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Young Millennial job-seeker: entitled and spoiled?

4th Turning (Crisis), Baby Boomer, Economics, Generations, Millennial, News 8 Responses »

Jul 172010

Last week there was a NYT feature story about a 24-year-old Millennial (born 1982-200?), a recent grad of Colgate University with a stellar academic record, who has been living with his parents (and grandfather) over the last six months sending resumes and looking for a job. He wants an executive track corporate position. A couple of months ago, he was turned down by an insurance company for the job he applied for—but was offered a lesser job as an insurance adjustor for $40K. The Millennial turned it down, saying that the company made clear it was at least ten levels below the job he wanted. The author interlaced the story with statistics on the severity of the current “Great Recession” for young adults.

The story lit up a firestorm of reader responses: no less than 1,487 comments thus far, and much larger echoes on the blogosphere. Many of the commenters lambasted the NYT for suggesting that this privileged young man’s experience (he lives in a nice suburban home and his dad is president of a small manufacturing company) is in any way representative of the employment hardships most youth are facing today. Even more excoriated the young man for turning down the $40K offer—and the family for letting him live at home while turning down such offers. The most vicious remarks seemed to come from older (Generation X (born 1961-1981) and Boomer (born 1943-1960)) readers, who often cited their own tough, low-salary beginnings. Apparently, they disapprove of this generation’s tendency to hold fast to long-term plans and dreams. Be realistic, they insist. Eat humble pie. It will be good for you (to repeat what older Chinese now tell the rising “Little Emperor” generation) to “taste bitterness.”

Wow. Stern stuff. What’s surprising about all this indignation is just how vague these critics are about just what is *wrong* about what is going on in this story:

The Millennial himself is not complaining. There is no whininess. He disavows any legitimate comparison between his own situation and what the unemployed faced, say, during the Great Depression. He’s looking forward to a happy ending–as are most unemployed Millennials (something we know from data from Pew and others).
The parents are not complaining. The son gets along very well with his (Boomer) parents and (G.I.) grandpa and runs errands for them. The marginal dollar cost of the son living at home seems trivial and doesn’t really bother anyone—though admittedly the older folks worry sometimes about the young man’s career. This is also typical. The survey data indicate that today’s Millennials and Boomers get along much better in the same home than young Boomers and their own parents did 35 or 40 years ago—when many young Boomers report that they left home in anger… or that their parents simply kicked them out. Take this trend (closer inter-generational households) and extrapolate it out over the next couple decades and you could be looking at a win-win solution to our unaffordable Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid liabilities, a solution predicated on greater mutual dependence within families. Our number one fiscal nightmare solved. And this is a *bad* thing?
There is no evidence that this Millennial is selfish or anti-community. In fact, he expected to enter officer training with the Marine Corps but was barred at the last moment due to childhood asthma.
The guy is clearly keeping busy, volunteering for the fire department, working for neighbors. By the end of the article, the reader learns that he is no longer actually living at home at all, but living with brother (a guy who did get the $75 opening corporate job) to sub for a roommate who just moved out. He is planning to temp for local eateries while there. Totally “temp” work—as opposed to quasi-permanent “careers” that the young person does not really want—is also a typical Millennial strategy.
There is, finally, widespread agreement among labor market economists that taking a lower initial salary, while certainly a doable and often successful strategy for long-term success, is not the only strategy. On average, it is likely to result in a lower salary trajectory for many years to come. Millennials plan ahead and have long time horizons. If an executive track is important to them tomorrow, they will plan accordingly today.

So let’s move to the bottom line here.

Should we feel sorry for this young man? No, but then again he’s not asking for that.

Did he make an irrevocable career mistake by not accepting the $40K position? Not as far as I can see.

Is it unfair that, over the course of the business cycle, youth who graduate into a severe recession are disadvantaged in their career paths relative to those who graduate into a boom? Yes, it’s unfair, but no more so than a lot of the other vicissitudes of fortune that hit some people and not others. Besides, the effects of these “cohort timing” differences, while long lasting, gradually fade over time. As Glen Elder showed, the Great Depression’s impact on the young adults of the 1930s was largely forgotten by the time this cohort reached its peak lifetime earnings years in the late 1960s. (By then, their salaries didn’t concern most of them nearly so much as their kids’ music!).

Would America be a better place if today’s young Millennials were eager to leave their parents at all cost, even if it meant taking a job they hate? You’ll have to explain to me why.

To be sure, one might reasonably argue that not everyone, not even everyone with excellent college credentials, can hold out for a $75K salary. True enough. But not everyone wants to hold out for a high salary. And many of those who do will ultimately change their mind. Maybe even this young man. So?

My question is: Why do the sober-minded, future-oriented career choices of today’s Millennials make so many Boomers and Xers jump up and down in agitated condemnation?

Economy Sees “W” Ahead

4th Turning (Crisis), Baby Boomer, Economics, Generation X No Responses »

Jul 132010

Farrell pulls out all the stops in this histrionic, if not hysterical, overview of the America’s economic prospects.

Still, there’s no denying the mounting bad news: China has peaked, Europe’s in trouble, and the American economy has hit a “rough patch” at the very least. The Dow is down seven straight days. The fear about inflation is being eclipsed once again (as we always warned) by fears about deflation. The long bond keeps climbing. The gap between the TIPS (inflation-adjusted) rate and nominal rate keeps narrowing. The Fed continues to pump reserves into the banking system (literally half of the money supply created in the U.S. over the last 234 years has been created in the last three years), but the velocity of money plummets because no one wants to lend… or borrow. Initially, everyone said, well, we’re just too uncertain about America’s immediate political, regulatory, and economic future to want to lend. Increasingly, potential lenders are beginning to wonder: If I just hoard my cash, will it be worth *more* a year from now than it is today? Central bankers fear nothing more than the psychology of deflationary expectations. They fear it even more than inflation. It is the one monster against which they have no weapons.

Some (most notably Krugman) say we need a vast expansion in fiscal stimulus. Keynes to the third power. It is certainly too late for that for Europe. (After all, they actually need to worry about a collapse in their exchange rate.) But it may even be too late for that for the United States. We’ve simply taken the “debt” cure too many times—its side effects now exceed its efficacy. Farrell excerpts a good quote from the Economist: “Borrowing has been the answer to all economic troubles in the past 25 years. Now debt itself has become the problem. A society built on consumption will have to pay more attention to saving. The idea that using borrowed money to buy assets” is over, “the debt-financed model has reached its limit. Most of the options for dealing with the debt overhang are unpalatable. … The battle between borrowers and creditors may be the defining struggle of the next generation.”

Gen-X officers: Whatever it takes

4th Turning (Crisis), Baby Boomer, Generation X No Responses »

Jul 072010

Creativity, risk, deception: These are the tools without which no Generation X (born 1961-1981) can get the job done right. The conflict between this Boomer (flag officer) versus Gen Xer (field-grade officer) is something I have seen before. This article simply offers another example of what the argument is about. Sooner or later, thanks to generational replacement, Xers will win this argument.

Michael Oates, btw, is a late-wave Boomer. But he speaks for his junior fellow officers. No more than General George Patton or Francis “Swamp Fox” Marion, this is not a generation that cares much about the Marquess of Queensberry rules.

Speaking of Patton, I think everyone who saw the movie recalls that Patton himself was used (against his will) to deceive the Germans on several occasions, including the ruse of invading Greece rather than Sicily, which is mentioned in this article.

Millennials Lack Empathy?

4th Turning (Crisis), Baby Boomer, Millennial 7 Responses »

Jun 042010

This article got me thinking about how psychological studies apply to generational theory. When assessing the direction of a very general personality trend—like empathy, or idealism, or trust, or whatever–you can always come up with some survey instrument that says anything you want it to say. How are they measuring empathy? In what sense and in what context? I don’t know. I discuss the actual survey further down.

When it comes to empathy as a desire and willingness “to help those in need,” the Millennial (born 1982-200?) score higher (per the UCLA survey) than any earlier group of college freshmen measured. They’re also volunteering more. The Millennials are indeed focused more on actions than on feelings, so maybe the study faults today’s kids for not “feeling” as strongly. It’s also true that Millennials have been surrounded by a lot edgier media at an earlier age than older generations, so maybe this has emotionally inured them to disturbing images—and maybe this gets them labeled as less empathic. I just don’t know.

But I do strongly disapprove of taking one rifle-shot survey instrument (Twenge does the same) and using that to characterize the fundamental personality of a generation. You need to look at lots evidence, behavioral and attitudinal, across many disciplines and across many social situations, before arriving at any sweeping verdict.

As for the actual survey, this is what I found after a few minutes of googling. Although I believe the study is not yet published, its basic results were presented and discussed at the APS annual meeting and a nice summary of its method and conclusions can be found here: http://sitemaker.umich.edu/skonrath/files/empathy_decline.pdf

A few comments. First, these findings are entirely based on survey questions from something called the “Davis Interpersonal Reactivity Index,” and, more particularly, on a subset of questions from that survey called “Empathic Concern” questions. Second, this is a “metastudy,” meaning that the authors did not actually give this survey to anyone. Rather, they collected and aggregated the results of many other surveys over the years as reported in published articles. The advantage of a metastudy is that it allows comparisons over time and increases the number of observations (the “n”), allowing for better statistical accuracy. The disadvantage is that, by aggregating lots of different studies with different subjects and using different procedures etc., it often mixes apples with oranges, introduces biases over time, and makes it impossible to apply “controls” to the findings. We have no idea, for example, whether the more recent studies were focusing on somewhat different issues than the earlier studies. Remember, we are mixing the results of surveys conducted at different times by different researchers. And finally, Jean Twenge’s fingerprints are all over this metastudy. For background on the “hypotheses” being tested here, a list of articles is cited. Twenge is the author or co-author of just about every article.

Finally, what exactly is the Davis Interpersonal Reactivity (DIR) Index? Well, for a full history and explanation, you can read the article by Davis (1980) here: http://www.eckerd.edu/academics/psychology/files/Davis_1980.pdf. I have appended (below) a full printout of the DIR survey, with all of the “Empathic Concern” questions marked in red.

A couple of important questions I would ask. To begin with, Davis constructed the DIR Index primarily to distinguish between different kinds of individuals at any one time. The underlying assumption is that all of the people surveyed have been shaped similarly by history, the media, IT, cultural mores, and so on. With the DIR Index, in other words, you can sort people into meaningful categories because the social context for all of them is the same (the index is probably even more meaningful if you restrict its use to one generation at any one time). Davis does not seem to have contemplated using this measure to determine population-wide changes over time. Is this trend-over-time use legitimate at all?

Twenge does this a lot in her own work. She uses a “narcissism” index whose statistical robustness etc has been demonstrated on studies at one time and then uses that index to point out trends over decades. Many famous psychometric exams show this problem, btw. While they work well at one time, they generate weird and anomalous results when trended over time. The most famous example are the IQ tests (Wechsler, Stanford, just about all of them), which show a strong genetic component during any one testing year (roughly 0.5 correlation) but also show a steady population-wide rise decade over decade (the so-called “Flynn Effect”). The positive trend over time is so steep that IQ tests would demonstrate, if they were valid over time, that today’s population as a whole could not possibly be genetically related to our grandparents as a group. So what explains the paradox? Undoubtedly, the steady shift over time toward a more urbanized, literate, test-oriented, media- and IT-rich social environment. This shift enables today’s youth, though endowed with the same “natural intelligence” (whatever that is), to perform much better on these tests than yesterday’s youth.

Why might this be important? I think it’s plausible, or at least possible, that today’s kids, being immersed in a media and cultural environment that literally bathes them in world news 24/7, may give different answers to some of the Empathy Questions listed below. I don’t know. Just a thought.

The other feature of these Empathy questions worth pointing out is that they all reflect youth people’s *feelings* about others rather than what people would actually *do* for others. Indeed, this is the whole purpose of the measure as Davis designed it: to focus purely on subjective response. In other words, these questions are expressly designed to be touchy-feely. As many of us have suggested, such questions naturally put Millennials at a disadvantage. This generation pays more attention to collective outcomes than personal reactions, to results over motives, to “works” over “faith.” If their empathy profile were identical to that of Boomer (born 1943-1960), they probably would have voted for Hillary rather than Obama in the 2008 primary.

Actually, the more I look at the Empathy questions below, the more I sympathize with Millennials for not responding well to them. Am I the only one who finds them cloying and annoying? I’m sure if Davis looked at my responses, he’d call me a sociopath.

Here’s a shortened version of the survey questions:

INTERPERSONAL REACTIVITY INDEX

The following statements inquire about your thoughts and feelings in a variety of situations. For each item, indicate how well it describes you by choosing the appropriate letter on the scale at the top of the page: A, B, C, D, or E. When you have decided on your answer, fill in the letter on the answer sheet next to the item number. READ EACH ITEM CAREFULLY BEFORE RESPONDING. Answer as honestly as you can. Thank you.

ANSWER SCALE:

A B C D E

DOES NOT DESCRIBES ME

DESCRIBE ME VERY

WELL WELL

1. I daydream and fantasize, with some regularity, about things that might happen to me. (FS)

2. I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me. (EC)

3. I sometimes find it difficult to see things from the “other guy’s” point of view. (PT) (-)

4. Sometimes I don’t feel very sorry for other people when they are having problems. (EC) (-)

5. I really get involved with the feelings of the characters in a novel. (FS)

6. In emergency situations, I feel apprehensive and ill-at-ease. (PD)

7. I am usually objective when I watch a movie or play, and I don’t often get completely caught up in it. (FS) (-)

8. I try to look at everybody’s side of a disagreement before I make a decision. (PT)

9. When I see someone being taken advantage of, I feel kind of protective towards them. (EC)

10. I sometimes feel helpless when I am in the middle of a very emotional situation. (PD)

11. I sometimes try to understand my friends better by imagining how things look from their

perspective. (PT)

12. Becoming extremely involved in a good book or movie is somewhat rare for me. (FS) (-)

13. When I see someone get hurt, I tend to remain calm. (PD) (-)

14. Other people’s misfortunes do not usually disturb me a great deal. (EC) (-)

15. If I’m sure I’m right about something, I don’t waste much time listening to other people’s

arguments. (PT) (-)

16. After seeing a play or movie, I have felt as though I were one of the characters. (FS)

17. Being in a tense emotional situation scares me. (PD)

18. When I see someone being treated unfairly, I sometimes don’t feel very much pity for them.

(EC) (-)

19. I am usually pretty effective in dealing with emergencies. (PD) (-)

20. I am often quite touched by things that I see happen. (EC)

21. I believe that there are two sides to every question and try to look at them both. (PT)

22. I would describe myself as a pretty soft-hearted person. (EC)

23. When I watch a good movie, I can very easily put myself in the place of a leading

character. (FS)

24. I tend to lose control during emergencies. (PD)

25. When I’m upset at someone, I usually try to “put myself in his shoes” for a while. (PT)

26. When I am reading an interesting story or novel, I imagine how I would feel if the events in the story were happening to me. (FS)

27. When I see someone who badly needs help in an emergency, I go to pieces. (PD)

28. Before criticizing somebody, I try to imagine how I would feel if I were in their place. (PT)

NOTE: (-) denotes item to be scored in reverse fashion

PT = perspective-taking scale

FS = fantasy scale

EC = empathic concern scale

PD = personal distress scale

A = 0

B = 1

C = 2

D = 3

E = 4

Except for reversed-scored items, which are scored:

A = 4

B = 3

C = 2

D = 1

E = 0

Boomer way of dying?

4th Turning (Crisis), Baby Boomer, Generation X, GI Generation, Health, Silent 5 Responses »

May 132010

As Bill and I pointed out in Generations and The Fourth Turning, every generation approaches life’s major passages with its own distinctive style. And that certainly includes death. In recent years, most of the media attention has focused on how the Silent (born 1925-1942) are choosing to negotiate the final passage—e.g., with warmly humanized nursing homes and hospices (like the “Eden Alternative”) and movies like “The Bucket List.” (In his final moments, apparently, Jack Nicholson will be carefully crossing the last of 27 items off his agenda.) The G.I. (born 1901-1924) exit style—emphasizing social largesse and institutional pomp—is already fast fading. The Silent style is kinder, gentler, more personal, and, as always with this generation, touched by ironic humor.

Yet we Boomer (born 1943-1960) are also getting older. And if you look carefully, you can already catch glimpses of how Boomers will do it (and are doing it) differently. With Boomers, the nursing homes will be gone entirely, replaced by “elective communities” and NORC’s (naturally occurring retirement communities—meaning, I go nowhere; I will get some Generation X (born 1961-1981) contractor to bring services to me!). As for all those lists, I think many Boomers will throw away the pen and the lined paper… and opt for an experience more interior, more mythical, more transcendent. And will mind-altering drugs play a role? For many Boomers, you bet. They came in handy in our youth, and many of us will revisit them, like a familiar friend, at the end.

It is in this sober and reflective spirit that I offer the following AP story about a 1943-cohort woman who, worried about the grave prognosis for her cancer, enrolled in one of a burgeoning number of programs that offer psychedelic drugs to terminal patients. In her case, the experience was very positive—as it has also been, it seems, for many others. The story received an amazing 337 comments. It took me back to Carlos Castaneda, “the teachings of Don Juan,” certain mushrooms, and the deserts of the southwest. If you’re not a Boomer, you wouldn’t understand.

The Millennial Metropolis

4th Turning (Crisis), Baby Boomer, Economics, Generation X, Millennial No Responses »

May 102010

A very nice piece by Morley Winograd and Mike Hais. If you look at surveys over time, you will notice that Boomer (born 1943-1960) have *always* been relatively partial to the ideal of rural/wilderness living; and Generation X (born 1961-1981) to the ideal of creative and diverse urban living (now called new urbanism, mixed use, infill paradise, what have you). Millennial (born 1982-200?) show a partiality to the small town and the suburb—yes, the suburb: take that all you apocalyptic Boomers who have always expressed such hatred for the brave new world your parents built! Keep in mind, though, that for single Millennials this remains their ideal for their stable, married, familied future, not necessarily for the present. The favorite destination for single Millennials remains big and busy (and now safer) cities. NYC tops the list.

btw, when NCLB was legislated back in 2001, no provision was bitterly resisted by teachers unions and the majority of Democratic leaders as the rule that school children in persistently failing districts eventually be given the right to choose new schools. Go back and look at the record. This was a Bush monstrosity that would unravel the very fabric of our public school system, etc., etc. Now this principle is accepted across the political spectrum, and even the unions are conceding. Reason, imo, is the rapidly growing impact over the last ten years of Gen-X parents. Districts everywhere in America are now wooing parents with slogans about how they want to “be their choice” of schools. What a sea change!

Youth Gain from Entitlements? Really?

4th Turning (Crisis), Baby Boomer, Millennial No Responses »

May 072010

I have a lot of respect for Ronald Lee. He’s a big-name demographer/economist. But I just can’t fathom how he can arrive at his conclusions because the differences in the magnitude of spending are so large. This year, all levels of government spent around $150 billion on higher ed—but around $1.2 trillion on transfers to the elderly. Keep in mind too that all generations are taxed to support higher ed, and that higher ed has current benefits (discoveries, R&D) benefitting all generations, whereas the majority of the transfers to elderly go strictly from younger people’s payrolls and pay exclusively for the personal consumption of the elderly. If he includes all levels of education, the quantitative comparison is less lopsided, of course, but then I find it harder to interpret his comment about the earliest generations who “did not receive public eduction.” And I’d like to know how he deals with the interesting question of how to calculate the enormous implicit subsidy K-12 education received in the early decades when talented women had few other places to work, and thus could be hired by schools at very low salaries. Up until the 1970s, you could say, adult women were collectively “taxed” for the collective benefit of children.

Generational Equity

4th Turning (Crisis), Baby Boomer, Economics, Generation X, Millennial, Politics 3 Responses »

May 032010

IMO, this is a generational shot across the bow. Expect a lot more of this in the years to come. Bill and I used to talk about up-card and down-cards in our theory. Up-cards are things we expected and have already come to pass. Down-cards are things we expect but have not yet happened to any significant extent. Young-adult dissatisfaction with unfair income transfers to Boomer (born 1943-1960) is a down card. It hasn’t happened yet but surely will happen. We didn’t see it with Generation X (born 1961-1981), because, well, they’re Xers. They all try to find their own individual solutions and survival strategies. But Millennial (born 1982-200?) are different. They will organize and be heard. And Boomers will not dare stand in their way.
Nice X/Y Quote: “Recall that there was once a reason for the unionization movement. History repeats itself….The pendulum swings the other way.”

Obesity Epidemic

Baby Boomer, Generation X, Health, Millennial, Silent 2 Responses »

Apr 292010

Interesting presentation about research on obesity by age. Nice animated charts on the growing obesity share, at every age, by each birth cohort since the Silent (born 1925-1942)

Given the known correlation between obesity and a very wide variety of chronic and acute diseases, from diabetes to heart attack to cancer, this trend may do nearly as much to shorten longevity for today’s younger generations as medical innovation (at gargantuan cost) works to lengthen it.

Goldman Sachs and Boomer morality

Baby Boomer, Economics, Generations 10 Responses »

Apr 232010

I’m always amazed at all of the interesting ways the moral rectitude of Boomer (born 1943-1960) comes back to bite them.

A couple of random examples:

We once wanted to protect the freedom and privacy of college-age youth (and inspired FERPA and other legislation to ensure this). Now, guess what, we’re angry that we—as parents—have been stripped of our God-given right to see our kids’ grades and health records.
We once believed that society would function better if everyone were a bit less inhibited about sex—and more transparent about what they do as leaders. Then came Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinski, which nearly persuaded Boomer-dominated Congress to impeach a President for being a bit less inhibited… and a bit more transparent.

All of this brings to—enough silly preamble—my latest example: The “scandal” at Goldman Sachs.

I would wager to say that, back in the 1960s and 1970s, nothing infuriated Boomers more about how the American economy was run than the idea that powerful greasy old men, dressed in oversize pin-striped suits and hidden away in smoke-filled rooms, essentially made all the strategic decisions about where capital would flow and (therefore) what would be produced and consumed. These anonymous titans, from their “commanding heights,” claimed they exercised prudent and responsible judgment, but their very paternalism just infuriated us more. We wanted to blow it all up.

And guess, what? We succeeded. The ascendancy of Boomers as voters and leaders since the late 1970s has coincided with a radical deregulation of our economy, especially in those areas, like investment and finance, where trusted “fiduciaries” were supposed to take care of others. In the new Boomer world, the market was the great leveler and everyone was liberated to take care of themselves. Today, you buy and sell on ebay as you wish, you invest your 401(k) money as you wish, you purchase and liquidate hotels or firms as you wish, and you can even invent new financial instruments (this brings us to derivatives) to gamble or hedge or arbitrage against any event you wish. Goldman Sachs, run by G.I.s back when Boomers were young, was your typical “investment bank.” It was supposed to watch out for the rest of us and steer capital accordingly. Now Goldman Sachs, run by Boomers, is no longer really an investment bank at all. It’s just a hedge fund and its purpose is to make money, just like everybody else. And let’s face it, because everything is deregulated and competitive, there’s no real money to be made in investment banking anymore any way.

And now we’re shocked that GS set up a derivative that it sold to clients on both the long and short side? That it didn’t warn these billionaire speculators that they might lose money? And that they, GS, might be taking the other side of that transaction? (We’re not talking about widows and orphans here.) This is crazy. Boomers set up this new world. Many Boomers have made billions off it. And, so be it, other Boomers should be allowed to *lose* billions off it. Yes, a deregulated hands-off financial system may make it easier for the next Steve Jobs and Bill Gates to get start up funding (something that wasn’t easy for them back in the “bad old days”). But it also makes it easier to lose vast amounts of money on bad bets.

You can’t have it both ways. Nothing infuriates Americans more than the idea that, for these very rich 50- and 60-somethings, we’ve privatized risk on the up side but socialized risk on the down side.

Boomers should stifle their shock. It’s like being bothered by the sight of Bill Clinton caught with his fly open. Boomers have taken America all the way here on that whole long crazy trip of theirs. And now they have to accept the consequences.

In the longer run, Samuelson’s final question looms large: “But if Wall Street can’t control itself, someone else will.” Prediction: Come the next First Turning (the High), some new institution (maybe a new government agency, maybe some new business cartel) will be in charge. Which means that, come the next Second Turning (Awakening), the young [Prophets] of that era will have something to rage about.

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