Young people are turning out in droves for Occupy Wall Street — and its subsidiary protests in cities across the country — because they’re fed up with student loans and dim employment prospects. The Associated Press dubs it the “lost generation” — those born in the 1980s and 1990s who are floundering in a hellish job market, supposedly brought on by The Man.
But is society really to blame for Generation Y’s economic plight?
It’s a given that macroeconomic forces beyond the power of an individual are curtailing my generation’s opportunities for financial stability. (I’m 25.) Recent census figures show that the employment rate among young adults is 55.3 percent, the lowest rate since the end of World War II. One in five young adults lives in poverty. Teen unemployment stands at 25 percent.
The job market is flooded with older, more experienced workers jockeying for the same entry-level positions that college graduates desire. The cost of basic needs — groceries, housing, clothing, and gas — has spiked. Wages are stagnant. Due to the federal government’s spendthrift ways, my generation faces a debt-saturated future.
But young people also are lagging because of self-inflicted wounds: massive student-loan debt, high consumer credit-card balances, poor work ethic, entitlement attitudes, heightened standard-of-living expectations, preoccupation with self-esteem, and delay of marriage and parenthood.
Consider: In 2009, the average four-year college graduate owed $24,000 in student-loan debt. That’s sustainable if a student leaves school with a degree in a high-demand field — say, nursing or engineering — paying a decent salary right out of the gate. But for liberal arts majors who often spend the first year (if not more) of post-college life waiting tables, it’s financial hara-kiri.
The occupiers don’t understand this basic economic fact. One of the ostensible planks of their movement is forgiveness of all student-loan debt. Who is left to pick up the tab for your degree in music therapy? Productive taxpayers.
It doesn’t stop at student loans, though. Graduates leave school, on average, with thousands in credit card debt. Throw in an auto loan, and the debt-to-income ratio goes off the charts. It’s tough to get ahead in that financial scenario.
When we do get a job, there is often the expectation of a fat salary in exchange for phoned-in job performance — and we’re not afraid to admit it. A Pew Research Center study found that Baby Boomers’ favorite identifying mark was their work ethic, while only 5 percent of my generation reported the same.
Prior to the Sexual Revolution, young men and women had excellent reasons to keep a job and work hard: family responsibilities. In the 1940s, men on average married at age 24 and women at 22. Now, it stands at age 28 for men and 26 for women. Increasingly, those who do get married delay childbearing.
With Millennials’ delay of marriage has come a delay of adulthood. If no job is waiting after they graduate college, or if it’s a job they don’t like, Millennials always can move back in with mom and dad.
“It’s a safety net — or safety diaper — that allows kids to quickly opt out of a job they don’t like,” said reporter Morley Safer on the CBS program “60 Minutes.”
Every generation has faced its version of a “raw deal” — whether it was the Great Depression and World War II for the Greatest Generation, or the Vietnam War and stagflation for the Boomers.
What matters is whether we shrug off the victim mentality and get our hands dirty making a better life for our loved ones and ourselves.
Of course, that involves a dirty word: work. Its easier to smoke a bong in Lower Manhattan.
David N. Bass is an associate editor of Carolina Journal.