Millennials: The Unluckiest Generation In Modern History?

at the time we thought the Great Recession was a once-in-a-generation help maybe once in a century economic disaster as anxious and unsettled as maybe I've ever felt how am I gonna make enough to really feel comfortable or you know just to make ends meet at that point I just felt really betrayed by the system for those of us that graduated into the worst economy since the Great Depression many of us haven't gotten over it I had this idea and this dream this vision of where my life is gonna go and then I had to put it on hold because there weren't jobs out there I still haven't recovered from the 2008 recessions well terrible for most everyone are particularly awful for those just entering the job market if you enter the labor market a long time which this generation did you're gonna have ongoing problems they're not transitory they're ongoing and right as some of us Millennials were finally getting back on our feet bam pandemic I think it's fair to say it couldn't have come at a worse time for them for the first time in modern memory we're having to confront an ugly truth that my generation will be worse off than my parents and grandparents were not because of anything we did or didn't do but simply because we were born in the wrong years what's our parents told us what our adult life should be it just didn't work out this is think again with me Andrew stern where I take you every step of the way as I dig into compelling complex or controversial topics that make us wonder do we need to think again unless you have a private yacht to escape to this pandemic has been excruciating for just about everyone it's too early to know which generations will be most injured by this that'll take years to sort out but one thing we do know is that the one-two punch of the Great Recession followed by kovat 19 in the span of just 11 years is an economic challenge different from anything we've seen before and as fate would have it the timing is uniquely bad for my age group Millennials have lower rates of employment overall they have and lower earnings lower savings and then layered on top of that they have debt which of course was is deeply related to that lower employment and lower earnings that they carry with them over time and they're carrying all of that into this particular economic crisis the ethos of America is upward mobility the American dream is to built on the promise that each generation builds upon the previous one and quality of life improves steadily first far back as US census data goes that's been true household wages have risen relative to previous generations that is intelligent X handed the baton to us across the education spectrum we're earning less than the previous generation but why were the most diverse most educated most productive generation in American history but from an economic standpoint we could not had been dealt the worst hand twice and as I learned from the experts it all has to do with timing when a recession happens the impacts are often uneven these cohorts who are coming of age during economic downturns unfortunately experienced really really strong negative economic impacts they come out to a very difficult labor market and it's hard to get a good first job it may be hard to get a job at all but if they do get a job they're likely to get a job that's maybe lower pay and lower quality than the job that they would have gotten had they graduated a bit earlier in 2008 nine or ten I think most of us were pretty happy to have a lousy first job just so long as we had what I didn't realize at the time though is that that first job has major impacts that ripple out across your entire career it is true that the trajectory of your economic future and in some ways your your life is altered permanently on average the first job that you get sets you up for the second job which sets you up for the third job right and so where you start in that career trajectory really I checked in with half a dozen or so of my fellow Millennials some I knew some I didn't and their experiences bore that out across the board I either had to prepare myself for like a long stretch of not being able to work when I graduate to Denton or you know just trying to scrap for anything possible at that point there were no jobs and I remember being friends with seniors who were getting ready to graduate they were panicked that they couldn't find jobs and so they either had to work for free or work in a different industry and and the same thing happened to me when I finally finished college in 2010 the legal market just completely blew up it went from you know jobs everywhere at high pay to there aren't any jobs seasoned attorneys don't have work new attorneys can't get work and it was just chaos that was the first time that I ever remember battling something that sounded like depression or anxiety I was 30 pounds heavier than I am now and had high blood pressure at the age of 27 I remember the the mental and the physical toll that it took was pretty profound compared to Gen X twice as many Millennials took on student debt to go to college or grad school and for those who took on debt on average it was 50% more than Gen Xers it also doesn't help the college was dramatically more expensive for us about twice as much for many of us our starting salaries were lower than what you'd normally expect Millennials earned 20% less than baby boomers did at the same age we can't buy a house we're less able to save for a rainy day we hesitated to get married or have kids in 1965 the typical American first married around 22 years of age by 2017 it was closer to 28 in 1972 the average age of first-time parents was about 24 years old now it's 28 and a half everything was delayed at best or impossible at worst they're not making more than their parents that speaks directly to the so-called American dream the idea that each generation you do better than the one preceding it and so if they compare themselves to their parents which is a very salient comparison ah they're gonna fall short more frequently than had before been the case they've been left in a situation where they're sort of being held responsible as though their actions are what caused the circumstances in which they find themselves when in fact it was actually decisions that were made at a much higher level so we got dealt a crappy hand our timing was monumentally unlucky and there was very little we could do about it for most of us this completely changed our mindset and outlook for the future individuals like millenials who come of age during economic downturns are more pessimistic about the economy and their economic outlook but they're also more pessimistic about their their future their future chances of success there the likelihood that they will be happy in their old age or the likelihood that they will retire comfortably do you feel like this country and our economic policies work for you do you feel like you were set up for success in the modern economy in America if you were to ask me a couple months ago I would say fairly yes but now I don't I don't think so those two events the relatively close proximity and time between the two has shaken a lot of confidence that I have in the fundamentals of our system I just felt really betrayed by the system even though I was like complying to what is to be like legitimate in this system these feelings of angst and insecurity translates to us taking fewer risks we're less likely to start a business more hesitant to buy a house or have kids the normal thing is that power the American economy and it's become all but a pipe dream for so many of us and that was before kovat landed the second of the one-two punch nearly a decade later as many of these folks are getting back onto their feet and getting back on to a career trajectory that maybe be expected to beyond five years ago they're getting hit again and that sort of one-two punch I think is is something that we've never experienced before and that is likely to have pretty devastating economic impacts for this for this generation the stability that I was like fighting to get like I did finally get when I turned thirty like the week I turned thirty and when the pandemic happens for it to stop and be stalled that is pretty traumatic you know I I don't know where to go from here it's always been a big punch in the face every couple of years Hillary lost her job and said she's still waiting on unemployment checks Eric contracted Kovac nineteen and after ten days fighting it recovered went back to work and was laid off a couple days later this roller coaster keeps going up you know when's it gonna come down is it gonna come down and now it's like alright it came down it came down hard Brooks is on a one-year contract as a professor for next year but with steep cuts likely to hit higher education long term job security is no guarantee Robby was scarred enough from the Great Recession that he chose a completely different area of law to practice specifically so he could weather a recession I still haven't recovered from 2008 and I I'm kind of lost of where I'm at now when I asked my larger friend group about plans for getting married buying house or having a kid many of them straight up laughed at me when I asked about their outlook for the future almost none of them were outright optimistic this is partly why medicare-for-all canceling student loan debt and other big structural changes proposed by politicians like Bernie Sanders Elizabeth Warren and AOC resonate with young folks across the country they're the ones who the system doesn't seem to be working for those who haven't fared well under the existing set of arrangements tend to blame themselves that's part of the American sort of self-reliance ethic I think there has been a change in that sensibility and a greater recognition that some of the problems that this generation has been experiencing are not due to individual failings but rather to systemic one the individuals who experienced economic downturns during their impressionable years are more likely to believe that economic success is the result of luck rather than hardware the problems are reaching such a level that it's hard to see yourself as the only person who chose your way into a particular situation because it's the same situation in which you see your friends and your relatives [Music] hey NBC News viewers thanks for checking out our YouTube channel subscribe by clicking on that button down here and click on any of the videos over here to watch the latest interviews show highlights and digital exclusives thanks for watching

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Keywords: Think, Digital Original Video, Politics, Digital Docs, Economy, Business, U.S. News, Hot Takes, Jobs, In Focus, Latest Stories, Coronavirus - Money, NBC Originals, news, NBC, NBC News, Breaking News, US News, World News, Current Events, Top Stories, Opinion piece, opinion, controversy, controversial, NBC Think, NBC News Think, bad luck, poor timing, worsening economic trends, millennials, Andrew Stern, lost generation, sociologists, Unluckiest Generation, Modern History, youth

Id: ikp0Qfgxmkc

Length: 11min 40sec (700 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 02 2020