finance and consulting (even in a bleak job market) in order to join initiatives like Teach for America, whose application numbers have soared in recent years. Many Millennials have joined non-profits or new kinds of businesses that emphasize social entrepreneurship. (A good example is TOMS, a for-profit shoe company that donates a pair of shoes to people in the developing world for each pair of shoes you buy. The company has grown tremendously in recent years and is staffed primarily by Millennials). Some 85% of Millennials told pollsters in a recent study that they would rather take a job that paid less but had a high social impact than a higher paying job with no impact. The combination of a search for meaningful work, the economic crisis, and the rise of entrepreneurship has led to the emergence of a new kind of career seen throughout the Millennial Generation: the consultant-writer-speaker-blogger whose personal brand is of more value than the particular company they are working for at any given moment. Millennials see whatever their current job may be as transitional, and rightly so. A study by Heidrick and Struggles found that Millennials are expected to have had 14 jobs by the time they turn 38. While such transitional careers may seem unstable or uncertain
The Desire To live Meaningful lives anD Do Meaningful work only DeepeneD as fuTure crises unfolDeD anD as we wiTnesseD The power of Technology To allow us To sTarT Businesses anD organizaTions anD share Messages wiTh unpreceDenTeD ease. to those in older generations, for Millennials who live in a fast future world, where everything changes fast and change is the main constant, it’s nothing but normal. A few months ago I was speaking at a small college in Virginia and I asked the students in the audience if marriage was an important life goal they were focused on. Less than a quarter of the crowd raised their hands. When I asked them if finding someone they loved who they could share life with was important, almost all raised their hands. When I asked them if owning a home was a major life goal, not a single hand went up. Then, I asked them if they thought that being part of a meaningful community was important. Again, almost all of them raised their hands in agreement. These attitudes can be seen among Millennials all over America. In 2012, Americans under 30 experienced our lowest rate of homeownership on record. Similarly, the marriage rate among Americans under 30 is the lowest it has ever been. Our current generational experiences are shaped partially by our values and partially by economic realities. This generation does not view the American Dream as being synonymous with buying a home and getting married. Instead we see love and community, the things that
72
WESTONMAGAZINEGROUP.COM
the American Dream is really supposed to be about, as truly important. As compared to prior generations, Millennials are much more likely to have multiple simultaneous jobs rather than a single job. Most importantly, they are far more likely to want a “meaningful” job than prior generations, and far less likely to define their lives around their jobs. I am not talking about every single young person, or even the majority, But there is an important and exciting trend within my generation of people, who are marching to the beat of a new and different drummer when it comes to thinking about our lives, our careers, and our futures. But not everyone sees it this way. A series of charges have been leveled against this generation since we began entering the workforce: that we see ourselves as “entitled,” that we ask too many questions, and that we want regular performance reviews of our work because we need constant reinforcement. I am not here to defend every aspect of the Millennials or every behavior pattern. But I would urge people in older generations to look at the other side of the coin as well: the so-called entitlement that employers may perceive is the result of the promises that our parents and Boomers throughout society made to Millennials during prosperous economic times, that we could and would do great things and that we could change the world. Millennials’ requests for performance reviews may be misunderstood as confidence boosters, when, in fact, Millennials want to know if their work is meaningful or not to the company. And what’s so wrong with the idea that Millennial employees ask more questions and offer suggestions to help make their company better? Employers who are frustrated that Millennials don’t readily embrace traditional hierarchy and are asking for more collaborative processes should note that it is the new thinking that has allowed companies like Google and Facebook to overtake the positions of storied American companies in less than a decade and to become prime drivers of our daily lives. For parents, this is an important moment of understanding. Your child may never get a job that you would have recognized as a career just a decade or two ago. But keep in mind that what this generation wants to do (and what we are doing) is not unlike the kind of work our parents did when they were in their 20s, trying to bring about meaningful social change in the 1960s. We inherited that legacy from them as well. Millennials have the great gift of being able to understand the fast future world we are all living in. We’re trying to use the assets we have to leave our world better than we found it. I’m optimistic because I’ve seen this generation up close and spent time with its leaders, changemakers, and entrepreneurs and with ordinary Millennials who have all shown me the extraordinary potential they possess and the results they’ve delivered. You should be optimistic too.
*
David D. Burstein lives in New York City and grew up in Weston. His debut book Fast Future: How the Millennial Generation is Shaping Our World, from which this article is adapted, has just been published by Beacon Press. He is also the founder and executive director of the youth voter engagement organization Generation18 and director of the documentary films, 18 in’08 and Up to Us. A frequent contributor to Fast Company, Burstein has appeared as a commentator on youth and politics for a range of publications and media outlets, including CNN, ABC, NPR, The New York Times, USA Today, The Boston Globe, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. For more, visit www.davidburstein.com.