Welcome Back to Reality 1.0: Gen Y Hit Hard by the Economy
I’ve discussed Gen Yers before and most of the time, I’m told that I simply don’t get it. This despite the fact that I am a 20-something myself.
According to the Labor Department, Gen Y is feeling the wrath of the economy. The unemployment rate for workers under 29 is now in the double-digits: 11%. For teenagers (ages 16-19) that rate is approaching a whopping 20%.
One 24 year-old with a master’s degree told MSNBC:
We were told it was our generation’s time to shine, that we could achieve our dreams plus more. When I was laid off I thought finding another job was going to be cake.
She has been unemployed for 4 months now and after 700 job applications, has received only 7 interviews. Even Target and McDonald’s have passed her over.
MSNBC notes that “Older workers seem to have a leg up on the youngsters. It’s a harsh reality that happens in almost any downturn, economists and labor experts say, but this one has been particularly hard on younger workers because many were blindsided.”
This isn’t surprising, of course, given the coddling most Gen Yers have received throughout their lives. When you’ve been told you’re the best and the brightest since the time you were still shitting your pants, economic reality is a minor inconvenience. Until it becomes your reality.
As MSNBC and the people it interviewed note, Gen Yers are often unrealistic. Many are unwilling to work for less than they think they deserve, apparently not understanding that worth is earned. Thanks to the financial support of their parents, many have been able to sail through high school and college without obtaining any work experience and thus without obtaining a real work ethic. Some lack the skills and attitude required to survive in a professional workplace, where they’re measured not by how smart or precocious they are but by how much they produce.
Not being able to get a job flipping burgers is therefore a rude awakening. The unemployed 24 year-old with a master’s degree told MSNBC:
Growing up, my parents were telling me, ‘The world is at your fingertips. All you have to do is educate yourself, go to college, and you’d get a prime position right out of school.’ They were wrong.
And so are assholes like Paul Graham, who spew the same sort of bullshit.
As pointed out before, the realities of the world would not inure to the benefit of Gen Yers. I noted that globalization and the Ponzi scheme economy of the United States would have a huge impact on this generation.
Saddled by debt, unrealistic expectations, narcissistic attitudes and their sheltered upbringings, many members of Generation Y are ill-equipped to deal with the realities of a world in which the conveniences and luxuries their Baby Boomer parents enjoyed (and have subsidized for them) without question are harder and more expensive to come by.
Their iPods, cell phones and voyeuristic social media tendencies will matter a whole lot less as Gen Yers, increasingly left to fend for themselves, have to grow up and make it on their own. Faced with an economy under siege, changing the workplace will play second fiddle to simply finding a decent job.
In other words, instead of shaping the future, many members of Generation Y will be lucky to survive it. At the most basic level, Gen Yers are sheep, not wolves. They just don’t recognize it yet.
They are starting to. And they will continue to because Gen Yers are not “special.” A good chunk of them are lazy, unprofessional and naive. Calling them “multi-taskers” is a nice way of saying that they can’t focus on anything. Calling them “entrepreneurial” is a nice way of saying that most of them think they have executive skills (and would like to make a lot of money sooner than later). Calling them one of the best educated generations is a nice way of saying that they have no real-world experience.
Like Twitter, Gen Y is just one big pussy waiting to get fucked.
While the United States economy has bigger problems to worry about than Gen Y, I’ve always found the American approach to education to be curious as it is quite lopsided.
Currently, Americans have realized that their industrial base has been eroded and that “building stuff” and exporting it is still largely the source of real wealth. Yet the American Dream over the past decades has elevated the ideal of a university education to the point where young people with any semblance of intelligence are convinced that a vocational career path is a lesser path.
In short, this has created an economy driven by “professionals”, many of whom produce nothing of real value, not necessarily because they are incapable of doing so but because there are far too many of them. Make no mistake about it: the overabundance of “professionals” in the United States has a lot to do with the nation’s unsustainable consumption-driven economy and the unrealistic standard of living many Americans sought to achieve.
And so it has come to pass that Gen Yers are now learning that their hopes, dreams and aspirations, many wildly naive, are being blunted by one of the most powerful social forces known to man: basic economics.
If there are any unemployed Gen Yers reading this blog, Paul Graham will be hiring through YCombinator. The salary isn’t great ($5,000 for 3 months) but somebody will buy you out eventually. After all, selling yourself is the American way.
