CBS's Hit Job on The Millenial Generation

Have you heard of the Millenials? They're the newest college grads out in the work force, but according to Morley Safer they're apparently 20 something spoiled rich kids who are driving executives all over the country to drink. Safer, whom I normally respect as a pretty fair journalist, does a hatchet job on an entire generation, accusing them of disloyalty, petulance, and general brattiness while living at home and mooching off their parents. Ah, but they're also devious, "tech savvy", and cunning opportunists whose goal, it seems, is to get the perfect job--how selfish of them!--and leave corporate America high and dry in her moment of need.

I'm not sure what's worse in all this, the dishonesty or the shallow thinking, the willful ignorance or the concious attempt to create new stereotypes. And at least, if you're going to create new stereotypes, at least make them interesting. Instead the 60 Minutes piece recycles stereotypes of previous generations and updates them for the new millenium. The only thing that's missing is the accusations of rampant drug use and wild sexual frenzy.

For example, you might think that previous generations have been accused of sponging off of mom and dad, but no, the millenials are the worst:

"There once was, if not shame, a little certain uneasiness about being seen to be living at home in your mid 20s, yes?" Safer asks Mary Crane.

"Not only is there no shame with it, but this is thought to be a very smart, wise, economic decision," Crane says.

"Well, that would suggest that they probably had pretty happy childhoods," Safer says.

"And who couldn't be happy when you're growing up in a world where there's no failure?" Crane points out.

Stop and appreciate the logical leap there for a minute... they live at home because they've never expereinced failure? Whereas failure makes you move out into your own place? I don't get it. But in the passage above, of course is the another old stereotype that is being updated to a new generation, the old canard that self esteem is just a crock, and that by rewarding kids for their effort you really are just creating a spoiled child who feels entitled and never really learns to do anything. The problem with this argument as it's applied here is that the entire piece seems to focus on just how successful this generation is, how in demand they are, and how they are naming their price. I'm not sure if that's true--I've seen 20 somethings looking for work--but if it is, it sort of suggests that however they were raised worked out ok, given that they're happy, self-assured, and successful.

But that seems to be exactly what makes some critics upset. These young people are just too damn good for their own good.

If this generation knows anything, it's that there are more jobs than young people to fill them.

"I believe that they actually think of themselves like merchandise on eBay. 'If you don't want me, Mr. Employer, I'll go sell myself down the street. I'll probably get more money. I'll definitely get a better experience. And by the way, they'll adore me. You only like me,'" Salzman says.

Well, if that's true--and I'm not saying it is, as this piece makes plenty of dubious assumptions--then by God more power to 'em. Name your price. If you can get away with it, so what? If they aren't as good as they think, they'll fall on their face, right? And according to the logic presented here, that failure would be the best thing in the world for them, and might even get them out of the house.

But man, these kids are lazy, as the Wall Street Journal's Jeffrey Zaslow points out--and I think this must be the first time any generation has ever been accused of not working as hard as their parents (/snark/):

Well, except, when we were younger, you had a piano teacher who expected you to practice your piano and work hard at it, and the parents expected it. And now, the parents say, 'Have fun, learn the piano, practice a little bit.' So, there's not the expectations that they will achieve and work hard," Zaslow says. "It's not the same work ethic."

Not only that, they never had jobs as teenagers:

Today, fewer and fewer middle class kids hold summer jobs because mowing lawns does not get you into Harvard.

Actually, what fewer and fewer kids today do has nothing to do with the generation that's no longer kids, but let that go for a minute. (Does anyone edit this shit?!) Now, not that anyone cares about facts, but here are some good ones about teen employment historically. I've put in bold the part about the lazy-ass millenials, who would've been seniors maybe around the year 2000:

During the peak of summer employment rates in 1978, the seasonally-adjusted employment rate among teens was 49.1 percent, meaning that nearly one out of every two U.S. teens was employed. This year, the summer employment rate for teens was only 34.5 percent, making it the worst year in recent history for teens looking for summer work.

The Center for Labor Market Studies' report findings show that the summer job market for teens in 2007 was worse than the previous historic low (36.1 percent), which was reached in the summer of 2004.

As recently as 2000, 45 percent of teens were employed during the summer. However, when the country began experiencing a mild recession in 2001, the market for teen summer employment collapsed. Teen summer employment rates fell every year from 2001 through 2004. Despite minor increases during the summers of 2005 and 2006, summer employment rates fell sharply again this year, a trend which experts find troubling.

Zaslow knows who's to blame for it this laziness, too. I'm not making this up:

"You have got a guy like Mister Rogers, Fred Rogers on TV. He was telling his preschoolers, 'You're special. You're special.' And he meant well. But we, as parents, ran with it. And we said, 'You, Junior, are special, and you're special and you're special and you're special.' And for doing what? We didn't really explain that," Zaslow says.

See? The problem with the new generation of workers is that they are spoiled, they've never been told that they suck, they all won first prize at everything, and they never failed.

I wonder if there are any people in their 20's out there who have been told that they suck, who failed, who didn't win everything they tried, and who failed more than a few times. My guess is there are.

If you can stand to watch it, the imagery of the clip does its level best to make the workplace look like a playground or a college dorm. There is a parade of costumes at a shoe company, big cushy seats, and back rubs. And of course laptops everywhere.

I taught this generation, and I didn't recognize them from the 60 Minutes hit job. The recent grads I know are confident and ambitious, but to lump an entire group together is stupid. Sure, lots of them are experiencing failure, and some of them are petulant. But a lot of them are also doing great things, finding their way in the world, and even have their own apartments. On the few times when there is some honest discussion with members of this age group, they seemed pretty self assured. It's pretty difficult to hear this, and think some young people don't have their heads on straight:

"We're not going to settle. Because we saw our parents settle," Dorsey says. "And we have options. That we can keep hopping jobs. No longer is it bad to have four jobs on your resume in a year. Whereas for our parents or even Gen X, that was terrible. But that's the new reality for us. And we're going to keep adapting and switching and trying new things until we figure out what it is."

Is that such a bad thing? I mean, has corporate America shown such loyalty to its employees during the previous generations that young people have learned to stick it out with their bosses through thick and thin? I give these guys credit for understanding what many of our parents had to learn the hard way: that your employer can chew you up and spit you out, let you go at age 55 with no other options, pull your insurance coverage out from under you, or put all of your retirement into worthless Enron stock. Why shouldn't these young people look out for number one?

One last observation: I kept thinking as I was watching this that all I've heard for the last few years is that our educational system is subpar and we're losing out to India and China, where big corporations have to go to find engineers. Well it's funny, but Morley Safer seems to think corporate America is falling all over itself to hire these expensive spoiled brats right here in New York and LA. I recommend they go to New Delhi for some cheap, humble help that's already experienced failure and wasn't ruined by Mr. Rogers.