Older generations continue to fret about Millennials and their job prospects as yet another survey is released.
The latest survey, from Bankrate.com, indicates that 56 percent of millennials delayed various life events because of student debt. But as Time points out, that means 44 percent haven’t, so perhaps concerns about generational failings might be hot air.
Broadly, however, millennials face financial difficulties.
As Steven Rattner covered in the New York Times, student loans compounded with a slow economy that hires them at lower wages than college graduates a decade ago makes it an unenviable position in society. When government debt, social security, and Medicare spending for older generations get factored in, the situation becomes worse. Paying debt and retirement obligations will be a difficult problem that present politicians have so far refused to address in a serious manner.
Generational broadsides, however, are tricky. The White House’s Council of Economic Advisers published a report on Millennials in October 2014 that emphasized just how difficult it is to make sweeping generalizations, calling the millennial generation “the largest, most diverse generation in the U.S. population.”
Delayed life events have become a Millennial meme. The New York Times obsesses over whether millennials will follow in their parents’ footsteps. If they don’t, maybe lower rates of homeownership and marriage aren’t signs of American doom, but a changing American society.
It’s important to remember the events of student loan debt. The Project on Student Debt states that 69 percent of graduated college seniors in 2013 from public and non-profit colleges had student loan debt. The average size of the debt was $28,400.
That figure is much higher than a decade ago, but it isn’t an insurmountable burden. Calling student loan debt a “crisis” is less apt than calling the rising debt burden a problem. The lower levels of wealth is affected by student loan debt and a weak economy (Rattner says Millennial median net worth is down 43 percent compared to Generation X in 1995), but it’s difficult to address these issues when the economy has been weak for years.
Millennials are most vulnerable because they’re the youngest in the workforce. That is to be expected. Creating opportunity for Millennials will not be an easy task, but that generation is not helpless.
They are highly educated, diverse in background and thought, and forced to use an entrepreneurial mindset. When their parents’ economy, and their grandparents’ demand on government for retirement and health care, fail to work for millennials, it’s up to them to find a new way.
As difficult as it is for Millennials, the problems should be seen as challenges to hone ingenuity, not as insurmountable, anxiety-inducing struggles.
