Recession Intensifies GenX Discontent At Work

CHICAGO -- They're antsy and edgy, tired of waiting for promotion opportunities at work as their elders put off retirement. A good number of them are just waiting for the economy to pick up so they can hop to the next job, find something more fulfilling and get what they think they deserve. Oh, and they want work-life balance, too. Sounds like Gen Y, the so-called "entitlement generation," right? Not necessarily, say people who track the generations. In these hard times, they're also hearing strong rumblings of discontent from Generation X. They're the 32- to 44-year-olds who are wedged between baby boomers and their children, often feeling like forgotten middle siblings -- and increasingly restless at work as a result. "All of a sudden, we've gone from being the young upstarts to being the curmudgeons," says Bruce Tulgan, a generational consultant who's written books about various age groups, including his fellow Gen Xers.

This isn't the first time Gen Xers have faced tough times. They came of age during a recession and survived the dot-com bust of 2000. In recent years, though, more members of the generation -- stereotyped early on as jaded individualists -- had families or began settling down in other ways. It was time, they thought, to enjoy the rewards of paying some dues. "We were starting to buy into the system, at least to some extent," Tulgan says, "and then we got the rug pulled out from under us." Now, in this latest recession, nearly two-thirds of baby boomer workers, ages 50 to 61, say they might have to push back their retirement, according to a recent survey from Pew Research.

Meanwhile, on the other end of the age spectrum are Gen Yers, who are often cheaper to hire and heralded for their coveted high-tech knowledge, even though many Gen Xers consider themselves just as technologically savvy. "It's so annoying," says Lisa Chamberlain, another Gen Xer who wrote the book "Slackonomics: Generation X in the Age of Creative Destruction." ''First, it was always the baby boomers overshadowing everything. Then there was this brief period in the mid-'90s where Gen X was cool. "Now it's, 'What are the new kids doing?' It's like 'Yo, hello, the Google guys are Gen Xers.'"

They can sound a little whiny. But there's also some evidence that Gen Xers really are being taken for granted at work. One survey done this year for Deloitte Consulting LLP, for instance, found that nearly two-thirds of executives at large companies were most concerned about losing Gen Y employees, while less than half of them had similar concerns about losing Gen Xers. The assumption is often that Gen Yers are the least loyal and most mobile, says Robin Erickson, a manager with Deloitte's human capital division.

However, she points out that a companion survey of employees found that only about 37 percent of Gen Xers said they planned to stay in their current jobs after the recession ends, compared with 44 percent of Gen Yers, 50 percent of baby boomers and 52 percent of senior citizen workers who said the same. Everyone surveyed worried about job security. Gen X and Gen Y were most likely to complain about pay. But a "lack of career progress," was by far the biggest gripe from Gen Xers, with 40 percent giving that as a reason for their restlessness, compared with 30 percent of Gen Yers, 20 percent of baby boomers and 14 percent of senior workers. Gen Yers, meanwhile, were more likely than the other generations to cite "lack of challenges in the job" as a reason they would leave, while baby boomers more often chose "poor employee treatment during the downturn" and a "lack of trust in leadership." The Deloitte study warns of a "resume' tsunami" once economic recovery begins, especially among Gen Xers, and notes that many executives were largely unaware of employee complaints unrelated to money.

Such findings don't surprise Rich Yudhishthu, a 37-year-old Gen Xer who's a business development consultant from Minneapolis. "The lack of promotional opportunities has pretty much killed job loyalty within a generation," he says. Liza Potts, a 35-year-old professor at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va., agrees, but also notes that the disillusionment took hold for many of her peers as far back as childhood. "Many of my friends had hoped to have jobs like their parents -- places they would stay forever that would take care of them like they did their parents. But then we saw that start to crumble for our folks," she says, recalling friends whose fathers and mothers got laid off from companies such as IBM or had to relocate.

Now worried about their own foreclosures, debt and unemployment, her generation is left to do the soul-searching their parents did. "Is there still time to become something different? Must we just accept where we are? Is there time to innovate elsewhere?" asks Potts who left her own career in the software and Internet industry for a life in academia. It's meant less money, she says, but also more freedom to choose her work hours and projects. In Chicago, 40-year-old real estate agent Adon Navarette has taken on extra jobs to make it, from consultant for an energy supply company to starting his own health and wellness business. He's heard his peers sniping about other generations, but also thinks their experience with other rough economic patches makes them resilient, too. It's a pivotal moment, he says. "What's going to define me as a Gen Xer is how I come out of this. What's going to define me is, 'What have I done to allow myself to take advantage of the market when the market turns around?'" he says.

Jon Anne Willow, co-publisher of ThirdCoastDigest.com, an online arts and culture site in Milwaukee, is among employers who've recently been able to hire more experienced candidates for jobs traditionally filled by 20somethings. They're hungry to work, she says. And as she sees it, that gives her fellow Gen Xers and the baby boomers she's hired a distinct advantage over a lot of the Gen Yers she's come across. "When the dust settles, they'll be exactly as they were before and we'll just have to sift through them and take the ones that actually get it and hope the rest find employment in fast food," she quips. Spoken like a truly jaded Gen Xer.

You still aren’t thinking.

If SS has been running a surplus since its inception, but there’s nothing but IOUs in the piggy bank...then OBVIOUSLY it’s quite a bit more than a scam to transfer wealth from youngsters to old people, isn’t it??!?!

Think some more.

“I’d settle for them returning all the money I’ve dumped into Social Security over my last 20 years.”

I’m 38 and I’ve been paying in for almost 25 years. I will do you one better and let them keep my money if they will let me and my employer out now.

This goes to a few others as well. This is starting to become a real point of contention for me on FR. Gen X-ers are not the bunch of slackers that you seem to think they are. I’m 38, a classic Gen-Xer. Let me tell you something. I’ve worked hard my whole life, since I was 13 years old delivering newspapers. Then I worked as a bagger in a grocery store that was so busy you had to raise your hand and ask for a bathroom break (usually denied). My parents never pampered or spoiled us for a minute. I’ve never been unemployed in my life. My wife takes care of our three boys and I bust my ass, picking up extra work whenever I can to make ends meet. I have to do so because of the punishing taxes which are being taken from me to fund the retirements of others. And guess what? When I reach “retirement age” that money will be gone.

"They're antsy and edgy, tired of waiting for promotion opportunities at work as their elders put off retirement."

______________________________________________

See, that right there is bullshit, and it's the first line of this whine. Cream rises. When I was younger I advanced over older guys and when I was older I worked for younger guys. I repeat...cream rises.

Your post refers mostly to Gen Y - don’t lump us Gen Xers in with them. Most Gen Xers don’t have boomer parents. Our parents were depression and WWII babies. That was a particularly small generation, which is why Gen X is also a small generation. They also taught us, by and large, to be more self-reliant than the boomers taught their children to be, since the idea of wealth redistribution as a good thing really caught on with the boomers.

The good-for-nothing boomers spawned the smug little jerks known as Gen Y who don’t read, won’t write, still have Mommy doing their homework for them while in college, bring a parent to job interviews with them, and expect to earn $100K fresh out of school.

I say this last part with some authority as I’m tenure-track college professor currently teaching Gen Y/Millenials and I’ve seen these things first-hand. Oh, and before you call me a lazy Gen X college professor who likes to have her summers off, it’s one of the four paying jobs I work in order to pay off my student loans and get ahead while the governement takes more and more of the profits from my work.

No. All “surplus” means is that one revenue stream (payroll taxes) was once enough to pay retirees receiving SS and Medicare and to provide revenue for other government boondoggles. Now the payroll tax is insufficient, so now general revenues and deficit spending are needed to transfer money to retires.

SS was always a wealth transfer scheme. It was never “insurance” or actuarially based. This was pointed out when it was adopted, and there is a vast conservative literature pointing out that how words and phrases like “trust fund”, “surplus”, “old age insurance” are just cynical misuses of words to mislead the public.

SS is not “insurance”, there is no “trust fund” (the IOUs aren’t backed by anything other than a willingness to tax the daylights out of working people for the benefit of geezers, which means that it is no different from any other statutory income transfer program.), and nobody has an “account”.

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