Not fair to say every millennial acts that way, but there certainly is a paradigm shift in work ethic and the way things are done. There is a big sense of entitlement I see with even my professional friends who are just a couple years younger than I am. I am not a millennial, (refuse to associate with the group) but I'm 34.

Not to say I had a hard up-bringing or anything like that. I excelled in school, had demanding parents, etc. I DID have a series of crappy events, that truly were out of my control with regards to my career when I graduated college. I made the mistake of putting all my eggs in one basket, and it didn't work. Sucked, but it was certainly a learning experience. To make a long story short, it took me several years after graduating to "find my way." ...and that was a result of my parents kicking me out.

In 2007, I literally had $10 to my name and I was sleeping on the floor of my buddy's apartment. I offered to cook and clean to "pay" my rent. Talk about demoralizing...but it put a roof over my head until I could get a job. Ended up getting a job in my industry (aviation) within a month or so...then I went balls deep in it. 60-80 hour weeks (when I was paid for 40), volunteering for everything I could, etc. It paid off. Rapid educational opportunities. They saw I was hungry. Promoted to be the most qualified instructor, even though it didn't pay any more. Became department head, in a sea of instructors who were all twice my age. Ended up heading up the internship program for college kids at my company. This was the first exposure to how lazy kids had become, just a few years younger than myself. In 3 years at the airline, I think I had at least 15 interns. Two of them stick out in my mind as kids I would have offered a job offer to upon graduation. Two. Zero drive, but a whole bunch of entitlement. Very disappointing.

Ultimately, that job led to my current Agency I work with...went to the FAA. Did the air traffic control thing at one of the busiest facilities in the world. (again...completely went balls out....won an award for fastest certification in my area of expertise, etc). Went to management shortly thereafter. Been in the Feds since 2010. I will say that I'm certainly not the smartest guy around, but having a killer work ethic is, without doubt, the secret. Especially this day in age, where the bar, apparently, has been set so low.

Not fair to say that all millennials have no work ethic. that's certainly not true...but there is a general paradigm shift in what they think is owed to them. I see this even with my close friends who are just a few years younger than me. There are lots of contributing factors, but the constant praise that kids get today, as well as the "everybody gets a trophy" mentality certainly does not help.

I will say one thing......I'm probably the oldest 34 year old you'll ever meet. I already feel like I say the figurative "get off my lawn" too much, as it is.

oh yeah....34, two houses, lots of cars. vacations, nice things. ...but I also work about 18 hours a day.

my life is good. because i did it right and know the american dream is dead.

the only reason i live my life as good as i do now, is because i chose to not chase the american dream. i chose, because of financial reasons primarily to not get married, not have kids, not have a giant mcmansion etc etc. the only reason i can sustain my lifestyle is because i chose not to attempt the american dream.

the american dream BTW, being what was essentially given to the boomers. it is now something my generation is having to reject, and chose not to pursue, because we have seen how it ends up for our friends who still believe in it: total failure.

and again, the boomers were essentially given this lifestyle. they were able to buy houses and start families on a single blue collar wage. they were given pensions and never had to save significant percentages of there income for retirement. hell, the entire concept of "retirement" is a boomer luxury that no one else before them, or in the future will be afforded like the boomers. we, like most generations before the boomers, will be working until we die. social security? yeah the boomers are working to end that, while of course keeping there benefits from it ... lol. just another boomer entitlement program.

Lots of whining about things that did not happen to you or have not yet (SS). If SS not there when you retire, it is because your generation allowed it to fail. My generation will be long gone by then. As much as social welfare has increased in the last 8 years...you could fund SS forever if everyone didn't want to spend that money now.

I think you are totally ignorant of what a single, blue collar wage earner could afford in the 60's and 70's (unless they were lucky enough to live an area with a huge union labor force...everyone else was pretty much screwed). Many did not have pensions of any kind and many who did lost them. Those who did have pensions were simply receiving them as part of their overall compensation. You just get your money up front and spend it (just put it in a 401k or IRA and you will have a better retirement than your parents did). You could easily buy the tiny little houses and mobile homes that folks of my generation were able to buy on a single income...but you just spend your money differently. On toys and entertainment...vacations, etc...I would nit have dreamed of spending $% on a cup of Starbucks coffee or sodas at work...much less go for lunch, etc. Eating out once or twice a year (McDonalds) was a luxury. In my day/world, when you graduated from high school, you were an adult and made it on your own. Guys like me did not even have a television, much less a credit card...and certainly no video games or cell phones or vacations for many years after we started working.

That is part of the problem with millennials...they somehow think they are being deprived of something that they have not earned...and they somehow believe that everyone before them had a life that like Happy Days rather than reality. The whole term "jobs that Americans won't do" did not exist in my day (maybe in Hollywood). We did them.

Fint, I asked my wife the other day: when did luxury items from not even so long ago become the necessities/standards of today's society?

objective facts say otherwise.

you seem to only be able to rely on personal anecdotes and attacks, whereas my argument relies only on objective financial analysis. we are talking quite simply about median income of the middle class how it has changed over the last 70 odd years. this analysis is impartial to personal stories.

the fact is, that millennials are working harder and longer, and for less money, while generating more income for there corporations than any other generation in history. these facts, no matter how many personal stories you can muster up, are not in-dispute. period. meanwhile boomers used a massive collection of social programs to make there lives easier (good public education, GI bill, good investment in infrastructure, good manufacturing sector, social security, medicare etc etc), while now actively attacking and removing those things for future generations.

again, this is simply not something you can dispute, its simply factually true. the boomers were given a world of good infrastructure, cheap (sometimes free) education, a booming american manufacturing economy, then they crashed it, and then they blame us for wanting what they destroyed.

its nonsense. you were given it all, destroyed it, and now are mad that we want what you guys had. its simply insane, your selfishness knows literally no bounds.

Noah
Exactly. I was just thinking the other day...I have always had to travel for work...many months at a time. I could have never even dreamed of affording to call home to talk to my wife or family. I could always write a letter. I wasn't even allowed to use the work phone to make a personal call when at my local workplace. I worked when I was told and did what I was told. For many years, I was paid far less than minimum wage and served at my boss's pleasure...so when they said jump, I asked "how high?" I usually worked two or more jobs...even when going to college. I think my wife and I were married for 5 or 6 years before we could buy a TV.

My kids had everything we did not...and every opportunity (just like the kids who post here)...and we sacrificed to give them that. My daughter (4 years out of school), probably has more money saved than I made/grossed in my first 15 years of work (she is frugal by millennial standards, but certainly not by mine). She had every opportunity to do well in school, take whatever courses she wanted, eat well, live in a decent home, etc. As a young teen, she never had to help work to feed the family, etc...much less in high school or college. Pretty much just to finance luxuries (like a cell phone or computer). Guys like me worked very hard and sacrificed very much to provide the next generation a better life than we had...and all they do is whine.

I think it was around the time Cellphones became affordable to all. I used to commute 54 miles each way when I lived in Western Mass and worked in Upstate New York. From 1992 to the summer of 1998, I did this without a cell phone. When my divorce started, I decided to get a cell phone. Even then, the phones were not exactly cheap and the plans not inexpensive. But they were "affordable".

As time went past 2000, it seems that "luxury" items went into the "need" and "I deserve it" columns.

The only personal attacks were yours.

I don't buy any of that....and you are absolutely wrong about much of it. For example, the GI Bill. Only a part of the Boomer generation had the GI Bill. It ended in '76 until about '86. The entire millennial generation has had the most generous GI Bill ever starting in 2009 extending back to those who still served since 2001.

The economy was in a terrible recession in the 70's and didn't recover until the mid '80s in many places in the nation (and industry never came back to many small towns).

Many in the boomer generation were drafted or joined the military to avoid the draft (to enter the service/job they chose). Many died, were terribly injured or simply were unable to recover. Something your generation has never had to do with our all-volunteer service.

If you have any sort of statistics showing millennials work longer or harder than anyone...I would sure like to see them. I suspect you exaggerate.

wow, the balls to both claim that millennials have it easy because of the most generous GI bill ever, in the same post claiming that boomers fought and died and millennials didn't have to. lol.

you really are something else.

as for facts and figures, they are readily and easily available based on almost any economic search term you want to use. we now work longer hours, for less money, for more profit for our corporations (which are making record breaking profits), than at any other time in american history. AND we are started 10-100 grand in debt to our adult lives, because you guys made it so even entry level everythings need to have a 4 year degree.

meanwhile, you guys started the two wars we died in based on YOUR lies. nice job on that one. lol.

Millenials working harder and longer and making more money for their bosses?

Oh my, that's pure comedic gold right there.

According to CP Walmart didn't create one job, their customers demand did. So I guess he's now blaming the customers for Millenials lot in life.

**Source***

**Source***

Link to study

http://www.manpowergroup.com/wps/wcm/connect/660ebf65-144c-489e-975c-9f838294c237/MillennialsPaper1_2020Vision_lo.pdf?MOD=AJPERES

It's not just cellphones (though that certainly is one example). It's a lot of other non-necessities that are now considered the American standard of living: cable TV, BIG TVs, the latest smartphone vs a flip phone, daily Starbucks, Coach handbags, a Lexus or BMW, spendy vacations, weekly manicures, rock concerts and pro sports tix, etc.

I'm glad to live in a country with such a high standard of living, but at the same time we seem to categorize a lot of niceties of living as necessities of living. As if these a rethingseveryone should have in their lives, or else they're not getting paid enough in whatever they do (if they're working at all), even if it's entry-level unskilled labor.

See...and there is that reading comprehension thing again. No. I refuted your point regarding the GI Bill which was just one of the programs you seemed to claim was designed to make Boomer lives. In fact, it was put in place before boomers were born and gotten rid of when a majority of them served. It is actually more generous now (for millennials).

As far as fighting and dying...many many more were boomers (don't they teach you guys history at all?...and every millennial joined by choice.

If you started $100K in debt, it is because you spent money you simply did not have. You could have always joined the military or got a job like anyone else. Even so, with the much higher wages, it should not have taken you long to pay off $100K anyways. My daughter has more than that in the bank after just 4 years in the workforce.

Now get off my internet!

I give up. What is your point here?

Sorry, you're just wrong.

The fact is, most Millennials can't get a 40 hr. week because that would mean full benefits. That is why they are complaining.

If you're complaining about working overtime then first of all, you must be some sort of unicorn Millenial, and second of all, just shut your entitled pie hole, you precious snowflake little child gurly man.

Reading comprehension Flint. Reading comprehension Flint....

It is a study that has reported findings contrary to your stigma that millennials are lazy and working less. You have only provided anecdotal evidence about how lazy the millennials are. Your personal experiences, and your own personal outlooks. I have just provided actual statistical data. You have not.

Shove it up your ass.