Posted on 11/16/2009 6:11:30 PM PST by llevrok
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.
The Deloitte study warns of a “résumé tsunami” once economic recovery begins, especially among Gen Xers, and notes that many executives were largely unaware of employee complaints unrelated to money.
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.
There’s a cliff ahead and you keep stepping on the gas.
Gen X is full of wonderful people, just like the Boomers and Gen Y. All this is liberal fluff meant to divide. News is spin. Did they interview every Gen Xer? Is this is scientific study we’re reading? It is opinion disguised as news.
It is dissembling at its most masterful and you are under its spell.
And very snarky.
There's lots of blame to go around, every generation since WWI (and earlier) has its stupid moments, and its moments where it did well. GenX is no different. Each generation has individuals that live poorly, and those that live well. Each generation has those who blame their plight on the one before it, and each generation has those that blaze a trail in spite of what they were given.
I'm only 46, so at the tail end of the Boomer era. We were educated in public schools to respect this nation, its founders and its history. I don't think that tradition carried on into the Gen X timeline.
I say all I do with all the love I have for the kids behind us.
They haven’t asked the questions they needed to and now are upset they don’t know the answers.
I am providing the answers. I just hope they have the wisdom to learn.
I’m considering stories such as the one linked in this story as attempts to fracture one generational set of leaders from the next.
Sounds like a good way to see it.
Thanks for all you do.
>>Thanks for all you do.<<
Love should always be shared :)
You do know what you call people who practice the rhythm method, dont you?
“parents”
;-)
LOL. Yup. I have a couple siblings born just that way. It is different than the rhythm method though, and much more effective. It is only rivaled in effectiveness with the pill(which is only effective because it is an abortifacent by preventing implantation of a fertilized egg) and surpasses slightly, condoms.
The rhythm people were on to something, NFP perfected it. It is so effective that people actually use it to conceive...
You’re just closer in mentality to the gen-xers. The kids who are in college and in the 20s are the ones that went democrat. Not the gen-x crowd. Most of my crowd wound up rejecting socialism.
The boomers are running congress for God’s sake. Look what they’re doing. 30-40 years ago they were screaming on campuses rebelling against authority. Now that they are the establishment they pass hate speech laws and set up ‘protest areas’ or tell you you can’t have a bible study in your dorm room because you’re a TA, or you’ll get arrested if you protest the way THEY did back in the 60s and 70s. And those bastards used molotov cocktails and destroyed buildings and crap like that. Now Pelosi goes on TV and cries that the tax protestors are using language that makes her scared.
I think you misread the comment.
I think she was referring to the (arrogant 0bamite) Gen Y’ers with the “we can hope they get a job in fast food” comment.
**Gen X doesn’t even have a clue it is clueless.**
There is something in the World that proves that wrong. Look at any picture or comparison of the US Military before the Gen X’ers joined and after. I have seen pictures and heard stories about the Army in the 1970’s and it was almost a joke. During the Reagan years when the young Gen X’ers started to join it became the most professional military in history. I am starting to worry about some of these new 18 year olds but for no other reason the Generation X can be proud of what the military has become.
The Gen X, Gen Y and Millennials have redefined military combat in ways their predecessors could only have hoped for. I have had the privilege of sitting with them and sometimes standing them up a drink. They are awesome and the power they can unleash is unprecedented in the history of armed engagement.
But remember, the Boomers got spit on for their service and were called "baby killers." They not only had to deal with the day to day hell of jungle guerrilla war, they had to deal with WWII mentality in a whole new kind of approach. The arguable shortsightedness of the WWII thinking probably killed many American young men. Many more were killed by Hanoi Jane and her fellow idiots who could not see at least the perceived importance of Vietnam.
How *DARE* you call the sacrifices of the young men and women during that time a "joke?" That kind of talk is what got many a young American GI killed.
You X-ers were the RECIPIENTS of the post-Vietnam thinking, and God bless and watch over every recruit, officer and volunteer who stood watch over our freedom.
But when I spoke of your generation's cluelessness, I mean of understanding things like "context." Clearly, as a representative of Gen X, you are truly clueless.
I have pinged some very special people and maybe they can school you better than me.
actually the pill prevents ovulation. It doesn’t do much to prevent implantation. I have several friends with “pill babies” conceived while on the pill because of missed pills/taking antibiotics/etc. If it were an abortifacent, these babies would not be among us.
Nothing but abstinence is 100%, something that sex ed never seems to tell young people. I hope you have many grandchildren when the timing is right. You sound like you will be a wonderful grandparent!
“Says a spokesperson for The Whiners.”
Spokesman, maybe, but I’m a Boomer, not a Gen-X’er. Yet you seem to be both incredibly bitter about X’ers, yet utterly forgiving of both Boomers and Y’ers, so maybe you’ll give me a pass, too.
I’m almost a “cusper”, like Obama, coming in between the two groups, yet I am more solidly on the Boomer side. So I got to see everything crumble behind me, in time for the X’ers to lose out. Students so depressed with declining school standards that they dropped out and educated themselves.
My group even missed Sesame Street, that vapid crap targeting lead paint chip inner city youths instead of classroom studies. My group still got to enjoy all the bells and whistles of school before they were ended due to declining enrollment.
Those who stayed in school really appreciated the ennui that comes with obvious time wasting. This was their motivation to not want jobs like that.
And please don’t pretend that in most jobs you don’t spend most of your time idling instead of working. Even the US military is happy to get 1 hour of work per day per individual, though they rarely do.
This is why Gen X’ers were so happy with Reagan. Because he didn’t come across as a patronizing time waster. That republicanism was fractured with H.W. Bush however, when he broke his promise, something which X’ers take personally.
It is not whining to want efficiency and honesty. The X’ers I’ve known have been hard workers, but have been consistently screwed out of the profits of their labor. In truth, the Y’ers now have it so bad they can hardly see how bad it has become. So they are completely boned.
So, to the end, we Boomers will gobble up as much as we can, leaving the scraps for the X’ers, and the bills for the Y’ers, which there is no conceivable way they can pay.
The Reagan years are also when the sergeants and lieutenants and captains who survived Vietnam, for the most part Boomers all, were the master sergeants and majors and colonels and generals who were running the US Military.
They knew what worked, and what didn't.
They were smart enough to stick with what worked.
No, that is not correct. Sometimes the dosage is not high enough, or pills are missed or affected by other meds, but the pill makes the womb hostile to implantation. It is a widely held misconception that the pill prevents ovulation for the fact that many women would not take it, nor any other chemical form of birth control (norplant, nuvoring etc). if they knew that it actually affected the womb not fertilization thereby causing a monthly abortion.
I am a 41 year old Generation Xer. I have no problem being ignored since that is the state of affaris we grew up with being dominated by Boomers and their constant reliving of the 60s/early 70s. Now we have to deal with all the Generation Yers with Edward the wimpy vampire. No wonder we are so grumpy. :)
Don’t totally blame us for Zero. According to the exit polls he won 30-44 by 52%-46% (Obama took 53% of the Popular vote.). Those Yers went for Hope and Change by a 66%-32% margin.
Sort of funny they talk about lack of “loyalty”. We learned early on that the whole concept of working for one company for your entire life was BS as the company you worked for will dump your arse at a moments notice.
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