“Exhausted.” “Lost”. “Anxious.” “Everything’s a struggle.” All pre COVID. These quotes from a Harvard Business Review article are from millennials (22-37 years old) who are struggling at the school-to-work transition or at work.[i] NY Times said:
“In the past, workers with average skills, doing an average job, could earn an average lifestyle. But, today, average is officially over. Being average just won’t earn you what it used to. It can’t when so many more employers have so much more access to so much more above average cheap foreign labor, cheap robotics, cheap software, cheap automation and cheap genius. Therefore, everyone needs to find their extra — their unique value contribution that makes them stand out in whatever is their field of employment.[ii]
In Working It, we call millennials the ‘lost work generation’? Why? The following from a Wall Street Journal survey captures U.S. and global work challenges:
“American millennials are approaching middle age in worse financial shape than every living generation ahead of them, lagging behind baby boomers and Generation X despite a decade of economic growth and falling unemployment. Hobbled by the financial crisis and recession that struck as they began their working life, Americans born between 1981 and 1996 have failed to match every other generation of young adults born since the Great Depression. They have less wealth, less property, lower marriage rates and fewer children, according to new data that compare generations at similar ages. Even with record levels of education, the troubles of millennials have delayed traditional adult milestones in ways expected to alter the nation’s demographic and economic contours through the end of the century. Millennials helped drive the number of U.S. births to their lowest levels in 32 years.”[iii]
Work Lesson Earned: Millennials don’t know how to fail and be resilient in a competitive COVID world. They’ve had a hard time adjusting to the Future of Work as the millennial quote indicates
“When you’re young coming out of college, you don’t realize what you’re walking into. You either perform or you don’t, and you could lose your job any day. Students think it’s easy-going just like school, but it’s nothing like that. It’s a lot more responsibility.”[iv]
[i] ‘The Biggest Hurdles Recent Graduates Face Entering the Workforce’, Harvard Business Review, April 11, 2019.
[ii] ‘Average Is Over’, New York Times, January 24, 2012.
[iii] ‘Playing Catch-Up in the Game of Life.’ Millennials Approach Middle Age in Crisis, Wall Street Journal, May 19, 2019.
[iv] ‘The Biggest Hurdles Recent Graduates Face Entering the Workforce’, Harvard Business Review, April 11, 2019.