I think it’s that the current generation of employees is *smarter* than their elders. Unlike baby boomers, they can’t be conned into believing that if you work hard, give your all for the company, and put in lots of unpaid overtime, you will be rewarded with a long-term career. They’ve watched their parents and grandparents work hard all their lives only to see their jobs outsourced to India, China, or Mexico, or to see themselves replaced by people here on H1B visas, and they’re not buying into it. They can’t be lured into taking a job by the same incentives that worked on baby boomers.
It doesn’t matter which industry; every industry and every profession has an “entry level.” Having been in management and having interviewed and hired a lot of candidates in recent years, there is a fundamental problem with the way that American management in general has treated American labor that goes back decades, and it has created a deeply cynical potential labor pool. Millennials and Gen Z workers are hard to hire, and the good ones are even harder to retain.
Good post.