For millennials now graduating from college, the world can seem frightening, uncertain, and often times unfair. It's hard to not feel as if we have a rougher time of it than our parents did, though they often try to convince us of the opposite. To be fair, neither view is unfounded. Baby boomers grew up with parents who instilled in them the values of hard work and its necessity to be successful. For baby boomers, career was often put ahead of personal life, at least in the beginning, but what's important to note is that careers were also easier to come by. Baby boomers grew up in a time of relative economic prosperity, with abundant opportunity and jobs that paid significantly more (when inflation is taken into account) than they do now. Contrast that with millennials. We're often referred to as lazy by our parents' and grandparents' generations, but the reality is that we've simply been raised with different values.
We've watched our parents work themselves to the bone, and though that enabled us to live comfortable lives growing up, we also saw how aging and draining it could be and concluded that life could and should be about more than just hard work. That's not to say we don't consider the act of contributing to society to be of value, but rather that we seek a greater level of flexibility than was available to our parents. However, there's also another layer to this. Unlike our parents, who entered the work force in a time of economic boom, we have been entering the work force during a period of economic slump. The jobs:people ratio seems to have shifted in a negative way, and so it's much harder for us to get our start. The proof is in the numbers: the U.S. employment rate as a whole was recently recorded as roughly 4.9% (though this doesn't take into account people who are underemployed), compared to the U.S. employment rate of strictly millennials which according to the Millennial Jobs Report in early 2016 was a whopping 12.8%. Of those who are unemployed in the U.S., census data suggests that 40% are millennials. Houston, we have a problem!
This is not simply an issue of millennials being lazy. I've heard it all: we don't "pound the pavement" the way our parents did, we need to make a full time job of finding a full time job, etc... The blame is always put squarely on our shoulders. Yet the reality is that the world is significantly different than it was when our parents were in our shoes. The requirements for jobs have changed. The way in which jobs are applied to has also changed: almost everything is online and impersonal now, streamlined to make the process easier for employers yet more difficult for the potential employees who struggle to make themselves appear as more than just another number. More of us than ever are unable to land successful jobs out of college, finding ourselves stuck for years in underpaid and unsteady hourly jobs that we never really wanted, from retail to food service, working nights and weekends, or moving from one temp job to another.
Though solutions may not be easy to find, one thing is certain: something is going to have to change. It's hard to pinpoint a perfect solution for the problem. Perhaps it has something to do with clashing ideologies, a generational divide. But the first step to resolving every problem is for those currently in power to admit that the problem exists.
