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posted by martyb on Monday May 27 2019, @06:52PM   Printer-friendly
from the it's-all-the-millennials'-fault dept.

The World Socialist Web Site, publication of record of the ICFI (SEP), on May 24th released a report about the grim situation many millennials face:

The stock market is booming, and President Donald Trump is boasting at every turn that the unemployment rate is lower than it has been in five decades.

However, the working class, the vast majority of the population, is confronting an unprecedented social, economic, health and psychological crisis. The same processes that have produced vast sums of wealth for the ruling elite have left millions of workers on the brink of existence.

Perhaps no segment of the population reflects the devastating consequences of these processes so starkly as the generation of young people deemed the "millennials," those born roughly between the years 1981 and 1996. More than half the 72 million American millennials are now in their 30s, with the oldest turning 38 this year.

A recent exposé by the Wall Street Journal noted that millennials are "in worse financial shape than prior living generations and may not recover." The article, "Millennials Near Middle Age in Crisis," [paywalled] concludes by stating that people born in the 1980s are at risk of becoming "America's Lost generation."

Selected bullet points from the WSWS article:

  • Millennials have taken on 300 percent more student debt than their parents' generation. [Source: The College Board, Trends in Student Aid 2013]
  • By 2014, 48 percent of workers with bachelor's degrees are employed in jobs for which they're overqualified. [Source: Labor Economist Stephen Rose, published by Urban Institute.]
  • The number of workers in the United States participating in the gig economy is expected to triple to 42 million workers by 2020, and 42 percent of those people are likely to be millennials. [Source: Freshbooks]
  • Between 1978 and 2017, according to the EPI, CEO compensation rose in the US by 1,070 percent, while the typical worker's compensation over these 39 years rose by a mere 11.2 percent.
  • In the 40 years leading up to the recession, rents increased at more than twice the rate of incomes. [Source: Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University.]
  • One in 5 millennials say they cannot afford routine healthcare expenses. Many of these millennials are uninsured because of the cost. An additional 26 percent say they can afford routine health-care costs, but only with difficulty. [Source: Harris Poll]
  • Men and women in their thirties are marrying at rates below every other generation on record. [Source: The Atlantic, "The Death (and Life) of Marriage in America"]
  • It is predicted that most millennials will not be able to retire until age 75. [Source: NerdWallet analysis of federal data]

The report concludes, "Far from becoming the 'Lost Generation' predicted by the Wall Street Journal, this generation of workers carries within it an enormous source of revolutionary potential."

[Ed. Note. I debated whether or not to run this story given the partisan source for the article, but the list of references suggested it was more than a simple opinion piece. So, are things really as grim as portrayed here? I'm too old to be a millennial, but have both personally experienced as well as witnessed many others facing the same trends listed here. Where do things go from here?]


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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 28 2019, @12:24AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 28 2019, @12:24AM (#848342)

    I ducked out being a millennial by leaving school just before Columbine. My third year of junior college and first of only two not living with my parents was 9/11.

    From both personal experience and stories from friends, both Gen X and Millennials I can tell you it is twofold: The unnecessary expectations for jobs that don't need it, because on the job training is necessary either way, and the necessary skills are easy to check or test for. Combined with this is a general disregard for employees, a combination of under-budgeting for employees or employee advancement, a disrespect towards many of them, not in the form of 'everyone had to pay their dues' like in the old days, but rather 'these schmucks should be happy we give them a job at all and work whatever hours we tell them with no prescheduling of their workweek.' This latter effect caused many people Gen-Xs to do all sorts of questionable to outright illegal behavior at work, but after watching and listening to the questionable behaviors of managers, unless it was a health or safety issue for customers I left it to loss-prevention or the managers rather than narcing on fellow employees, because neither side was doing right by the other. Long story short, I gave up on the workforce (damn lazy millenial scum!) and have just done odd jobs while working on and off for family. My friends meanwhile have after a decade or more of work, managed ~25k/year as a midwestern female military veteran, 55k a year as a millenial techie (first in the bay and now on the east coast), 100k a year as a truck driver (with seasonal unemployment and better unemployment pay than either of the aforementioned people busting their ass, he gets to screw off and use it as vacation time, knowing its temporary.), and a few others still in the sub 20k/year pay range struggling with full time jobs and junior/state college workloads.

    For reference, my *MOM* in the 1970s managed to buy a house by 26, FULL PAID OFF, after getting a master's degree in social work and working for the state for a few years, at what was at the time not all that excellent of pay. But it was enough to cover an apartment with a roommate, gas, a used and then new car, and savings towards a deposit on a mortgage. While some of that is the housing boom that lead to skyrocketing prices, just as much of it is due to pay stagnation and inflation, leading to everything costing signifcantly more.

    For reference, her as a member of the boomer generation is being bled dry by medical bills, and the quality of medical service since I was a kid (where I got surgical treatment at my local hospital good enough to amaze radiologists at a children's research hospital a few years later when I had an unrelated injury.) Today however, just getting the right medications from the doctors, or finding a doctor who actually bothers to keep up on your chart is almost impossible. Both she and my father have had multiple medical issues due to doctors using either obsolete information or assumptions about the patient.

    Personally, I haven't had medical coverage since my early 20s. I'm sure I'll die from something easily treatable as a result, but given the number of people I know who have died from medical malpractice or worse, I'll save that money I don't have anyway, and at least die with some financial common sense.

    I feel more sorry for the generation after us, who didn't see pre-columbine schools and think our pro-authoritarian regime (on both sides of the aisle) is the norm, and doesn't remember the hypocrisy of the 'only a communist would do that' list of behaviors from 1980s school indoctrination, many of which the GenX/Millenial generation have forgotten about even as they march towards that 'bold new future' of dystopia everyone secretly longs for.

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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by loonycyborg on Tuesday May 28 2019, @06:35AM (1 child)

    by loonycyborg (6905) on Tuesday May 28 2019, @06:35AM (#848428)

    Having a working accessible medical care system is one of the things 'only a communist would do'.

    • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 28 2019, @06:45PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 28 2019, @06:45PM (#848606)

      using a totalitarian nanny state to get it is what a communist would do. why can't you stick to the point and quit being dishonest?