You may have heard that millennials are living at home more than young people in previous generations. In 2014, the number of young women living with their parents eclipsed their counterparts in 1940, and last year 43% of young men were living at home, which is the highest rate since 1940.
I’m trying to maintain an open mind about the economic struggles of millennials and not expand my own anecdotal experiences beyond reasonable boundaries, but I can’t help but wonder if it’s not high expectations rather than economic struggle that is keeping these people at home longer.
Do millennials expect more, and as a result, are less willing to live in substandard circumstances and struggle to survive?
When I think about how my friends and I lived during our post high school and college years, the one thing that marks that time is struggle.
- Tiny, cruddy apartments
- Cheap, carbohydrate-laden food
- Multiple roommates
- Exceptionally long working hours (often working two or three jobs to make ends meet)
- Few amenities.
We slept on floors and in closets. We drove dilapidated vehicles. We hung out in parking lots. We took dates to pizza places. It was not uncommon to have our electricity shut off from time to time.
And this wasn’t the case for just me. The majority of people who I was growing up with after high school and college lived this way.
Again, perhaps my scope is limited, but as a young people, we preferred to eat elbow macaroni, sleep on floors, and watch black-and-white televisions rather than living with our parents.
Are millennials simply unwilling to endure such hardships given the way that the overly-indulged way that so many were raised, or are the economic realities of today truly more debilitating than my generation?
An honest question.
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I absolutely agree with you. I think this generation feels like college is a "must" right out of the gate of high school- not planning or foreseeing their long-term goals. College campuses now resemble resorts rather than brick and mortar places to debate, discuss and grow intellectually.
I have a friend working towards her 6th year degree and in some of her classes are students that have not worked in the world yet, and are earning their Master’s in Education. She told me that during one break-out session in class, a young woman said, "I don’t know how I’m going to get all my work done this weekend because there are so many Halloween parties!" The thought of prioritizing work first never even crossed this person’s mind.
Many of my coworkers have children graduating from college and have now decided (after their parents paid their college tuition bills and more) that they don’t want a career because they see how stressed their parents are. So they live at home and argue with them when they don’t pay for their car insurance (at the age of 22) and put pressure on them to work.
I don’t have nearly the same story as you, Matt but my parents told me that "If you want to go to college, figure out a way to pay for it yourself." To make a long story short I did, and through the process of hard work and determination I made it through. I wouldn’t change a thing about it. That struggle and hardship made me into the person I am today and has helped me be an efficient, effective, and successful.
It’s a good point about colleges. Resorts rather than classrooms. Student loan debt is a crushing thing, and we must do something to help people, but there were options when purchasing an education. Community colleges and state schools.
No surprise that resorts are pricey.
As someone in the age group in question, I just wanted to add this:
State schools are still expensive. The University of Illinois costs, for in-state students, over $30,000. That’s not much less than most private universities.
Also, to work today and be a student, it is nearly impossible to make enough money to pay for school and any other expenses. Most college students work minimum wage jobs, and minimum wage is just not enough, especially when most students are full time and can’t work 40 hours a week. (http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/04/the-myth-of-working-your-way-through-college/359735/)
I don’t know a single person from my graduating class who didn’t want a job. Everyone knows that jobs earn money which is needed to live. They may not want to destroy their soul through work, but they will do what must be done.
I’ve been to a good handful of college campuses over the past few years for tours. They are not resorts. Dorms are small, dining halls are crowded, and facilities are outdated. Yes, some schools are updated and provide good facilities, but those take the shape of new science equipment and student resources, not entertainment.
Honestly I’m tired of hearing people generalize millennials. We are not some inhuman group you can observe and judge. It’s frustrating going into a world where no one takes you seriously because of the year you were born. It’s frustrating going into a world designed to make us fail. We need degrees to get decent paying jobs because rent has gone up. But tuition has gone up and we need to get minimum wage jobs. Those jobs can’t keep us afloat, so we can’t pay for our education, which makes it nearly impossible to get a better job so we can pay the rent.
And tell me that moving out of my parent’s house is normal when American culture is one of the few that insist that living with my parents is shameful and selfish.
Trust me, it’s not the millennials that we should be criticizing. It’s the people who think that nothing has changed. It’s not the millennials. It’s the world we’re living in.
I wonder about this too. My son is 26 and only lived at home for the first five months after college graduation, but he is one of the lucky ones, who was able to find a job in his chosen field after those five months, and has been working continuously ever since. Yes, holding down two, occasionally three jobs. However, he’s still working out the whole cash flow logistics thing, and there’s a certain baseline of amenities that he takes as a given that’s galaxies away from the elbow macaroni, sleeping on the floor lifestyle that you describe and I remember. My take on your question is that it’s a little of both. It’s pretty tough out there today, even for those of us who’ve been at it for a few decades. For those starting out, maybe a little slack-cutting is in order. The problem is that when you love them, sometimes it’s hard (for soft-hearted me, anyway) to know where to stop cutting slack and start applying some tension.