Category Archives: delayed adulthood

Generation stuck

Posted on February 23, 2011 | 3 Comments

I’ve been reading transcripts of our interviews with young people fresh out of college (graduated last spring), and I have to say, it’s both depressing and heartening. Probably the most prevalent feeling among this generation is that they’re stuck, their life is on hold until they can find a job. They truly want to embrace adulthood–be financially independent, live on their own, get on with life. But they can’t. How can they make any kind of move–whether that be out of their parents’ house or across the country–when they have no money coming in, no solid job prospects, but about $20,000 or more in student debt?

Or as one young person said, “It’s like a prolonged Indian summer of adolescence and I’m not thrilled about it.”

I hear the frequent complaints from older generations saying, yeah, but I lived on my own at age 19. It wasn’t easy, but I cut corners and didn’t expect a flat screen tv and a posh condo. True, but they (and I) didn’t have a monthly bill of $400-500 to pay back to State U. either. (And I have yet to hear the flat screen or posh condo request.)

So far I’ve read about a dozen or so interviews, and half of the young people are unemployed, and those that are employed are often not in the field they hoped to be in. Nationally, the unemployment rate for those 18-24 is about 15%.

They’re frustrated, and getting more so. As this young woman said,

A lot of times it just feels like I’m never gonna be able to find a job. It just feels like, you know, I have been like completely shut out. I mean, you know [pause] why didn’t I major in business? Why didn’t I go major in chemistry? It is scary ‘cause it’s like the longer that I am sitting at home, applying for jobs and not hearing back, or hearing back and then them saying, “No, we went with somebody else,” —it just  kind of wears you down. And it’s kind of like, well, is there any point in trying”

That’s the scary part of that sentence: “Is there any point in trying.” She did everything right. She got 5′s on her high school AP tests. She was in all the extracurriculars. She excelled in college. She was a planner–had her life mapped out: major in Russian, do a stint in the Peace Corps, apply at the State Department.

But then, life intervened. She realized, while on a semester abroad that she didn’t want to live that far away from home. So here she is now. Her plan is derailed, and she is left with a general liberal arts degree (albeit with honors), and no job offers. Yes, she should not have put all her eggs in one basket. But at any other time than right now, she would have landed on her feet. And if she’s struggling–3.7 GPA, honors courses, good work ethic–then you can imagine what havoc is being wreaked on those who are less on the ball.

And yet… they remain optimistic. They believe that if they just work hard enough, they’ll make it, eventually. They also believe, despite evidence to the contrary, that America is still the land of opportunity. Given the huge, and growing, gulf between rich and poor in this country, and the overall hollowing out of the middle class, it’s hard to square this belief. I chalk it up to youth.

But optimism for how long? Bob Herbert takes note of this in his column today. Drawing from the hundreds of heart-breaking letters that constituents in Vermont have sent their Congressman, Herbert chronicles the silent suffering of “the many of millions of Americans who, economically, are going down for the count.” Like the woman who wrote, “this is the first generation to leave our kids worse off than we were. How did this happen? What happened to the middle class? We did not buy boats or fancy cars. Why was it possible to change the economy…to a paper economy that disappeared?”

Or as another said, “All we want to do is work hard and pay our bills. We’re just not sure even that part of the American Dream is still possible anymore.”

There is in these letters a pervasive “sense of loss…in the possibilities of America,” Herbert writes. I’m reading these and the young adults’ stories with the backdrop of Wisconsin and the “race to the bottom” in wages and job security that is on display.  In a Machiavellian move, the governor of Wisconsin has pitted the middle class against itself such that now we hear  waitresses and day care workers and home health aides say: “I don’t have job security, I don’t get a living wage, why should they?”  In a sadly telling moment, this anger and accusation is the reverse of the peculiarly American credo that “I’m voting Republican because some day, I might be rich too.”

I’ve never understood that motivation until recently. My husband was telling me how the parking lot at his school was always full when he arrived so he had to park on the street, as did several fellow teachers. Each morning, after battling for a space, they walk into the school, past the principal and assistant principal’s assigned, primo parking spot.

“You’d think,” I said, “that to bolster moral, the principal might give up her spot and show some solidarity with her workers.” But then I realized, no one begrudges her that perk. They aren’t bitter because it’s a perk that everyone buys into–that if you work hard and rise to the top, you get your own parking space. It’s a sign that you played the game better, and won. The playing field was fair, and you outworked, outmaneuvered, and outchased that spot. Bully for you. You earned it. It’s those carrots that keep us all working and in line. That parking spot is the American Dream.

But in their desperation, the low-paid Wisconsin workers in precarious jobs have turned this quest on its head. They are shouting at their brethren who have managed, through unions, to secure some semblance of a middle class life. Wisconsin public workers are not paid outrageous sums. They are paid a middle-class wage. They have benefits. They have, gasp, a secure retirement (so far). That is what we all should have. Period. And yet, in a cruel reversal of the “I can someday get my own parking space” mindset, these angry words turn that sentiment around. The rallying cry is instead:  join me at the bottom. That’s truly scary. Is that the new American dream? Fighting for the scraps? What have we come to?

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Make room for young workers, or else.

Posted on January 28, 2011 | 2 Comments

A few months back I wrote a couple of posts wondering whether we were witnessing a youth revolution, in Europe. I should have included the Middle East. Tunisia, Egypt, and now Yemen are all in open revolt against staid, corrupt governments that cling to the status quo, blocking opportunities for young people to get started in life. In Tunisia, young men, even those with college degrees, spend their days in cafes instead of at jobs, because the jobs are nowhere to be found. Their forced idleness becomes a tinderbox–the results of which are clear.

Young people are taking their pent-up frustrations to the streets, in the optimistic, naive, heartfelt belief that they–the 20-somethings of this world–can change their future. More power to them. It is just this optimism coupled with youthful naiveté that we need. It is why the world changes only at the hands of the young. They still believe it can. Without that belief, we’re done. Witness Japan.

Japan’s economy continues to struggle through a lost decade (or two), largely the result of a failure to respond nimbly to changing times. They became mired in the past, unable to pivot as the world shifted. Their economy ossified. According to today’s New York Times article by Martin Fackler, the failure lies with the old folks. Japan has clung to policies that protect older workers while creating a new system of “irregular” jobs that make it harder, if not impossible, for younger workers to get a foot in the door. In this case, irregular jobs are akin to contract jobs, where young people are paid less, they work for a set short-term time period, with no benefits, or as they call themselves in Japan: “freeters”–a job-hopping part-timer.  Last year, according to the Times, 45% of young people 15-24 were working in irregular jobs, up from 17% in 1988. The Economist finds that about 28% of young people aged 25-34 were freeters.

“Japan has lost its vitality because older workers refuse to step aside,” said one person interviewed.

Young people are feeling shoved aside in favor of older workers, and are facing the prospects of never fully getting that foot on the escalator of a career. Sound familiar? Baby Boomers are forced to cling to their jobs here in the US as their retirements disappeared. According to the Labor Department,  28.2 million people over 55 years of age had jobs, an increase of 7.6 percent from three years earlier, when the recession was beginning. Thirty years ago, one in seven jobs was held by a person who was 55 or older. Today the proportion is one in five.

We also tilt our safety net to older Americans, from Social Security to Medicare, to pensions.  Unlike in the Middle East or in Europe, however, young people in Japan (or in the US) do not flood the streets in protest. Instead, according to the article, they turn inward, blame themselves, or “try to find contentment with horizons that are far more limited than their parents.’”

We certainly join them in the blame-game. How many times have you heard the word “moocher” attached to 20-somethings living at home with mom and dad?

It seems the time is now to have a serious conversation about how we help this younger generation get started on the path to adulthood. Older people I talk with often pooh-pooh this generation’s struggles: “Boo-hoo. So “the world has changed.” Big deal. It’s always changing. Grow up.” Perhaps. But to that I say, this one is different because we’re different.

We’re no longer the Big Dog in the world. We’re playing the game on a globalized field. We suddenly have billions more people to compete with, most of them young. We are also not poised to rebound as quickly as we once were. Our education ranking has declined. Our economy is preoccupied with old-school industries. We have not invested in R&D. The list goes on. Like Japan, we’ll be feeling this sting for a long time because we have failed to adapt. Tunisia is feeling the heat because it sat on its laurels and refused to see the powder keg they were creating by ignoring the frustration of its youth.  In Portugal, young people are tossing in the towel and emigrating. The list goes on.

Here in the US, we have the makings for a lost generation for another reason as well. Andrew Leonard, writing at Salon, warns that countries with the weakest safety nets risk losing the most in this globalized economy. Reading Dani Rodrik’s “The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy” it struck Leonard that the U.S. is overlooking one important fact of competing in a globalized world: “People demand compensation against risk when their economies are more exposed to international economies.” Those economies most exposed to globalization also are those with the biggest governments, providing strong safety nets to its workers–with the exception of the US.

I was struck by the fact that the United States (which, despite all the hoo-ha we hear about Obama’s “socialism” today, boasts a smaller government as measured against the size of the economy than most other rich nations) has opened itself up very widely to globalization and international trade without expanding its safety net to compensate for the risks involved. We’ve thrown ourselves into cutthroat waters without a life preserver in sight, exposing our workers to the harsh mercy of global competition without showing them any mercy of our own.

It’s time we take this issue seriously, and start having a conversation about how we can make this path into jobs, careers, and adulthood easier and more hopeful for young people–the world over.

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Money tops concerns of Millennials

Posted on January 18, 2011 | 1 Comment

It’s probably no surprise given this tough economic climate for 20-somethings, but at the top of their list of concerns are money. A random survey by American Express of about 1,253 young adults age 20-49* finds that fully 8 in 10 feel overwhelmed by money issues today.  More than half (57%) indicated they are still financially dependent on their parents and other family members to pay bills.

*The report refers to “those in their 20s” even though the survey included older individuals. I presume that they have examined the subset of young people in their 20s, but there’s no information about just how many that included. That could be problematic if the numbers are small.

Given how many are stressing out over finances, it’s also not surprising that nearly all (96%) are concerned most about making money. That said, they are still fairly balanced about life. Career, they say, is not more important than being healthy  (69%), and having a well-balanced/well-rounded life (68%).

While seeking that balance, however, money has reared its ugly head. For the majority (86%), their current financial situation is a drain, and the vast majority are stressed out about it. Two-thirds also feel pressure to be successful in careers and finances.

In a list of concerns, the ranking belies the pressure cooker this generation grew up in:

  • 96% are concerned most about making money
  • 88% establishing a career
  • 86% figuring out “what I’m going to do in life”
  • 85% being debt free/reducing debt
  • 74% finishing education/pursuing an advanced degree
  • (72%)  being in a long-term relationship/marriage.

Slightly more than half of young adults feel that their parents never had to face the financial challenges they’re facing. And they probably didn’t. This is truly the first generation to carry this much education debt.  And personal debt. The irony is not lost that the survey is done in conjunction with the launch of a new credit card, ZINC, aimed at 20-somethings. But back to education debt–College grads with a BA in 2008 borrowed 50% more than their counterparts in 1996 (after adjusting for inflation), while those with an associate’s degree borrowed twice as much, according to a Pew Research report based on data from the National Center for Education Statistics.

I certainly don’t remember feeling financially pinched when I was in my 20s. We may not have had a pot to piss in, as the saying goes, but we could still find cheap apartments and didn’t have any debt to speak of. ATMs were new back then–think of it! I remember getting overdrawn once or twice because it was just so easy to go get cash. We quickly learned that lesson. My husband and I both made peanuts, but neither of us had any college debt or other big bills hanging overhead either.

Rex will remember this better than I, but here’s our expenses (roughly) when I was 27–in today’s dollars.

Income (mine): $27,600
Expenses: $22,100
Rent (my half): $737
Food (my half): $500
Entertainment: $185
Clothes/Household: $100
Utilities, including phone (heat was included in rent): $70
Misc: $100
Car/gas/public transport (car was paid off): $150

Savings/year: $5,400 (we usually took one big vacation/year and shot that)

So finances were never a burden. We worked full-time at modest-paying jobs, we were home by 5:00, we hung out with our friends and drank cheap beer. I remember waking up in the middle of the night panicked if I spent more than $25 on a night out ($46 in today’s dollars)–this was before the rise of micro brews and ever-increasing bar tabs. We lived in a decent apartment but not in a trendy neighborhood. Our rule of thumb was no smaller than 1,000 square feet, which was pretty standard in Chicago neighborhoods. Those apartments were everywhere. Life was less of a pressure cooker then, and much less expensive.

I’m curious– what does a typical budget look like today for a 27-year-old? Do tell!

Feeling financially secure has always been one of the most important factors in taking the first big steps toward “adulthood.” Getting established in a job, socking away some savings are often prerequisites to marriage and kids–and even just basic relationships. It’s tough to go out to dinner, movies, and hang out with friends when you don’t have any cash, let alone get your own place. Given the current recession and the housing bust, one wonders how many more young adults will find themselves stalled on the road to adulthood even longer.

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Brain drain

Posted on January 13, 2011 | Leave a comment

Diogo Vasconselos (@dvasconselos) posted an article from the Guardian a couple days ago about the rising number of Portuguese young adults who are leaving the country in pursuit of opportunities elsewhere. Portugal, reeling from the economic collapse in debt-laden Europe (thank you America), just dodged the bankruptcy bullet with a bond sale, but nevertheless is still in precarious shape. The strife is causing residents to emigrate at rates not seen since the 1960s, according to the article in the “Guardian.” And many of those fleeing are young:

What is different from the previous wave of migration in the 1960s is that these new emigrants are most likely young, highly skilled, and choose new countries like Spain and the UK. A 2006 report by the World Bank warned that Portugal was suffering from serious brain drain, with 13% of graduates emigrating.

The article tries to make some lemonade with the news by suggesting that the hardship might make this slouching generation grow a spine–or as the subtitle says: “might just herald the emergence of a more self-sufficient, curious, and less spoiled generation.”

Statistics portray a youth that is averse to risk-taking, values comfort and longs for security. The Portuguese social structure is shaped by dependent children or married people.

A Dutch friend was telling me the other day that he left his parents’ home at 18 – in Portugal, almost 60% of young adults between 18 and 34 still live at their parents, one of the EU’s highest rates according to a 2008 Eurostat survey (in the UK it is about 40%). Telling a Portuguese son or a daughter to find his or her own apartment at 18 would be unthinkable, the equivalent of abandoning a child in the wild.

Hmmm. Sounds familiar (both the trends and the whining about them). We document a similar trend in the US in “Not Quite Adults.” Although not nearly as high, roughly 30% of U.S. 18-34-year-olds are living with their parents. Many of these young people are remaining at home, not because they are lazy or spoiled, however, but because it simply takes longer to get a secure foothold in adulthood today. Education demands, unstable jobs, and rising competition and credentials all make it necessary to be much more strategic today in getting started. The slower path, it turns out, is a path to a more secure future. At least it was before the recession. The question is, Is that secure future still out there?

Today, we now have an unemployment rate of 16% for 18-24 year olds. Economists think it will be at least five, and more like ten, years until we can get back on track and employment returns to 5%. That’s a long time for a young person just starting out, with college debt and living expenses that likely outstrip the salaries that employers offer in a tight job market.

A college degree certainly still pays off, but when older workers cling to their jobs for longer out of necessity, and when competition is stiff for jobs, the average student from an average college is going to find herself competing against primo candidates for a standard job. Hello underemployment.  Are the college-educated therefore facing an interim that those with less education have been facing for a couple decades now: a precarious job market that fails to pay a living wage for far too many? How secure will that future be  if a young person is delayed three, four, even ten years in getting on a solid path to a good job–during the most critical time in one’s career?

I recall a few months ago reading about growing numbers of young Americans thinking about moving overseas, to Asia and other locales where the jobs are. While I seem to recall that the numbers emigrating were minuscule, it’s an interesting early indicator. Before this, young American expats were confined largely to writers and artists living in Paris in the 1940s. Some moved overseas to volunteer with the Peace Corps or mission work. Some moved when their employers demanded it. But it wasn’t a common experience on the whole to think of moving overseas to find work. But will that change as jobs in Asia continue to expand and jobs in the West continue to shrivel? If I were young, I’d certainly consider it.

In Europe, they worry about emigration because their birth rate is already low, and emigrating only drains that pool even more. Low birth rates are never good for countries because you need younger workers to support the elderly. That’s less of a problem here.

Emigration, however, also causes a brain drain as the “best and brightest” pursue opportunities elsewhere. Interestingly, rural America has been dealing with brain drain for years now, as Maria Kefalas and Pat Carr so brilliantly chronicle in their book, “Hollowing Out the Middle.” As they argue, residents in rural communities in essence shoot themselves in the foot by cultivating the best and the brightest to leave while underinvesting in the kids who are most likely to remain at home and create the second generation of the town. We might be on the brink of doing that on a grander scale now–underinvesting in those who will pull us into the future. I don’t think we’re at a point where we’ll see massive emigration, but it’s certainly worth thinking about–and preventing.

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College–results may vary

Posted on January 3, 2011 | Leave a comment

This morning’s Miami Herald finds that graduates from two-year applied programs in community colleges are earning more than four-year graduates from the state’s public universities. According to data crunched by the state’s employment bureau, those with a BA from one of the state’s 11 public universities earned an average starting salary of about $36,500 in 2009. Meanwhile, those who earned an associate’s degree in science from a community college started, on average, at $47,400.

Part of this difference, the article notes, is that those graduating in science from a community college tend to be older, and likely have more job experience. But still, the $11,000 difference is striking, particularly when you factor in the lower cost of community colleges. Less debt plus a higher salary equals a more secure start as an adult.

The key, the article notes– and what Rick and I say in our book, “Not Quite Adults” as well–is to be strategic in choosing the course of education. For a long time, just getting a BA was a passport to higher earnings. But now, with costs rising and jobs expected to be tight for several years to come, it pays to be more strategic. We’re hearing rumblings in our new interviews for Generation R project of growing discontent with the payoff to college. In this current recession, far too many graduates are finding themselves back at home, with a college debt hanging over their heads, while they search for work. The competition in the workforce is stiff–so stiff that even those from the most elite universities are discovering the unemployment line.  There is nothing quite like sending out countless resumes and not even getting a phone call to make young adults start to wonder, is college still worth it?

It’s probably cold comfort to a recent grad working for $10 an hour as a receptionist or slinging drinks for tips, but in the long run, a BA will more likely pay off in greater lifetime earnings because the salary ceiling is higher with a BA. That said, as I noted in this post, applied training can still pay off–even seven years later, according to recent studies.

In one case, researchers compared the earnings of young adults who had gone through a career academy in high school and those who had not. A career academy mixes traditional academics with applied learning in a particular field, such as accounting, nursing, or engineering. The curriculum is aligned with the demands of the job, and young people do internships and shadow actual workers on the job. In an evaluation of career academies by MDRC, young men—often most at risk for becoming disconnected—did particularly well. They earned about $30,000 more over eight years than their peers from the same high school.

Similarly, as a recent Demos report, “Graduated Success,” finds, two-year technical degrees pay off in the longer-term. Eight years after graduating from high school, 43% of technical certificate holders earned a median annual salary that was higher than that earned by someone holding a general associate’s degree. (This is where being strategic comes in.) Moreover, 27% earned more than those with a BA.

As in all things, one needs to be realistic and choose a field that is growing and that aligns with one’s interests. Labor economists note that it is the middle-tier jobs that are most likely to grow in the next decade, and if one is looking for job security–as more young people are–then jobs that require face-time and hands-on skills that can’t be exported are good bets.

Not all community college experiences, unfortunately, are as successful as the above examples. Far too many enter college–either two- or four-year–with only a vague idea what they want to do. And as a result, far, far too many drop out. We need community college reforms  that help more students stay focused and on a path to success. Here’s a few ideas for doing just that.

Granted, if you go to community college and wander through some English courses and a philosophy class, with little direction, as many of the young adults we interviewed for Not Quite Adults did, then the payoff to community college is won’t be great. But if, like the young men we interviewed in a landscaping program and phlebotomy program, they choose a course that aligns with growing job demand (health care, green technologies to name two), then the payoff is solid. And worth it.

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Here we go…already Not Quite Adults is being politicized

Posted on December 26, 2010 | 6 Comments

Well, that‘s over for another year. I managed to find at least two decent gifts for my hubbie under the deadline. I was furiously writing a piece for the New York Post about our book on the day I’d planned to do my last-minute shopping. (Love this pic that ran with the Post article!)

I’m normally not a procrastinator, but for some reason, it always comes down to the wire on Christmas. It doesn’t help that it’s also our anniversary on Christmas Eve—no pressure. When I finally got the article done and submitted, I hightailed it out to the shops–just me and the men by that point. Here’s a tip: never go in to a jewelery store on Christmas Eve. It reeks of panic buying.

This year I’m a little more distracted since Not Quite Adults comes out on Tuesday. It’s been a double whirlwind of wrapping presents and wrapping up interviews, like the Q&A that ran in Salon on Saturday. I really don’t sound that ungrammatical in most conversations, but when she interviewed me, the cat was howling in the background and The Gift was looming. But, all in all, the article makes the points I wanted to make.

What I find most fascinating are the 100+ comments (not that I’m counting, but there are more comments for our book than most). Our main message–that the slow path to adulthood is not such a bad thing because it’s the path to a more secure future–just doesn’t sit well with certain folks. I’m fine with that, but there’s two things that strike me in the comments and the general sentiment “out there.”

First is the sheer dismissal of facts. Ours is not a book of opinions. The Network on Transitions to Adulthood included the top minds in the country scouring trends and surveys going back to the turn of the century. We examined so many aspects about this time of life–using information from big data sets like the census to more fine-tuned surveys that follow the same families over 20, sometimes 30 years, asking them very detailed, very in-depth questions. Economists looked at the changing nature of work, wages, and debt and spending. Sociologists looked at our attitudes toward marriage and relationships. Experts looked at this generation’s political life. They compared this generation’s opinions and demographics with those of prior generations. And then the Network went out and did our own 500 interviews, with young people from across the country, rural/urban, black, white, Latino, Asian… you name it. In other words, our book has pretty darned good legs to stand on.

Yet we still hear comments that put science in quote marks, like this one from a Washington Times columnist: “The research behind this book is “scientific,” and included interviews with nearly 500 young people. Too bad for the authors that they didn’t include my 20-something daughter in their research.”

When did we as a country come to this? I’m not thinking of our book here, necessarily. But in other areas as well: medicine, global warming, evolution. Why has science been hijacked and put in quote marks by absolutists who, ironically, want absolutism unless it runs counter to their own belief.

Second–and this connects directly with the first–  like most things in the country today has become a politically polarized topic. The right wingers think the slower path is a result of lefties and their wussy policies. What’s particularly amazing about that claim, and its counterpunch that we should just kick them all out of the house at age 18, is that those who are making these claims are most likely the very ones who would probably benefit from some of the policy suggestions we make. It’s their kids who are being left behind and are at greater risk when they take that fast-track to adulthood.

Not Quite Adults is not meant to be an excuse for this generation or a counter-culture attack on tradition.  It’s meant instead to be a objective look at the bigger picture–the social, cultural, and economic forces that have reshaped our world, and thus the path to adulthood. We just wanted to shed some light on this rather sudden, and thus disorienting, change and maybe spark a different conversation that we have with our kids and with each other. And for me, personally, I hope that we can take a look at how some things might be done differently to make this path to adulthood more secure for those who are struggling the most–the kids in Kansas and Utah and New York and Ohio who are standing at the brink of adulthood and wondering, why can’t I make this happen? Why do I find myself stuck in a snow bank spinning my wheels? I hope the book can shine a light on a few things that we can do to give that young person the extra push he or she needs to get on the road again.

If you want to find out more, here’s the book’s website, including where/when we’ll be appearing.

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The recession and young adults

Posted on December 6, 2010 | 2 Comments

As “Not Quite Adults” wraps up, I’ve been working on a new book with Maria Kefalas and her husband Pat Carr–what we’re calling Generation-R (for recession). (Actually we’re blatantly ripping off Steve Greenhouse on the “Gen-R” name.)  They and a team of sociologists are interviewing young people from the Philadelphia area (see more about the project here) about their lives. We’re curious how a recession as deep as this one is altering their plans, their hopes, their beliefs. More critically, we’re wondering, is this a turning point for the country, captured in a generation?

Although we’re just getting into the project, we’re already seeing some amazing shifts–and some more predictable stories as well. I always love reading transcripts. It’s like reading a novel– you begin to quickly form an image of this person you never met, and with enough transcripts under your belt, you also begin to piece together an impression of a generation.

The picture of a generation that emerges from projects like this is, to me, a canary in the coal mine of history. If you look carefully, you will see where the country is heading and also where we’ve been. Rex and I were talking about this topic Saturday as we took a break from our holiday shopping. Over a bowl of clam chowder and a glass of wine, with the first snow falling outside, we talked about how different he is from his oldest brother, who turned 70 this year. His brother was born when Truman was in office, and grew up amid thick conventionalism. Rex, in turn, was born in 1950 and came of age amid the swirl and confusion of the 1960s. The two brothers are night and day in their outlook on life, and it’s not hard to see why. Of course there’s always that quirky mess of genes and biology that alters our worldview as well, but the moment when biography meets history is duly transforming.

I was struck by this generational “marking” again when listening to an interview with Bruce Springsteen on NPR about his seminal album, “Darkness on the Edge of Town.”  The album, he said, captured the turning point we as a nation–and as a generation–were facing  in 1977-78. We were then (as now) at the tail end of a severe recession. We were just emerging from the turmoil and questioning the Vietnam War had wrought. Crime was at an all-time high in cities. The country was in a deep malaise. It was, he said, an end of innocence. Look no farther than music and film of the day, from the rise of punk-rock to Taxi Driver and Chinatown. That era was when my own generation came of age, ushering in the decades of detached irony and cynicism.

In many respects, we’re now at a similar turning point. In the interviews I’m reading, I’m hearing the echos of another childlike loss. This time, however, we’re awaking from an age of make-believe: Make-believe that I can afford that Coach bag or Rolex. Make-believe I can afford the $500,000 home. Make-believe that I can make coast on a credit card. Make-believe that college is worth it. Make-believe that class and status do not hem us in and shape our destinies.

We are all waking up to a sudden new reality, and young adults are the ones forced to, as they say, make lemonade. At our county fairs when I was growing up, the highlight was always the dunking booth. A big-wig in town would take his seat on the metal bench above a tub of water, and the “little guys” would get to throw a softball at the target, which when hit would trip the seat, sending the big-wig into the bucket of water. The look of utter astonishment at hitting the water–even though the surprise was hardly, well, surprising–never ceased to delight. It is the same stunned astonishment that I hear in the stories of young people.

The roles have been reversed, but the surprise is still the same. Young adults–particularly those from middle-class families–have been dunked by fat cats on Wall Street, and they’re popping up, soaked to the bone, momentarily laughing at themselves perhaps, while not quite sure what just happened, …yet.

Two things are dawning on them so far. First, the future is no longer as carefree as it once was. As one young woman said, “the future is a little more dimmer now…. I’m thinking more of how am I going to do it, not that I am going to do it….When I was younger and before the recession, it was like it is going to happen. Now it’s, Is it going to happen?”

A second realization for those in the middle and lower-middle-class is that meritocracy is a ruse. One lower-middle-class young woman, who had once believed that if you work hard, you’ll succeed, is having second thoughts as she sees coveted internships handed out to those with lower grades but the right connections–often parental connections. Instead of heading to an internship to hone her resume, she is working in a car dealership as a receptionist. That burns, she says.

This “cultural capital” –the networks and insights and insider understanding that elite families have– is cropping up a lot in the interviews as a key advantage that “some kids” have.  But this time with a subtle shift.  The  notion of cultural capital has always been with us, and widely acknowledged. Even in my fairly humble family background, the mantra was always, “it’s not what you know, but who you know.” But it was said with optimism. What might be changing is the shrinking size of the group that sees that mantra with optimism versus cynicism.

In families of modest yet still comfortable means, “it’s who you know” is offered with the belief that they, too, can meet the right people, that they’re just one step away from being invited into those circles. It’s the belief in the American way, the level playing field, the equal opportunity. Or as my sister-in-law said when I asked her whether it wasn’t bothersome that 1% of the country holds 25% of the nation’s capital (yes, I was skating into dangerous territory for a Thanksgiving dinner)–”no, that’s America. You can become one of that 1%.”

Yet the middle-class kids are now beginning to turn that narrative around. They’re joining the group lower down the rung in a brutally honest assessment of how things work in the world. It’s dawning on them that perhaps it’s no longer possible to join the club. Perhaps that’s also why they staunchly believe in the Ivy League, even if it means going into deep debt. They have absorbed, often unknowingly, the realization that that extra boost of an Ivy League education on your resume lands you, at least on paper, in the club.

It’s far too early to tell if this is a turning point or just the musings of a handful of young adults. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out in future interviews. But it does seem that all the elements are there for another turning point, with darkness once again lurking at the edge of town.

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For the first time the economic gain from marriage are greater for men than women

Posted on November 19, 2010 | Leave a comment

Here’s an astounding fact: Today the economic gains associated with marriage are greater for men than for women. Let that sink in a moment because it’s a momentous change.

According to a Pew Research study, economics and education have upended this long-standing dynamic. In the past, when relatively few wives worked, marriage was a bonus economically. But today, with the growing earnings gains of women, the stagnating wages for men with the least education, and with women outstripping men in higher education, the story has changed. Today, men benefit from marriage economically more than women. According to Pew:

Among U.S.-born 30- to 44-year-olds, women now are the majority both of college graduates and those who have some college education but not a degree. Women’s earnings grew 44% from 1970 to 2007, compared with 6% growth for men. More men today marry women with more education than they have, while more women marry men with less education than they have. The combination of these factors means that marriage is a better deal, economically at least, for men–and particularly those with less education overall.

Whether this cause for celebration or worry I’ll leave to you. It is certainly heartening to see women making so many gains professionally. However, I personally worry that so many young men with the least education are struggling in today’s economy (and increasingly even those with  a college degree are included). Indeed, married women today are somewhat less likely than their 1970 counterparts to have a husband who works. I just wrote a brief with the nonprofit group, The Young Invincibles, on young men’s precarious standing. The trends are pretty sobering.

But we can talk data all day. Here’s a story that gets right to the heart of it.  A young man wrote it to our Generation-R website to tell us about his dilemma–a dilemma facing many in this most recent generation of college grads. (we welcome these stories and conversation, so add your own to the site).

Having a sense of economic security–which this recent college grad clearly lacks–is a precursor to popping the question for most couples. It is particularly true of those couples at the lower rungs of the economic ladder. Survey after survey shows that this group values marriage as much as anyone, but they want their financial ducks in a row first. And of course, for them, getting those ducks in a row can take a long, long time. It’s not surprising then that the marriage rates for those with the least education and income are by far the lowest.

Yet it seems that this worry might be creeping up the ladder of late.  In our early interviews with recent college grads, we’re hearing that same concern. “My life is on hold,” we hear, until I can get a good job and some money in the bank. Given the dire economy, when college grads are working as bartenders, receptionists, and cashiers at the local Shop Rite, it’s not clear when that moment is going to be.

It’s clear that marriage is no longer a marker of adulthood as it once was. Maybe it never will be again. It’s certainly not the necessity it once was. Couples can live together, they can live on their own, they can create his and her apartments, they can create new family forms. No harm, no foul.

But, the declining marriage rates are a symptom of something larger, of the acceleration of a chronic cough into full-blown tuberculosis.  We find ourselves in a winner-take-all society, where those at the very tippy-top reap all the rewards of luck and “hard work,” while those in the expanding bottom become increasingly frustrated. Working hard and playing by the rules does not seem to open the same doors it once did.

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Young people may be slow to embrace “adulthood” but they’re more “adult” doing it

Posted on November 15, 2010 | Leave a comment

I was at a party this weekend and the topic of jobs and adulthood came up. The conversation had turned to a recent law school student who, sensing the dire conditions on the street today for lawyers and his looming debt repayments, wanted to cut a deal with his university. He was willing, he said, to drop out on the spot after two and a half years if the university would return his tuition to date. This, he reasoned, would be a win-win because it would save them from having to report his expected unemployment to U.S. News & World Report, the prestigious college ranking guide.

While no one has taken him up on his offer, it does show that even elite kids today are suffering from the current state of the economy.  It also reflects the anxiety this latest generation feels as they try to take their first steps into adulthood in a high-stakes world we have created for them.

One woman at the party, a corporate lawyer, was having none of it. “I came out of law school in 1992,” she said alluding to the slight recession at that time, “and I managed to find a job and be out on my own. They can too.”

We tend to reflexively judge the world around us by our own experience in it. It’s only natural. After all, it’s our most cherished living example, and a darned good one at that.  But it’s often a mistake.

We older readers rushed into adulthood, finding a job, living on our own, pairing up and marrying in short order, often by age 25 or 26. While we may have achieved all those milestones of adulthood, I’ll wager that we weren’t yet very “adult.” Responsibility and foresight weren’t high on our agendas. At least not all of us.  For a large portion of us—and I speak from experience here—we messed around in a haphazard string of jobs. We dabbled in this or that. We hung out too late, and partied too often. We picked up and moved apartments when we found cheaper and more spacious digs. In other words, we may have had the job and the independence, but it really wasn’t taking us anywhere fast, and we were not exactly role models for children. (There are exceptions to this scenario of course. Many of my high school friends were well on their way to respectability).

But here’s the key: I came to no great harm in this strategic-free path. The world may have been changing underfoot—huge global economic changes were beginning; cultural worlds were reforming (think gay pride, cultural relativism, postfemimism, identity politics); families were rearranging as a result of divorce—but the threads had not yet retied themselves in a new order. Messing around and dallying in this and that wouldn’t yet leave a mark on a young person. It was not  yet the high-stakes game it is now, where a misstep early can easily sink a person today.

Today, the danger of not being strategic is far more perilous. Through our hundreds of interviews, that message came through loud and clear. Young people, and their parents, realize that the game has changed. In fact, you could say that today, young people are being much more “adult,” even though they are delaying “adulthood.”

If there’s a word that came up more often in talking with young people about their choice to, say, remain home, it was “responsible.”

Take living at home: To many young people, it’s more financially responsible to stay at home and save money for a down payment than “throw away” money on rent. Young adults by and large get along with their parents, and their parents often enjoy their company as well. One man in St. Paul told us that he had been saving for a home while living with his parents. He was able to squirrel away savings from his full-time job as a computer programmer. He had just put a down payment on a house, and was preparing to move. He had also recently become engaged. He was 31.  To him, living at home just made sense. It was responsible. Living at home and saving also matched his frugal bent (another trait we saw frequently in interviews). His friends would tease him about his cheapness, but, he’s say, why buy a new jacket? “My jacket works. Until my zipper busts, my jacket works. And needing new this and new that. I don’t need that. I got a set of dishes and they’re not made out of lead or nothing. They’re nothing wrong with them. I can still eat off of them.”

As with being frugal, we were also surprised to realize how financially aware young people are, even in their early 20s. Suze Orman’s messages are getting through. Amit, [all names are pseudonyms] a young man from California, had just finished medical school and was living with roommates when we interviewed him. He was in no rush to marry or settle down, and he was saving now for his own future. His foresight and financial savvy are not what you typically hear about this generation.

“I saw how my parents grew up. They came here from India with very little. Almost nothing. And they don’t make as much as a lot of other people in this country, and they were able to, you know, own a home. Own two homes, and put two kids through college. And without mounting up, you know, enormous debt. And I think it goes to, just a general lifestyle of trying to live within your means.”
He still splurges now and then, “but I think it compromises your ability to do things in the future, like owning a home, having a retirement, or things like that. I personally have been in debt, but I think I have enough understanding now. I mean, you know, not, just paying the minimum on your credit card is not a wise thing to do. Not making credit card payments probably doesn’t look good on your credit report. Probably hurts your chances of getting a good mortgage. I also think there’s definitely good debt and bad debt. And I think educational debt is definitely a good debt.”

Paul, on the other hand, found himself in debt and decided to move home to recoup. His parents, as he says, “are cool about it,” and actually like that he lives with them. He wants to get married to his girlfriend in the near future. He’s working full-time in the computer field, and is heading back to finish college, which got interrupted when he was working while going to school and decided the money he was earning was more fun than school.

He quickly learned the hard way that the money was not enough and he was going nowhere fast without a degree. “Get that education and everything else falls into place,” he now says.

Heading back home after a stumble is quite common today, and instead of feeling guilty, parents should feel happy that they can offer their young adults a safe haven and a relaunching pad. They’re creating a valuable set of resources for people like Paul to get back on their feet instead of trying to dig out of a sand pit with nothing but a toy shovel. With a car loan, a student loan and some credit card bills, “I just really want to get rid of those loans and start fresh so I can just start saving for real,” he said. “I opened up extra savings accounts, pensions, mutual funds. And I want to get more money into there so when I retire or I need money later down the line, it will be there.”

A comment on College Candy blog has another take on responsibility, this time living at home while searching for a good job fit:

“After spending 16+ years in school, it’s a huge waste to take a job just to take one. If you have no choice, fine, but if your parents are willing to let you come home while you search for the job you have been preparing for, it doesn’t make you less mature to do so. And you may not have all the responsibilities of an “adult” just yet, but that doesn’t mean you are purposely avoiding them. Times are changing and with the job market the way it is, people are moving back home because they HAVE to, not just because they don’t want to do their own laundry and pay the bills.”

Contrary to their portrayals in the media as slackers and playing video games all day on the couch, this generation is trying to be responsible and more strategic because if they don’t, the fall is from a very high cliff.  Wages have stagnated for men with the least education. A young man with just a high school degree today earns 35% less than he did in the 1970s. The wages of those with even a college degree have been flat. Young adults are the most likely to be uninsured because their jobs are unstable and health insurance benefits have been scaled back. It takes more education than ever today to just get a foot in the door. The BA is now what the high school degree used to be: a signal to employers that you’re employable. It’s so dire  that three in ten young men with the least education have simply thrown in the towel and dropped out of the work force altogether. Three in ten—at a time in life when you’re planting important stakes in your career. One economist has called this the most disturbing trend in 40 years.

Today, paradoxically, you have to be “adult” sooner because there’s less room for mistakes and a lot is on the line. So when we want our young adults to “grow up,” like we did, we should stop and think about the world they’re entering and quit trying to force them into the image of adulthood and the path toward it that we took. While the lawyer at the party may have been able to land a job in a corporate firm right out of law school, it’s a lot different 18 years later, even for lawyers.  And it always will be different, for every generation. We should try harder to put ourselves in this generation’s shoes and step back from our own solipsistic bubble and realize that, yes, times do change.

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A Lost Generation on the horizon

Posted on August 17, 2010 | 1 Comment

Robert Borosage, president of the Institute for America’s Future and co-director of its sister organization, the Campaign for America’s Future, has the key to my heart. In his recent piece on reinventing our economy, he puts his money on manufacturing and goods-producing as a route to building a strong middle class.

Since 2000, we’ve lost more than 5 million manufacturing jobs. Instead of making things here, we borrow $2 billion a day to cover our trade deficits.

I recently drove to Michigan City from Chicago, a route that takes me through Gary, Hammond, and other rusting cities and towns. It’s a depressing sight. The grocery stores, car dealerships, banks and churches are long closed, replaced by  Costco-sized “adult entertainment” warehouses, junkyards, and liquor stores. The $50 an hour job (with benefits) has been replaced by the $10 an hour job at the Majestic Star or Horseshoe casino. Sure, some of this transformation was inevitable. But some of it was hastened by government and Wall Street policies.

Borosage for one thinks this loss is not an inevitable product of globalization. He thinks our choice to let manufacturing go elsewhere is  a matter of ideology (free markets rule) and Panglossian policy (free markets will fix all). This market “fundamentalism” got us into a lot of hot water, and unfortunately, young adults are paying the price and feeling the brunt of it right now.

The recession is the last nail in a coffin of a long string of changes that have affected young adults just starting out in the workforce. For years these changes–declining wages as casinos replaced steel mills, declining opportunities as low-skilled jobs were outsourced overseas — were felt largely by those with the least education. But now, even college grads are out of work, and facing the prospect of lower wages over their life time.

We’re facing a lost generation if we don’t begin investing in our future in more than just platitudes. Young adult unemployment is at an all-time high, and without some policies to restore well-paid jobs here in the US, we’re going to see some of the so-called pathologies afflicting our poorest communities seeping up the line into more working-class and middle-class communities. In many respects, it’s already happening, and this latest deep recession is only speeding up the process.

As Ron Peck says in his March Atlantic Monthly article,

“If it persists much longer, this era of high joblessness will likely change the life course and character of a generation of young adults—and quite possibly those of the children behind them as well. It will leave an indelible imprint on many blue-collar white men—and on white culture. It could change the nature of modern marriage, and also cripple marriage as an institution in many communities. It may already be plunging many inner cities into a kind of despair and dysfunction not seen for decades. Ultimately, it is likely to warp our politics, our culture, and the character of our society for years.”

Take marriage, for example. Kathy Edin and Maria Kefalas in their book “Promises I Can Keep,” have documented what happens to marriage when men can no longer provide for a family, as many urban black men no longer can. In these cases, women have instituted a “pay to stay” rule, and many men cannot pay, so they don’t stay. This trend of growing single-mother families is creeping into higher-income and white society as well. As Edin told the Atlantic reporter:

“We already have low marriage rates in low-income communities, including white communities. And where it‘s really hitting now is in working-class urban and rural communities, where you‘re just seeing astonishing growth in the rates of nonmarital childbearing. And that would all be fine and good, except these parents don‘t stay together. This may be one of the most devastating impacts of the recession.”

W. Bradford Wilcox of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers agrees. “We could be headed in a direction where, …for substantial portions of society, life is more matriarchal… The marginalization of working-class men in family life has far-reaching consequences.”

In Japan, which experienced its own lost decade in the 1990s as its economy collapsed and refused to revive, workers who began their careers amid that slump are and are now in their 30s , make up 60% of the cases of depression, stress, and work-related mental disabilities reported by employers, according to the Japan Productivity Center for Socio-Economic Development.

Borosage places his bets on green technology as the new way out of this decline. But, as he says, competition is already fierce, and we need some support for this fledgling savior, including “U.S. renewable energy standards that ensure a growing market for alternative energy, aggressive use of government procurement to help domestic producers, tax credits and other subsidies to help start-ups, expanded investment in science and technology and, finally, setting a price on carbon emissions.”

“This forward-looking manufacturing strategy is vital to rebuilding a broad middle class — as other nations have demonstrated. Germany, for example, maintains a large manufacturing trade surplus that is now fueling its recovery, even as its workers receive higher pay and better benefits and work far fewer hours than Americans.”

All I can say is, we’d better hurry up. We have an entire generation at stake.

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