Not Quite Adults: Why 20-Somethings Are Choosing a Slower Path to Adulthood, and Why It’s Good for Everyone

by Settersten, Richard; Ray, Barbara E.

  Chuck Underwood, president of Cincinnati-based management consultancy Generational Imperative, which helps companies manage generational differences in the workforce, finds that the youngest workers today put work–life balance at the forefront. They often view long workdays and overtime as an unacceptable intrusion on this balance. The Network’s own analysis also finds this general preference for shorter days and less bleedover into “personal” time. In 1976, 60 percent of young people valued more free time outside of work. This preference rose steadily over time such that by 2004, three-fourths of young people, regardless of their college and career aspirations, wanted more free time. Perhaps these young workers have drawn a lesson from their parents, whose work often threatens to consume them.

  The growing preference for some form of work–life balance that these trends point to is also reflected in the declining preferences for taking on more responsibility at work and working longer hours. In 1992, according to the Families and Work Institute study, fully 75 percent of young workers under age thirty-seven wanted to move into jobs with more responsibility. By 2002, that was down to 57 percent.4 The trend is clear: Less is more. This shift of drawing less personal identity and investment from work may solidify even more after the beating the recent recession has doled out. The sense that employers will disappear or that the ax is hanging over one’s head is more pronounced today, and it will likely shape the current generation profoundly. The recession may have just snipped off the last threads of company loyalty. Of course, the opposite is also a possibility—the threat of being usurped by a more willing, more committed worker in a tight job market might put personal fulfillment on the back burner.

  Let’s be clear about one thing, however: Less is more not solely because this generation has been, as 60 Minutes implies, spoiled from day one. Although there is no doubt a grain of truth to that, the larger reason for the changing attitudes toward work comes from above—from the big changes in the workforce that have made work less certain, more onerous, and more do-it-yourself. Gone is the company man, and may the fittest survive. It is this larger shift in the role of jobs in one’s life that has shaped this generation’s view on work.

  What is worrisome, however, is that although the majority of young adults prefers careers with less commitment, some are better positioned to negotiate this desire. Others with the very same aspirations but who lack the requisite credentials in a knowledge economy are in no position to bargain, and, as we show later, they are likely set on a collision course.

  Doing Well and Doing Good

  At the same time as this generation seeks more work–life balance and fewer hours than their overworked parents, they still want their jobs to matter. Skeptical as she may be of employers, Jillian still has a dream. She wants a job that is meaningful. While she is leery of giving her life to an employer, either in spirit or in actual years, she is not without ambition and the willingness to commit—to the right job or employer. Jillian and her well-positioned peers are looking for something more. They want to see an immediate impact from the work they do, as it benefits either themselves or others.

  The first person in her family to get a college degree, Jillian is now in graduate school in the field she loves: literature. She hopes to eventually get a PhD and teach in a community college or state university “where kids know what’s at stake.” She wants to ensure that young people like her—those who start out in a community college and pay their own way—find the same inspiration she did. “I want to give back to my community in a tangible sense,” she says, and “educate others for the betterment of our society.”

  “Doing well and doing good are becoming ever-more intertwined,” says Tom Watson, author of CauseWired: Plugging In, Getting Involved, Changing the World, a book about this generation’s approach to giving and civic values. “It is not universal yet in the corporate world, but a lot of people are thinking about what they’re going to do with their lives, and they want to see … what they do in jobs as doing some kind of good. This doesn’t mean they won’t be corporate lawyers and salesmen. It’s just that they’re very attuned to the idea that they shouldn’t do a job just to make money.” Of the 28 percent of young adults under age twenty-five who were working full-time when surveyed by a major marketing firm in 2006, nearly eight in ten wanted to work for a company that “cares about how it contributes to society.”5 A whopping 97 percent of respondents to the Harris Interactive Poll of Generation Y said they want jobs that allow them to have an impact on the world.

  Our Network interviews repeatedly echo the same ideals. At twenty-nine, Ben, a young Chicago attorney in a large corporate firm, was struggling with the decision of whether to give up his lucrative six-figure salary. He had been working in the same law firm for three years when he came to the realization that becoming a partner was not in the cards for him, the first stumbling block in what had been an otherwise charmed career. Ben had graduated from one of the top five law schools in the country and clerked for a U.S. attorney in New York before landing his current position. Lately, however, he had begun to struggle with existential questions about life, happiness, and the role of work. He started to consider other options for work and he even thought about giving up law altogether and going back to school for journalism. Ultimately, though, pragmatism won out; he is now considering a move to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

  “One of the things that is of value to me,” Ben says, “is working in a group environment and feeling like I’m part of a larger entity.” At the U.S. Attorney’s Office, he would be working for Uncle Sam. “I’d know who I was representing. I’d be representing the Smithsonian, the Department of Justice.” There, he says, he would feel value in bringing lawsuits on behalf of individuals who were facing discrimination or who had been harmed in some way by corporations or big businesses. “I would feel better about myself doing that than defending a large company, I’d have a passion for what I’m doing.” In the meantime, he’s taking steps toward greater fulfillment by doing pro bono legal work for low-income families in Uptown, a largely poor neighborhood in Chicago.

  Samantha also felt the pull of a more rewarding line of work. “The people that my agency serves are the most rewarding part of my job,” she says. After college, Samantha worked in a flower shop and later in a job-placement office, neither of which appealed to her. She wasn’t using her psychology degree or the skills she’d acquired in college, and she felt she was just clocking in at her job. Across the street from the job-placement office, however, was a small nonprofit organization that helped people with mental and physical challenges to live independently in the community. She was drawn to this small group of folks who were working hard to better the lives of those in need. Working with them, she could apply what she had learned in college. On her lunch hour one day, she asked if they needed any help. They did, and she was hired. Even with the $7,000 pay cut she took, she immediately felt a connection to both the job and the people she served. “I wouldn’t be the person I am today if I hadn’t had an opportunity to engage in life with them,” she says. She also felt that she was making a more meaningful contribution to the lives of the individuals and families she served.

  By the time we interviewed Samantha, at age twenty-nine, she had become executive director of the NGO. She works long hours for little pay and “complains a lot sometimes,” but never really considers leaving because the job is meaningful. “To me, I want to know that I made a real honest difference for the folks that we provide services to.”

  The Quest for Meaning Meets Self-Esteem

  Giving back through meaningful work may be a hallmark of this generation. Another hallmark, however, is a mismatch between their aspirations and reality. And this is where the collision course begins that can leave young adults frustrated and drifting.

  Like Sean Aiken and others of this generation, Dustin has a strong desire for a job he is passionate about, but this desire is coupled with restlessness and uncertainty. “I’ve always had two or three t
hings going at once,” he says. “I still don’t know what I want to do.”

  Dustin grew up in a tight-knit family on Chicago’s North Side. His parents, now retired, were old “hippies,” in his words, and “totally supportive.” For most of Dustin’s twenties, he lived next door to them in a second house they owned. When they sold it, he moved, like many Chicagoans, into the “mother-in-law” garden apartment in his brother’s two-flat, paying nominal rent and relying heavily on his parents’ support. Dustin has a college degree, but he never saw himself as the college sort or the type to be focused on a career. He’s not using his degree to move up a corporate ladder. Instead, he sees himself as an entrepreneur. He has dabbled in many things, all freelance in one form or another. His most serious venture was a bar band he led, with dreams of hitting it big. His parents lent him money for demos and promotion when the venture showed some initial promise, but it ultimately went nowhere. Today, at age thirty, he has landed a job with the city government through family connections, but, according to him, it is by no means permanent.

  “Maybe people are fine with the long-term,” Dustin says. “I don’t know. Those who do know what they want to do are sometimes just stuck, I think. Maybe they’re fine with that, I don’t know. I leave myself outs. I have two or three things going, maybe two jobs and an idea. It’s not that I’m afraid of committing to the job. There’s something to be said for a pension and a lifelong job, but at the same time, you really have to like that job. You have to be willing to put up with the crap of that job.”

  Instead, Dustin would rather make a killing by creating a niche product or innovation, so that he could spend the rest of his life living off the interest. He does not need to live like a king—a middle-class income, he says, is fine. “I don’t need $10 million. If I could get a 5 percent return on $1 million, that would enable me to have $40,000 a year forever. I’d be fine with that. I’d have my budget. I’d have it all covered, and then I could work a part-time job and maybe travel or volunteer. I’m still figuring out how to get there. I have a list of things I want to try.”

  Dustin is floundering as he grapples with his high aspirations and the fact that he lacks what it takes to get his foot in the door in a creative, knowledge economy. Being an average kid is not the ticket it used to be. Plain vanilla doesn’t count. As Daniel Pink in his book A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers Will Rule the Future puts it, it’s now all about the extra toppings.

  In a world where competition comes not only from home but also from across the globe, young adults today must stand out in a much larger, much more competitive pool. Average just doesn’t cut it. Dustin’s rambling attempts to find a path for himself provide a peek into what it feels like to be competing in this market. His aimlessness is reflected in many of the other interviews we conducted. We repeatedly heard from young adults who wanted: “a job where I’ll be respected,” “something where I’ll grow as a person,” “a career where I’ll continue learning,” “something where I’ll engage myself in a lot of different ways.” When jobs do not match their lofty aspirations, they often simply move on, like Allen did.

  Allen’s first job out of college, as a consultant in a government position, lasted less than a year. A graduate of University of California–Berkeley, with a double major in history and ethnic studies, Allen was excited to be earning a salary for the first time in his life. Six months into the job, however, he began to hate it. “I didn’t think that my compensation reflected my contribution, so that made me upset, and then the project I was placed on was just dreadful. The people I had to report to, they were definitely ‘federal workers,’ middle-aged. They were just there to make their paycheck—and I had to work for them! And I was twenty-two, twenty-three, and you get beaten down, you definitely lose interest. It felt like a waste of talent.”

  Allen’s friend hooked him up with a job in San Francisco at a technology start-up, and he thought, “Yeah, work for two years and hit it rich and, you know, go and retire. Go and get my PhD in history.” Unfortunately, he clashed with a new supervisor before he could make it rich. The company let him go, citing a lack of integrity. A few months later, however, he was rehired after the supervisor himself was fired. According to Allen, he was rehired because “they were well aware of my capabilities and that was pretty much it.” Today, he is working in sales in that company, although he says he and his fellow sales associates are “very disgruntled of late” over the “pay, the lack of direction in the company, and our CEO’s an idiot.” Allen is looking to make a change as soon as one comes along. “I would definitely make the jump,” he says.

  Their quest for the perfect job leaves many in this group searching for the right fit. But in reality, only a handful of the best and brightest have the luxury of seeking the perfect job and, in this economy, even many of these young people will have to settle for less. Yet settling is often not a part of their vocabulary. The culture that surrounds young people today is one of instant fame and gratification. Glamorous jobs are often not what they seem, and the hard work they entail is sometimes not in this generation’s sightlines. This all makes for a rude awakening when the job market does not cooperate, especially for the large middle tier of young people who are not highfliers.

  In The Ambitious Generation: America’s Teenagers, Motivated but Directionless, Barbara Schneider and David Stevenson, a sociologist and education expert, found that 70 percent of teens in a large, nationally representative survey in the 1990s expected to obtain a professional job. Meanwhile, very few said that they wanted to be machinists, secretaries, or farmers. While they had high aspirations, more than one-half of the teens and young adults had little sense of the qualifications or education they needed to get there.6 Nor were they logically pursuing their goals. Instead, many were drifting and directionless, likely among the career nomads we see in the workforce today. Their expectations outshine their qualifications and, based on our interviews, this mismatch continues to be alive and well today.7

  As we’ve already seen in the chapter on education, and will see again in the chapter on parent–child relationships, parents have also set their kids up for this collision course. They have raised children to have unbridled expectations that do not match their characteristics, abilities, and resources. Educators and school systems also reinforce these messages. The clash between aspirations and achievements seems particularly likely to occur as young adults seek higher education and work. Allen, at least, has the credentials to back him up in his quest for the perfect job. Dustin has absorbed the ethos of meaningful and exciting work, but he’s negotiating from an entirely different vantage point. His credentials shoehorn him into a job sector with a lot less flexibility or patience for dabbling, and a lot less generosity and “give.”

  “Work that makes a difference.” “Something you can believe in.” “Work you can take to heart.” “Being able to see your impact.” “Giving back.” We heard these expectations in nearly every interview. Being socially useful in a job, however, is often a privilege of the well positioned in life. For young adults like Ben and Samantha, with a college degree and a lifetime of solid achievements, the search for fulfilling, meaningful work that does not intrude too heavily into their lives is an indulgence they can often afford. For the rest, having a job that is meaningful and that gives back is more often a luxury than a reality. The rift between those who are positioned to be selective—even amid a recession—and seek that meaningful job that gives back and those who, unbeknownst to them, do not have that luxury of choice is growing ever wider.

  Job-Hopping to Nowhere

  Everyone has picked up the notion that jobs should be more than just jobs. The high work ambitions of this generation are not confined to those with college degrees. Those without degrees do not want to work in meaningless jobs either. They do not want to spend ten hours a day patching together two part-time jobs. But the odds are they will be forced to do so. In this brutal economy, their fate is more precarious than ever. As Monica’s jo
b-hopping suggests, the collision between their ambitions and reality can be sobering.

  Monica grew up in a working-class family in St. Paul, Minnesota. She has a ten-year-old son and rents an apartment in the suburbs. Monica originally planned to attend college and focus on musical engineering, but her plans were derailed when she became pregnant as a high school senior. Instead, she took some accounting courses at a local community college, only to find “it wasn’t the right time. I wasn’t ready to go to school. It was a lot to be raising a little child, working part-time, and going to school … so I dropped out and just worked for a while.”

  After dropping out, Monica worked in the accounting department of an insurance company, but she hated it and soon quit. Her mother read about promising job prospects for paralegals, so, with her encouragement, Monica went back to school and later landed a job in a police precinct during an employee’s maternity leave. Once the employee returned, though, Monica was out of a job. She moved on to a small legal firm for five months, but they did not have enough work to keep her busy. “I can’t handle that. I need to be busy. I cannot stand reading the newspaper all day.”

  Bored with the job, Monica quit and took a position at a temporary employment service, which placed her in a job testing legal software. By now, she was working pretty far afield from her paralegal degree. “It was a temporary job that they thought would possibly turn into a full-time job or permanent job, but it never did,” she says. She worked there for four months before leaving. “Any person off the street could have done the searches and run the testing. You didn’t need a paralegal degree,” she told us. Ultimately, she became frustrated with the mismatch between what she had imagined and what the reality was turning out to be. Life in the service sector is seldom glamorous, interesting, or well paid.