Millennials get castigated by their elders (and their peers) for being entitled and lazy, but the debate over individual perseverance ignores the structural economic developments that are squeezing young Americans.
The growing costs of college, and the rising costs of living in the most economically productive cities, push millennials toward riskier behavior. To pay off those loans, and get work experience, they flock to cities with high rent. Thanks to restrictive, anti-density zoning policies that prevent housing growth, millennials pay inordinate amounts of their income for housing.
While not wise for their personal budgets, millennial unemployment that’s twice as high as the national average pushes them away from parts of the country with a lower cost of living.
Posing the question of whether millennials are entitled or underpaid, CNN tried to develop the tensions emanating from a former Yelp employee who complained about her low wages in an open letter on Medium.
Student loan debt has climbed, and the value of a college degree has fallen. College graduates still earn more than their peers without a degree, but that premium is falling, either by more competition from other graduates, or the higher cost for the degree in the first place. Nor is a college degree a social equalizer like it once was. Had costs been restrained to levels seen in the 1990s, high rents wouldn’t pose such a problem.
That, however, isn’t the world where millennials live.
The good news is that the “barista with a B.A.” stereotype is more myth than fact. Millennials, if they survive an initial few years of poverty and develop job experience, have more promising careers ahead of them. Their elders, in their rush to scold millennials for assumed personal flaws, simply don’t realize the cost pressures millennials face today. Owning a smartphone and watching Netflix are nice to have, but focusing on contemporary forms of entertainment obscures the problems young Americans face.
Until more attention focuses on how to make cities more affordable, and how to expand opportunity for the youth of America, more resentful will develop than solutions. The status quo isn’t working for them, and that could explain part of the attraction millennials have to the Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump campaigns.
