Somehow I feel like the workplaces with a glass ceiling over bilingual is so small
as to be immaterial.
Most jobs that are focused on interacting with people benefit from speaking a second language if it’s a common language in your community: nursing, teaching, customer service, social work, etc.
I’ve seen job listings mention it as a nice-to-have and know bilingual friends who have gotten those jobs.
I only speak one language well but I wish I spoke more. I hope my son (and future other kids) learn multiple languages. But not for job/economic reasons: it just seems good for your brain and interesting for how you think about the world.
I am fluent in 3 languages, and while it is convenient, I assume claims about it being "good for your brain" are just as pseudoscience-y as all the other claims about what is good for the brain.
One of the languages I know doesn't even use a Latin alphabet, and I spent many hours learning it when I was little. And it's basically useless (obviously just my experience) except for communicating with older family members. Once they pass away in ~3 decades, I doubt I use it again.
Actually, the biggest incentive for me to teach my kids that language is so that we have a secret way of communicating in public (in the US). But I have failed so far, because it's just a lot of work to teach kids another language when you and your spouse prefer to speak in another, and so the kids are not completely immersed in it.
A quick google search finds several studies about the benefits of multilingualism on the brain.
Here’s a recent one: https://www.fens.org/news-activities/news/speaking-another-l...
https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fbul0000142
>Public Significance Statement—The idea that bilinguals outperform monolinguals in cognitive control functions seems to have already been accepted by the popular media and educators, because of a number of influential studies reporting a bilingual advantage. Our thorough meta-analysis, however, suggests that healthy bilingual adults do not have such a cognitive control advantage. The synthesis of 152 studies and 891 comparisons and several moderator variables does not show systematic advantages across the analyzed cognitive domains, tasks, or bilingual population
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/366360968_The_Bilin...
Still, I get, over all, the number is small. They could have all had a different career in their native language.
I know people in both camps. I have more respect for English speakers learning Dutch than for Dutch speakers learning English. Even though I respect both. But the simple truth is: there's a lot of incentive to learn English. There is not a lot of incentive to learn Dutch.
Learning English from Dutch is 24-30 weeks whereas from German is 36 weeks. I am assuming some degree of reciprocity but maybe not.