Derek Thompson at The Atlantic has posted a fascinating collection of letters from today’s twenty-somethings in which they voice their frustration with the current job market and the larger prospects for their lives. These recent college graduates, many of them unemployed or underemployed, do not hesitate to assign blame. One writer directs his rage at:
a predatory system of higher education and the failures of a generation that came before. I’m angry that a “state” university costs as much as it does. That many, if not most of the students who attend, treat the experience like a 4-year version of MTV’s Spring Break. Massive grade inflation means one less standard deviation between myself and those who don’t try [. . .] Then there’s the baby boomer generation. Guardians of the state, they have left it dysfunctional. Watchdogs of the economy, they have let it burn. Stewards of the earth, they have done little to curb its exploitation or prepare for a more sustainable future.
For men and women this young, the cynicism is overwhelming, and the contrast with previous generations’ attempts to change the world is notable. But are young people justified in blaming the world they were born into as the source of their misery? Or, like another writer, should they blame themselves? Another respondent discusses how her lifelong belief in hard work and carefully manicured resume building was shattered:
In high school, I worked two jobs, took college coursework, participated in ten student organizations, held prominent leadership positions and earned a 4.0 GPA. I was rewarded with a scholarship to a top twenty university and had the whole world ahead of me. . . .
Yet, as the writer goes on to explain, all of this ultimately landed her an unpaid internship, followed by a stint moving back in with her parents.
Thus far, the so-called Millennials (at least in the United States) have mostly kept their disappointment to themselves. But will their disenchantment ever surface publicly, as it has in parts of Europe? Might this early experience of hardship create a new crop of leaders or result in new definitions of success, away from the resume-oriented, double-working-parent model? Or is there a danger that this group of Americans will begin to resemble another ‘Lost Generation’?
September 6th, 2011 | 12:49 pm
The solution to this is so obvious.
If every frustrated member of Generation Y would simply eat one Baby Boomer each, all our problems would be solved.
September 6th, 2011 | 1:02 pm
If this leads to an outright rejection of the Spirit of ’68, it might turn out well. After all, most conservatives are just liberals who got mugged by reality.
September 6th, 2011 | 1:51 pm
Unfortunately, it will probably take more for these kids to reject the spirit of 68 outright. The tone of these letters is of a privileged generation wailing and gnashing it’s teeth at the possibility of hardship. They haven’t accepted their situation by any means.
September 6th, 2011 | 2:27 pm
Someone ought to tell these kids that Generation X already did the “whine and blame your elders about what a rotten world was left to you” schtick.
September 6th, 2011 | 2:35 pm
There was an Andy Rooney commentary on 60 Minutes fifteen years ago or so where Andy related a conversation he had just had with a new college graduate lamenting the lack of opportunities, and the fact that no previous generation had ever had it so tough. Rooney compared this young man’s generation’s situation with his own, which had faced the depression and WW II. Unfortunately did so in a bitter fashion, but his point was that the young man’s frustrations really weren’t unprecedented. It wasn’t so long ago that college seniors and recent graduates faced the same uncertainties as the millenials. That said, the young man quoted in the article has made some worthwhile criticisms, both on his own generation and the boomers.
September 6th, 2011 | 3:40 pm
I myself am a millenial (24), and indeed, I am worried about the job situation. I understand that my position is better than most and that people before have had it worse. Here, I think, would be my summary of the situation we are in. Growing up, everyone my age was told that education was the key to success. That was the one constant in the universe. Do well in school and you have a future. Go to college, graduate school if possible. The people who told us this were not sinister or lazy. They thought it was true because it worked pretty well for them. A college education was one of those certain investments that had little to no risk.
Unfortunately “no-risk” is a contradiction in terms. The other no risk investment for middle class people was owning your own home. Look at how that turned out. Just like with home ownership, everyone went to college even if they were unprepared because more education is always good. But we forgot the fallacy of composition. When everyone has a college degree, not everyone gets a white collar job in a top flight company. What happens is what some economists first predicted in the 1970s, namely that even jobs that do not in any way require a college education start requiring collge degrees. What was once a great investment now becomes a mandatory entrance fee for the American Dream.
And the entrance fee keeps getting higher. I read a lot of conservative web sites, and I sometimes hear people complain about students not working their way through college anymore. At a non-state college, a year’s tuition can cost up to $44,000 a year. It is less for state colleges, but still a hefty price tag. It can be rather difficult to work any job that will support you and a college education without a college degree because it is difficult for a high school graduate to find any employment. As a result, you pay for it with a scholarship, your parents money, or debt. The end result is that many college graduates end up doing jobs they could have done four years ago with the equivalent of a small mortgage to pay off.
Are we mad? Yes, we are mad basically because we made the “responsible choice.” The irresponsible choice was to do what some of my classmates did and party their way out of one semester of college. The irresponsible thing to do was to major in English and try your hand at writing novels rather than go to engineering school or law school, which leads directly to a career. We made the safe investment, and every adult we every met told us it was a safe investment. There are no downsides to going to college, except that there are. Now, in this recession, there are no jobs at all. The number of jobs created in August was zero, and the work force grows every day. We, on the other hand, still have this debt.
I can’t blame Baby Boomers for this predicament, though I can’t really blame myself either. Both thought based on good information that college was worth it. In the same situation, both would rationally do exactly what they did. What is eventually going to have to happen is that the bubble is going to have to burst the same way that it did with houses, and people will be hurt. I don’t know how it will turn out.
The worst part about this is not our standard of living, which will still by higher than most people. The worst part about this is the failed expectations. Conservatives often note the culture of narcissum my generation has been immersed in, such as giving a ribbon to everyone who participates. What may surprise them is that in the end my generation may end up hating itself. People always told us that we were really going to make something of ourselves. They told that to me. People actually started talking about when I was going to make my first million when I was in high school. However, if I graduate law school, cannot find a job, and I have to rely on my parents in my mid-20s, the worse part will not be the money I could have made, it will be the humiliating fact that I had so much and could make nothing of it. Those participant ribbons never really made anybody feel better about themselves, but they did raise expectations. Those expectations are now crashing down.
September 6th, 2011 | 3:58 pm
Some choice quotes:
“browsing news articles all day”
“I make sure not to finish work to quickly”
“I have caught some breaks since, landing what I would call a dream job. Yet I lost a year of my life…”
Sounds pretty horrifying.
September 6th, 2011 | 3:59 pm
As someone between Gen X and the millenials, I share a lot of the same frustration. One problem, in my obviously shallow and self-centered mind, is the fact that a LOT of employers want 4-year degrees for work that in no way requires it. My degree has only been valuable in one job – and that was to get in the door (networking). Nothing I’ve done otherwise requires any of the critical thinking skills I (hopefully) developed at the university.
While I benefit from my degree (without using it), I’m concerned more about the young people that *don’t* go to college. What on earth are these people supposed to do for a living over a lifetime and end up with enough to retire before age 75? And how are they supposed to raise a family on one income for the benefit of their children?
September 6th, 2011 | 4:05 pm
Someone ought to tell these kids that Generation X already did the “whine and blame your elders about what a rotten world was left to you” schtick.
Really? I didn’t hear that. I guess you were standing closer to someone from Gen X; as far as I could tell, they were being drowned out by (a) all the Baby Boomers crowing about how they changed the world, and (b) the millennials who write, and this is a direct quote: My generation does seem to care a lot about Important Stuff. We put our lives on hold to canvass for the causes we believe in. We volunteer like our hair is on fire.
What great cynics volunteers make.
September 6th, 2011 | 4:25 pm
People always told us that we were really going to make something of ourselves. They told that to me. People actually started talking about when I was going to make my first million when I was in high school. …Those participant ribbons never really made anybody feel better about themselves, but they did raise expectations. Those expectations are now crashing down.
If it makes you feel better: (a) they told me that, too; (b) they also told pretty much everyone I know that math & science guaranteed a high-paid job (“six figure salary” being bandied about); (c) it turned out they were not quite right.
After earning a doctorate in one of the hardest of the hard sciences, I landed a spot at a college that offered me the plum salary of… $39,000. (In 2005, not 1975.) Words cannot express my disappointment: kids dumber than I with a Bachelor’s in Accounting had cruised into positions making 2-3 times that amount in their first year. Let’s not even talking about the computer programmers who found jobs with defense contractors, who command premiums from the federal government.
I could do any of that, but I had chosen to study a harder field, which my parents and national leaders had claimed all my life was a national priority. Yet I was paid a fraction of their salaries. Don’t tell me they work harder than I do; they were friends of mine, and I know very well how little they worked.
Newly married, with kids on the way, I worked hard, made sacrifices, and contented myself with research. I’ve done work that I’m very proud of; sometimes I think I could die happy, feeling that I’d accomplished something & contributed to the world. Either way, I am now at a different institution, I was recently promoted, and I earn a lot more than $39,000 — relatively speaking. Barring inflation, I’ll probably never see the six-figure salary people talk about. (Where do people get these ideas, anyway? Not every school is Hahvad.)
The good news is that if you humble yourself, work hard, and keep a positive outlook, things will get better (with high probability). They won’t get as great as people told you when you were young: they’ll get better. The value of life isn’t determined by the money you make.
The bad news is that most people will try only to reinforce the destructive entitlement & self-esteem mentalities so ingrained in our society.
September 6th, 2011 | 5:14 pm
AC, that’s what they are saying isn’t working in the article. they aren’t even getting the 39k-chance at tenure menial jobs. They are unemployed or are making 20k a year in retail, not enough to even move out on.
I mean, considering that you seem to have picked a doctorate in a hard science, something which has been recommended up and down and which has built in career protection due to the difficulty of the subject, to get that level of starting compensation shows how hard it is out there.
It’s hard out there. Blaming the victim as many other comments do isn’t productive. We need to take a hard look at fixing this economy or it’s going to be lost generations. Not just one.
September 6th, 2011 | 5:15 pm
Suggestion To Millennials: Learn the computer programming language Ruby-on-Rails. It’s free to learn. Every hot company in America is dying for coders and programmers. Stop complaining.
September 6th, 2011 | 6:51 pm
Dave, if you don’t get a great job immediately out of college, are you really a victim? Yes, times are tougher than they were, but being young and college-educated in the United States still puts you miles ahead of the vast majority of the world’s population.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the victim mentality and sense of entitlement may be contributing to the current malaise. Although there are many valid critiques one could make about this or that policy choice or educational philosophy, asking the government to “fix the economy” isn’t going to get anyone anywhere.
Matt mentioned computer programming. There’s many good jobs in that field. You can join the ACM as a student ($35/year) and get access to hundreds of books, not to mention all of the other resources available online. For example, MIT OpenCourseWare publishes a lot of stuff for free. There are many online master’s degree programs that are reasonably priced and will virtually guarantee you a job. Maybe not much more than $30k, but you can work your way up. Programming isn’t that hard, either; you don’t need to be a math genius to be a decent programmer. If that’s not quite your thing, nursing is also very lucrative right now, and (to my knowledge) only requires an associate’s degree for an entry-level position.
September 6th, 2011 | 8:57 pm
Patrick, it varies. I think if it’d years, we need to worry. Especially with high debt loads.
As for “Learn X” I think people undersell what it takes to do so. People who can autodidact high-level programming languages enough to make a portfolio capable of being hired professionally aren’t really hurting for a job already.
As for a nurse, the associates have huge waiting lists due to shortages of teachers. My sister is one: it’s really not something you can just retrain for, but have to know going in what it’s like. My sister had the advantage of working in a hospital prior as a clerk.
The whole “entitled mentality” is really just blaming the victim at times. Read the comments in the article, and the four ones linked to it. They really don’t come across as that.
September 6th, 2011 | 9:14 pm
I am a millenial. I simply accept that I am going to make less money. It really is just a massive wage correction that is happening in Western Countries as the rest of the world starts to compete. Anyway, I think people just have to accept that this will be the case and move on.
September 6th, 2011 | 9:43 pm
John,
Your real gripe is with an “educational” system that has left you socially, psychologically and economically unable to marry until well into your thirties. This is all part of a cultural conspiracy to rob you of your right and your ability to become a father until your body is well nigh dead. “Education as contraception” is far closer to reality than “education as learning.” In a really successful educational system we would come out with marketable degrees at age 20. Do you agree?
September 6th, 2011 | 11:09 pm
Unemployment is profoundly frustrating for everyone. Failure to be paid what is fair is similarly frustrating.
This has been the routine for the poor for all of modern American history, but the right wing has specialized in vicous “get a job” retorts until the “good people” became undervalued, underemployed and unemployed.
Unemployment has been a chronic problem for many for my whole life. Its a problem for the right wing when their kid can’t get paid well, that’s what’s new.
September 7th, 2011 | 6:26 am
Recently, I saw a piece of graffiti on the wall of the Sorbonne: « Le futur n’a plus d’avenir » – “The future has no future.”
September 7th, 2011 | 10:14 am
[...] at First Thoughts, Matthew Cantirino posted a link to a collection of letters written by jobless or underemployed Millenials, to the Atlantic. [...]
September 7th, 2011 | 11:38 am
“John,
Your real gripe is with an “educational” system that has left you socially, psychologically and economically unable to marry until well into your thirties. This is all part of a cultural conspiracy to rob you of your right and your ability to become a father until your body is well nigh dead. “Education as contraception” is far closer to reality than “education as learning.” In a really successful educational system we would come out with marketable degrees at age 20. Do you agree?”
Uh, I am not clear about your objection. That seems a perfectly legitimate resentment despite any unnecessary snarks about “conspiracy”. Why shouldn’t a young man wish to be able to marry and to be able to contribute constructively to society? For the matter of that, why, pray tell, do you think it is even wrong for a young man to desire to, some time in his life, be able to lawfully engage in procreative activities as your snark at “contraceptive” seems to imply.
The present educational system is wasteful and incompetent. It leaves a lot of people with little worth learning.
And come to think of it, it would fit the dictionary definition of conspiracy:
con·spir·a·cy
[kuhn-spir-uh-see] Show IPA
noun, plural -cies.
1.
the act of conspiring.
2.
an evil, unlawful, treacherous, or surreptitious plan formulated in secret by two or more persons; plot.
3.
a combination of persons for a secret, unlawful, or evil purpose: He joined the conspiracy to overthrow the government.
4.
Law . an agreement by two or more persons to commit a crime, fraud, or other wrongful act.
5.
any concurrence in action; combination in bringing about a given result.
—————————————————
It fits five and four. College students are taught in a controlled setting that for many subjects has already been made obsolete by technology. They are forced to buy specific textbooks at usurious prices whose paper is better used to line a liter box then to attempt to impart knowledge-prices enabled by the fact that the faculty can actually command which textbook to buy. They are charged unaffordable tuitions. It is certainly an agreement as the faculty agrees with it and it benefits the academic complex, not the students. It is wrongful and while not a crime in the sense of breaking the law, it is fraud in the sense of deceiving people out of their money and more important, out of large parts of their lives. It is not a conspiracy in the sense of “omniscient and omnipotent manipulators.” But it is certainly a conspiracy in the sense of combining to do harm to people.
September 7th, 2011 | 12:01 pm
[...] ultimately landed her an unpaid internship, followed by a stint moving back in with her parents. More… [...]
September 7th, 2011 | 12:28 pm
[...] during First Thoughts, Matthew Cantirino posted a link to a collection of letters combined by jobless or underemployed Millenials, to a Atlantic. It’s [...]
September 7th, 2011 | 12:36 pm
What I find lacking in these comments, as well as similar ones in a recent letters column in Atlantic, is that nobody is pointing to the exportation of America’s jobs to China and elsewhere as a major cause of our unemployment. Of course the milennials are unemployed, somebody is doing their job abroad and they’re buying the product at Walmart.
Let me point out the cause-effect relationship for those among the highly educated of the younger generation who don’t where a good deal of their problems are coming from . Their high skill engineering/computer sci jobs have been exported en masse, not just automotive jobs or line jobs at Rubbermaid. They are getting a double-whammy from the lack of a US jobs policy. Stimulus money won’t help them a bit because it will be spent on goods made in China.
Additionally, the loss of factory jobs impacts highly educated milennials because the less money flowing in the economy, the less money people spend on professional services.
We will not solve the unemployment situation for this generation (or any other) until we have a US trade policy that protects American jobs. Remember Ross Perot’s warning that NAFTA would cause a “Giant sucking sound” of American jobs. Well it has. NAFTA and a host of other global financing ideas have taken away American jobs.
Milennials: Stop focusing on how easy the Baby Boomers had it and focus on how to get a trade policy that makes it possible for Americans to earn a living wage.
September 7th, 2011 | 2:36 pm
California Teacher,
It was in fact the Baby Boomers who smoked Milton Friedman’s drugs like he was a crack dealer (which he actually was, though of the more pernicious intellectual drug sort). And we can’t get them to even admit stuff like Ricardian equivalence doesn’t hold if an economy has substantial unemployed resources. The only way they’re going to let go of whatever they gained from the Econ 101 class they slept through in 1970 is when they die. Until then, we’re going to hear half-understood bromides that they quote from long-dead libertarian writers who hated FDR. (Yeah, those libertarians who couldn’t explain business cycles and were harassing FDR for bothering about the facts then in front of everyone’s face).
It’s too bad the spirit of 68 had it’s most far-reaching and long-lasting effects on the Baby Boomer “conservatives”, while their long-haired brethren rather gently faded into obscurity.
September 7th, 2011 | 3:25 pm
Jason,
Nothing snarky about my comment at all. I agree that getting married and raising a family are two of the most important, valuable and fulfiling things that people can do – far more valuable and fulfilling than earning any number of really stupid “advanced” degrees.
The fact that our educational system places such a high value on accumulating these meaningless pieces of paper, as opposed to learning valuable skills in a timely manner, shows just how corrupt and perverse it is.
I was completely sincere in my remark about education being institutionalized, mass contraception. Otherwise, we’d be ready to work at 20, married at 21, and parents by age 22-23. But this is really too much for the family-planning crowd to handle. And so, we have 8-year bachelors degrees, followed by 5 years of underemployment, by which time we’re thirty-something and maybe – maybe – ready to form a “relationship.”
It’s all lies packaged as illusion covering up deceit. Look that up in your thesaurus!
September 7th, 2011 | 6:16 pm
I’m a Gen Xer and we DID whine about the boomers, incessantly and we still do.
September 7th, 2011 | 11:52 pm
California Teacher and burritoBoy have it right.
September 8th, 2011 | 10:49 am
A more accurate name for the 20-something generation than “Millennials” would be “The Post-NAFTA generation.” That identifies the root of so many of their current problems. The Baby Boomers had it better because they were part of the Pre-NAFTA generation(s).
September 8th, 2011 | 11:11 am
Sorry Matt; I misunderstood you. I did think it intended to be hostile. I apologize.
September 8th, 2011 | 12:47 pm
We will not solve the unemployment situation for this generation (or any other) until we have a US trade policy that protects American jobs.
It’s too late for that.
The decisions have already been made. You can’t always go back and undo decisions once you figure out – belatedly – that you don’t like the consequences.
You might be able to soften the blow a bit but you cannot undo what is already in motion: America is becoming part of a global economy, and the days when Americans could earn $20 an hour while workers in India earned pennies for the same job – those days are over.
Economic theory suggests that American wages will fall, and foreign wages rise, until equilibrium. In reality, it’s never that smooth – but if you want to make money, you need to understand what is going on, look for the money-making opportunities, stop waiting for someone to hand you a job you can live on and go out there and figure out where the opportunity is.
For personal happiness: figure out where the need is real. For economic opportunity: figure out where the need is most likely to be profitable.
September 10th, 2011 | 12:32 pm
It’s easy to blame a generation for the ills that exist at any point in time. But, ultimately, it’s pointless. What does it accomplish?
It’s like labeling, for instance, all Tea Party folks racist. Fine. So then what? Where does that get you?
I believe it’s more useful to look at the functional structures that have led to the current mess — which is actually a recurrent mess, such as we saw in the 1870s, 1890s and 1930s. Were those generational failures as well? Is it constructive, or even truthful, to pin blame on people identified according to rather goofy generational divisions originally concocted to market breakfast cereals?
Look around. Study history. Seek out patterns that might give us all some clues as to the ills that afflict us so that we might, as mature adults regardless of the silly generational designations, brace ourselves collectively for the work ahead of us to right our country and our society.
September 19th, 2011 | 4:21 pm
Jack Perry and John Willems, I commend you both. I, too, am a Millenial, but my own concerns about being “lost” are not necessarily about finding the perfect job. I’ve found there is always opportunity to make money, you just may have to be a little more creative and cut back on some luxuries.
Instead, my issues are the scowls and looks of concern that I receive when asked about my current situation. I am a recent University of Texas graduate. I am on the Dean’s List for all four years attended. I am waiting tables to at least have some steady cash flow, while working on others.
The last is the clincher. You should see their stares, especially after I announce that I don’t want a typical career like theirs.
I’m a photographer. I’m a documentarian. I’m a writer. I’m an investor. My values are fundamentally different than the baby boomers. I’ve seen my parents/grandparents work incessantly for a job while their personal lives fall apart. Why would I trust the formula when I’ve constantly seen it fail–in the home and in the economy?
Call me lost, but at 22, I’m looking at this recession as a opportunity to make my own way and an even better excuse to not participate in a traditional job market that doesn’t care about me–or anyone but themselves, for that matter. Thinking like that will just depress you, my fellow Millenials. Think outside the box. Our society desperately needs it.
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