Could Millennials be the Next 'Greatest Generation'?

Since we work with young college-age women, we tend to follow polls and trends of the 18 to 30 age group. Recent articles suggest those under age 30 — the Millennial generation — are facing tough times, and it's causing them to undergo the kind of philosophical shift that often occurs when reality overwhelms ideals. Could the tough times forge the Millennials into the next 'greatest generation'?


The Atlantic describes young Americans' struggles:

Two years after the Great Recession officially ended, job prospects for young Americans remain historically grim. More than 17% of 16-to-24-year-olds who are looking for work can't find a job, a rate that is close to a 30-year high. The employment-to-population ratio for that demographic — the percentage of young people who are working — has plunged to 45 percent. That's the lowest level since the Labor Department began tracking the data in 1948. Taken together, the numbers suggest that the U.S. job market is struggling mightily to bring its next generation of workers into the fold. 

While the unemployment rate for 25- to 29-year-olds is only slightly above the national average (10.2%), many apparently continue to struggle financially for a decade beyond age 30. A May 2011 Harris survey for ForbesWoman found that 59% of parents provide financial support for their adult non-student children ages 18 to 39.

The hard landing after graduation has made Millennials less optimistic about the future and more cautious in their planning, reports a Generation Opportunity survey of young people conducted by Kellyanne Conway's thepollingcompany/WomenTrend this summer.

• More than half say the US is on the wrong track, and they are not optimistic about the nation's economic future;
• More than half are not confident that the country will be a global economic leader in 10 years; and 
• More than three-fourths say that they have delayed or will delay buying a home, paying down student debt, obtaining more education, saving for retirement, changing jobs or cities, getting married, or making some other major life decision.

These young voters are also paying attention to the national economic policy debate:

• Three-quarters of Millennials want to see federal spending reduced;
• Three in five want to reduce the deficit through spending cuts rather than tax increases; and
• Two-thirds say that Social Security dollars are safer “under your pillow” than with the government.

Young people are “looking for tangibles,” says Conway. In 2008, “the big question for young people was, ‘How am I going to help you make history?’ The big question from young people today is, ‘How are you going to help me find a good-paying job?’”

Millennials may have voted with their hearts in 2008, but their wallets are leading them today, suggests Michael Barone.

The Democratic edge in party identification among white Millennials dropped from 7 points in 2008 to 3 points in 2009 to a 1 point Republican edge in 2010 and an 11 point Republican lead in 2011.

In the wake of the 2008 election, I argued that there was a tension between the way Millennials lived heir lives - creating their own iPod playlists, designing their own Facebook pages - and the one-size-fits-all, industrial-era welfare state policies of the Obama Democrats.

Instead of allowing Millennials space in which they can choose their own futures, the Obama Democrats' policies have produced a low-growth economy in which their alternatives are limited and they are forced to make do with what they can scrounge.

Journalist Tom Brokaw, author of The Greatest Generation, said he believed Americans who came of age during the Great Depression were “the greatest generation any society has ever produced.”  The economic deprivation of the Great Depression didn't defeat them. Rather, it forged in them a strength of character, courage and resolve to win World War II and rebuild America into a superpower.  

If today's tough life lessons produce the same character, courage and resolve, Millennials could well become America's next 'greatest generation'.