Wired for Success

This story is so pre-September 2008 when the American economic house of cards collapsed. Prior to that, Gen Y thought they were so unique and special. Nothing like a nice global recession kick in the head to knock out some of the entitlement and self-absorption baggage between their ears.

Stick a fork in Gen Y. They're cooked. They were coddled through high school and then allowed to sleep walk through grade inflated rinky-dink college academic programs. Science and engineering are too intellectually demanding for them and the trades too physically demanding. Many Millennials are functionally unemployable because the no value "knowledge" jobs in banking and sales that they envisioned getting which were aligned with their marginal skill sets are going, going, gone...

The elitist Eastern establishment Y's coming out of Harvard and Yale and every other bastion of entitlement are flooding the employer of last resort - the Federal government. Ostensibly because they want to "make a difference." Nope, they are merely escaping from one illusory economic domain where no intrinsic value is created (investment banking) to another. Wait till the Fed Gov ship sinks under the weight of overwhelming debt.

With so many un-entitled, experienced workers competing for the same diminishing universe of jobs, Gen Y better grow up real fast. This ain't no party.

Interesting essay. But it’s missing an important part of the equation: Generation Jones, born 1954-1965, between the Boomers and Generation X.

Google Generation Jones, and you’ll see it’s gotten a ton of media attention, and many top commentators from many top publications and networks (Washington Post, Time magazine, NBC, Newsweek, ABC, etc.) now specifically use this term. The Associated Press' annual Trend Report chose the Rise of Generation Jones as the #1 trend of 2009.

It is important to distinguish between the post-WWII demographic boom in births vs. the cultural generations born during that era. Generations are a function of the common formative experiences of its members, not the fertility rates of its parents. Many experts now believe it breaks down this way:

DEMOGRAPHIC boom in babies: 1946-1964
Baby Boom GENERATION: 1942-1953
Generation Jones: 1954-1965
Generation X: 1966-1978

Here is an op-ed about GenJones as the new generation of leadership in USA TODAY:
http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20090127/column27_st.art.htm

Here's a page with a good overview of recent stuff about GenJones:
http://generationjones.com/2009latest.html

And here's a five minute video featuring dozens of America's top political commentators discussing the importance of Generation Jones:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ta_Du5K0jk

I have a feeling you are a Boomer with a Millennial kid and this is just your view of the world. Jeff Gordinier's research in X Saves the World totally crushes your opinions on this one.

Xers are opting out? Are you kidding me? We're responsible for the creation of Google and Amazon.com. Frankly, Xers (& I include Gen Jones with X - there are really not that many differences in their formative cohort experiences) are leading the way on everything. Plus they make up 42% of the American workforce, compared to 32% Boomers, and 21% Millennials: http://www.mccrindle.com.au/wp_pdf/Population_Map_USA_McCrindle_Research....

Millennials are great. But they are really young. And they don't have some super-sonic brain power that means that they'll be able to just take over without any life experience. I hate to break it to you, but anyone under age 45 grew up with technological change and can easily adapt to new technology. This is not something specific to Millennials.

Once again, the term gen Y, or generation Y, makes no sense. They are supposedly the children of Gen X, which is NOT the letter X, but the Roman numeral for TEN. Gen X people are the tenth generation of Americans born since the revolutionary war, going by 20 years per generation. So of course, gen Y is nuts, but it started being used by people who did not understand what gen X meant, and it spread and spread, as any cancerous error will. What's next: gen Z? And then what? Get smart, people.