First published August 2009
It's fashionable these days to make all sorts of claims about the latest generation to enter the workforce — my generation — Generation Y. Among other things, we are cocky, attention-deficient, home-bodied, highly educated, spoilt and tech-savvy; in other words, unemployable.
Indeed, the weekend broadsheets provide a seemingly endless litany about how we're being dismissed from our comfortable graduate programs, how we're failing to find new jobs, how we're setting our career expectations too high and even how the entire GFC might be just desserts for the generation who've had it all. Incidentally, this sort of commentary has not lessened my generation's tendency to egotism.
Whether we deserve it or not, Gen Y is copping a mouthful of humble pie in this economic downturn. Youth unemployment is at 12.3 per cent, and set to rise with the Government's changes to youth allowance. Smug observers suggest it's time to hunker down, stop making unreasonable demands, and accept that we'll have to tough it out in low-pay, low-benefits jobs for a few years. For once, everything's not just going to be handed to us on a silver platter.
I have two things to say to these observers. First: take a look at yourself. Yes, you're old, but that doesn't make you your dad. You are a Baby Boomer: you never lived through the Depression. Don't talk to me about hunkering down to work, hippy — I actually attended classes during my university degree, and am currently seeking out work.
'Starting at the bottom' just isn't as easy as it used to be. Even apprentices, clerks and administrative assistants need tertiary qualifications these days, whereas my dad, with a year 11 certificate, got his first job as a journalist by showing up the day another guy quit.
Point the second: If you could stop prophesising our doom for a moment, you might see that we're not as hopeless as we seem. In fact, we're pretty shrewd. How else do you explain the fact that while we struggle in this increasingly demoralising job market we're living in your house, eating your food, and being told how special we are (by you, our parents)?
We Gen Y-ers have cleverly secured for ourselves a very comfortable niche in society: staying at home longer, racking up degrees into our mid-20s, and receiving financial help from our parents long after we leave home.Strangely enough, rather than