that perspective for young women they faced the prospect of having a new young small family with a husband who was struggling to bring in income. There were a lot of heroic women that I talked to that managed to eek out a small garden while raising their kids (and often neighbors in exchange for needed goods) and often being able to sell baked items in order to afford modest meals for their family to help supplement their husbands meager income. Indeed I believe Rosie the Riveter was forged in the hard times and hard work of the decade before.

So to wrap a long story, at least some of their experiences were similar to the media treatment of the people caught in the "border crisis". Many others experienced similar coverage as you would see in the media when a manufacturing plant closes, some sympathy for their plight but little comfort. Likely what you are really looking for is the plight of the college educated and that is outside of my experience and background of study. I hope that someone can jump in and expand on that aspect as well.