Archive for the ‘Workforce Trends’ Category

While the Great Recession appears to be over, a return to normalcy seems far off. At least that’s according to a recent article published in The Atlantic.

If you can believe what you read, “there are good reasons to believe that by 2011, 2012, even 2014 unemployment will have declined only a little” off the near 10%. The effect will be an “era of high joblessness [that] will likely change the life course and character of a generation of young adults.” That’s not surprising considering that the current unemployment rate for all workers between the ages of 16 and 24 is hovering around 19%! And it’s worse — much worse for young black males between 20 and 24 years-old where the unemployment rate is a whopping 35% (compared to 19% for while males).

With anemic job creation and even slower Baby Boomer attrition, the author of How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America believes this job slump could “change the nature of modern marriage…plunge inner cities into despair and dysfunction…and warp our politics, our culture, and the character of our society for years.”

Is he right? (If the torrent of Congressional exits is any indication, it’s a pretty good sign that joblesseness and economic recovery in the near-term won’t be pretty.)

Within the past 24 hours I’ve read an article reporting that that the level of job dissatisfaction for workers under the age of 25 is at the highest level ever recorded. Another one titled “So You Thought Generation X Was Angry” describes how Gen Y is bearing the brunt of the economic collapse. And a third pointed to how Gen Y feeling left out of job market is causing a big problem for them and the business world.

Concurrently, Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) was painting a graphic and bleak picture of an imploding workplace and deteriorating infrastructure designed by Baby Boomers to be paid for by Gen X and Gen Y. In his recent speech on fiscal “state of emergency” he said:

One state retiree, 49 years old, paid, over the course of his entire career, a total of $124,000 towards his retirement pension and health benefits. What will we pay him? $3.3 million in pension payments over his life and nearly $500,000 for health care benefits — a total of $3.8m on a $120,000 investment.

A retired teacher paid $62,000 towards her pension and nothing, yes nothing, for full family medical, dental and vision coverage over her entire career. What will we pay her? $1.4 million in pension benefits and another $215,000 in health care benefit premiums over her lifetime.

He then asked, “Is it ‘fair’ for all of us and our children to have to pay for this excess?” That’s a great question and one which will take a courageous man or woman to look into the eyes of a young unemployed adult today and say, “Yes. I deserve every penny.”

So for the time being, it looks like at least one-fifth of young adults will remain unemployed. Unfortunately when they do get a job, it seems likely that each paycheck will come with a hefty deduction to pay for failures and excesses of a generation gone by.

Is it any wonder then why tension is building between the Baby Boomers and their successors, Gen X and Gen Y?

Also posted on my Workforce Trends blog at Bizmore.com

Roll back the clock about 40 years and 74% of young people said there was a generation gap between themselves and their parents.  Of course if you are a Baby Boomer, you recall growing up in war and recession.

It’s not surprising then that 79% of Generation Y, according to a recently-released Pew Research Center report, today acknowledge a generation gap, the highest level ever recorded. The parallels between the late 1960s and today are uncanny — two wars and a recession. You’d expect the tension between young adults and parents to be paralyzing. Surprisingly, you would be dead wrong.

The members of this Gen Y generation, ages 10 to 30, are BFFs (best-friends-forever) with their parents. It is reported that college students typically check in with their parents about 10 times a week. If you speak with some parents and young adults, it’s even more often than that. Kids and parents dress alike, friend each other on Facebook, listen to the same music and fight less than previous generations. Gen Y even assert that older people’s moral values are generally superior to their own.

Like every preceding generation, Gen Y is a product of their parents. But unlike their Boomer parents who were raised to believe that second place was first place for losers, Gen Y were raised to believe that everyone who plays is a winner. For the record, born between 1980 and 2000, these “trophy kids,” also known as Millennials, have been coddled by their parents and nurtured with a strong sense of entitlement. Their anxious parents were afraid of their children growing up with an inferiority complex. In games, it was common for everyone to receive a trophy — win or lose — thus the name “trophy kids.”

Kids no longer fear the bad report card either — teachers do. This generation was treated so delicately that many schoolteachers stopped grading papers and tests in harsh-looking red ink to avoid bruising the child’s precious self-esteem.

If the bond between parents and children is so strong, why does nearly 8 out of 10 Gen Y believe there is a gap? It is in their use of technology where Gen Y sees the greatest difference, starting perhaps with the fact that 83% of them sleep with their cell phones. It is also this technology that young people believe can be leveraged to build community. They think technology unites people rather than isolates them. Technology is a means of connection, not competition.

That hunger for community further distinguishes them from the radical individualists of the baby-boom years. In fact, in some respects Gen Y emerges as radically conventional. Asked about their life goals, 52% say being a good parent is most important to them, followed by having a successful marriage; 59% think that the trend of more single women having children is bad for society. While more tolerant than older generations, they are still more likely to disapprove of than support the trend of unmarried couples living together. While they’re more politically progressive than their elders, you could argue that their strong support for gay marriage and interracial marriage reflects their desire to extend traditional institutions as widely as possible. If boomers were always looking to shock, millennials are eager to share.

The greatest divide of all has to do with hope and heart. In any age, young folk tend to be more cheerful than old folk, but the hope gap has never been greater than it is now. Despite two wars and a nasty recession that has hit young people hardest, the Pew survey found that 41% of millennials are satisfied with how things are going, compared with 26% of older people. Less than a third of those with jobs earn enough to lead the kind of life they want — but 88% are confident that they will one day.

Let’s hope that optimism doesn’t get extinguished with the passing of time and maturity. Based on the way things are going, future generations will need every bit of hope and heart they can muster.

Also posted on Workforce Trends (How to Manage Age and Attitude in the Workplace)