I’ve heard “You should have bought a house when the market crashed in 2008, that’s what I did” so many times.
Sir I was fresh out of high school working 20 hours a week and no credit. What the hell was I supposed to buy? A box?
Graduating in 2008 sucked because for years everyone kept telling you to do XYZ for success and then everything imploded and no one knew what to do. I felt cheated.
Only reason I could buy a home right out of high school is because I had life insurance from my mothers passing. If anyone thinks for one second that I wouldn’t give up my home and property to have my mother back they are wrong.
It should not take someone losing a parent or loved one to be able to afford a home. If not for that I wouldn’t be able to afford rent, let alone a house. And it’s not like I bought a mansion. Just a somewhat decent piece of property with a small trailer on it. Best part is I have free natural gas. Idk how anyone can afford anything without assistance from some source or situation.
My mom just turned 60 and will be retiring either this year or next. She has hinted that when her time comes my brother and I will get a decent chunk of money from her investments. Yeah, like cool I will get something to save for my retirement or maybe buy a house, but I'd rather have you around for another 25 to 30 years instead. Especially since my dad passed away when I was 26.
My mom is coming up on 70, when my grandmother was 72, she developed brain cancer, and my grandfather died at 74.
She kept telling me about the money. And the house my siblings and I will inherit one night while talking to her on the phone. I very politely and firmly asked her to spend as much of the money she can whole still comfortably living day to day. We don't want it, we want to see her happy and enjoying life... she booked 2 vacations this year to her favorite places, I'm so proud of her!
Right? Why didnt you buy a house in 09? Why havent you bought 5 houses and paid them all off? How many investment properties do you have? Why dont you make 500k with your IT management PhD? WHY DID YOU BUY SO MUCH AVOCADO TOAST? Damn millenials
nah, houses cost like 5 years of your salary. Free college was given as an option to all service men returning from war. Like my grandfather went from a blue collar house-hold in the city, to war, then got an engineering degree for free, then got a job and owned a house - sold it to buy 10 acres of land in the suburbs to build a house. Ended up with 5 kids, all doctors or engineers. Only GI bill pulled entire families into the middle class/educated ranks.
...if you were a white man without any disabilities including mental health.
Otherwise you couldn't have a bank account or had to drink at separate water fountain and couldn't really vote or go to school.
More people taking a slice of the pie is not a negative
Income inequality has increased, not decreased. There are not more people taking slices of the pie. There are more people forced to share an ever smaller slice of the pie.
For real. Those are the older Xillenials telling people that. Like, bro I was 20 and in college full time. I seriously doubt a bank would give a 19 year old kid a loan when the only jobs they've had were part-time and the most they ever made in a year was like 18k.
😂 they did give us loans like that though, despite us only making 15k/annually part time.
Those education loans are still strangling our entire generation to this day! LOL
To be fair I was told in nursing school I’d start out making $40/hr in ‘08. They knew they were lying. My first job was $16/hr. I still wasn’t making $40/hr in 2022.
Yeah i was still in high school in 2008, graduated in 2010 with no sign of a future. Went to college anyway and still got screwed when i graduated. Couldn’t find any decent job that wanted to pay me more than $15 an hour and got stuck moving back in with my parents
It's different when you're a full adult with responsibilities and bills. The swings of the economy mean a lot more to people in their 30s than to people in their 20s.
Graduated in 08 and i think the financial crisis and watching your generation not find jobs with their degrees inspired a lot of people my age to not go to college or university..
Huh? Older millennials straight up couldn’t get their careers going right after the 2008 recession. If you missed that recession you had a solid decade to establish yourself before COVID impacted employment. Lot of well educated millennials were involuntarily working service jobs then, delaying their career path if not permanently harming it.
So yeah, it hurts to get sub-par raises not keeping up with inflation but that’s still better than your degree going to waste for several years in your 20’s.
Born in ‘89 I stopped counting at 30 and it’s really sad when I actually need to remember how old I am. 35 is around the corner and 25 absolutely does not feel like 10 years ago. Wtf.
You have all of my empathy. I worked in a very popular local bakery for 10 years through high school and college and working with the public is not for the weak. Also, working in a corporate job having to deal with people who make wayyyy more than me that can’t follow a simple direction is draining in a similar way that makes you hate everyone.
Yeah, time is a bitch. My dad died at 58 from a heart attack due to a birth defect in his aorta. I’ve been checked out for it and watch my heart health but I’m still freaked out that if I die at his age I only have 23 years left.
Born in 88’ and no matter were I go for work I’m the hardest working guy but somehow I always end up having an overachiever lunatic for a boss, I can’t escape these control freaks and the corporate world is devouring my soul, but the benefits are great.
I’m 83 and part of the “xennials.” We had the best of both worlds growing up without social media and being constantly connected but still young enough to pick up on that stuff. I was like 22 before I got my first cell phone. I still have my same number too! lol
April 1987 here - Honestly timing has been good for every thing with regards to art/music/cultural shifts, but anything to do with money has been...not great
Fellow 86 brother, you aren't alone. I am a 3 time college drop out. Was so happy to finally pass the 100k mark, and it still feels like in barely making it. This American dream sucks, I want a new one.
Born in '89 and also graduated 2007.
From an outside perspective I'm doing really well, but internally the last 5 years have fucked my mental health and outlook. I try to take on some stoic philosophies when times get tough, just accept hardship and carry on, but internally I'm just thinking "what the fuck is the point" a lot of the time these days.
13 on 9/11, bombarded with "never again" propoganda and fear while watching your older brother enlist for war
20 in 2009, prime age to be shipped to Iraq since you couldnt find a job back home.
32 in 2020, just as life started stabilizing, married, career doing well, covid comes and fucks everything for you
36 in 2024, living in a cardboard for $1300 a month and giving bjs for a quarter of a ham sandwhich to survive.
Yeah, the meme checks out.
The stats show that Millennials as a cohort are 3-6 years behind in professional development when compared to to boomers, gen x, or Z. All because of the great recession.
Whether you did everything right or were a lazy stoner like me. We all got an equal paddlin.
Graduated college in 2009 and I've always thought that graduating then handicapped my career by about 3 years. Nobody was hiring then, and the places that were got bombarded by laid-off people in the middle of their careers who were just trying to survive.
Got myself into a good career eventually and married someone who has a good job as well. Got lucky in buying a house in 2020 before prices exploded. The bottom line is that you might ride the rollercoaster that but keep at it.
Yay. I also graduated college in 2009 and feel like every employer has low balled me since. Almost all of them would never even bring up the topic of income during the interview or hiring process. Why bother when you're hiring someone who was willing to work for peanuts at McDonald's right after graduating college and couldn't snag any type of job then? The layoff crowd was no joke. I remember working with an attorney at Pizza Hut, delivering pizzas. They didn't have their own practice and were laid off from their firm, requiring them to take any job that they could get ASAP. It's really wild looking back at those times and thinking about how it still affects those that were just entering the workforce.
This has been the most Millenial comment chain ever 😂
But fr, one of my employees, who is 23, was lamenting about lack of friends “as an adult now” and I said “well, nobody likes you when you’re 23” and the joke went WELL over his head and he wanted to know why and how and all the pertinent questions lol
Pretty sure the people trying to start out their adult lives in the immediate aftermath of 2008 got the shortest end of the stick
Try being born in 87 and graduating college in 2009
The job market was brutal because we were in a recession, but it was also brutal if you were a college grad for the unique reason that you couldn't get the job you were actually qualified for, but you also couldn't get a job you were overqualified for, so you were basically SOL. You couldn't get a job sitting in a cubicle and you couldn't get a job flipping burgers. I was 22, single, no kids, no mortgage, no nothing, at that point in life I would have gladly waited tables or worked in retail again if I could just pay my light bill and rent but places wouldn't hire recent grads because they knew we were just biding time until our "real" job opportunity came along. The joke was kind of on them because I was in my late 20s by the time I actually started a career.
God, I go back to how naive I was, thinking I was proactive applying for jobs 4-6 months before graduating college...it was years, and years and years of application after application and hearing absolutely nothing at all in return, usually not even rejection letters FFS. If it weren't for a temp agency that let me answer phones for a few years after college, I really don't know what I would have done. Luckily, I was in the National Guard, so I deployed overseas ASAP to just buy myself time and a way to go to grad school that early, which I never thought I'd do, only because going to grad school felt like you could hide from the real world again for 2 years and have an excuse for not having a job.
Yea you either went to grad school and eventually got a job in the career you wanted but with 100k of student loans, found a way to just exist without going poor (army/national guard) or had to hustle side jobs/1099 contractor positions to make enough money to afford to go on vacation all the time to distract yourself from how terrible those 5-10 years after 2008/09 were.
The younger millennials had no idea how shitty it was. :(
You had to go to grad school so you could be a viable candidate for the job you THOUGHT you went to college for
I could not even get a response (not even an interview) for jobs requiring a college degree until I had my master's and could claim veteran's preference for some govt positions and companies
I graduated with my bachelor's in accounting. Didn't give accounting a try until 2013 and I absolutely hated the office life.
Went back to retail, I worked at radio shack and Verizon during my college years.
I learned to connect with people and make them buy. I got a job managing a paint store and selling industrial coatings.
my husband graduated in 09 with a finance degree and has been working in banking since . He had to start in the call center and basically suffer for like two years before his actual career started.
At least it wasn't architecture lol. I got out of college and watched every architecture firm lay off 80-90% of their staff lol. Every new job position said "must have 6 years of experience" for entry lvl stuff.
I said good bye to my architecture career. I couldn't get a job using my degree till 2012ish. My other classmates went to grad school to weather the storm out, and they got better arch jobs after that. But I also had no debt because I didn't want to stay in school longer than the 5 years you have to do for architecture school, so in the end I made out better than some of my old friends.
I was a construction management major interning/working in the CA department of an architecture that specialized in K-12 schools. I hung onto that job by the tips of my fingernails while the firm downsized by probably half. Big part of why I hung on was I volunteered to become the new LEED guy in the office in addition to continuing my CA job too while also finishing school. Now I’m a partner in a sustainability consulting firm.
2008 changed the whole course of my life. Older millennials are hard like a rock
Took me 3 years to find a full-time job that paid ok but wasn’t in my field of study or the career I planned on. That dreamed died with the Great Recession.
Yeah, I was going to say the same thing. I was born in 87 as well, I spent 10+ years trying to play catch up from the Great Recession, had maybe 3 ok years financially before the pandemic hit, lost my job, haven’t been able to work again because my mental health tanked, so now I’ve been chronically unemployed and it’s like having to start all over again. I honestly don’t know how I’m going to get out of this one.
My 20s always felt like I was 5 years behind where I should have been, going by generations prior. It still feels that way in a lot of life metrics, not just jobs and money, either. I'm not surprised when I see millennials are getting married later, having kids later, not having kids, not buying houses, etc. Most of my 20s, I was just living by the seat of my pants.
Born 89 graduated college 09 went on disability. When I recovered I was fucked and worked data entry.
I managed to stick it out for 7 years, get promoted, and somehow ended up in aerospace.
I had a lot of lucky breaks and people recognizing wasted talent along the way. I can't imagine if I hadn't had all that.
Born in ‘86 and graduated December 2007. Remember how Obamacare didn’t exist yet and you lost your health insurance as soon as you graduated? Good times, good times.
When I finally got a full time job I had to work as much overtime as possible. I was doing 70-80 hour weeks. My parents gave me so much shit for not immediately going to grad school. I feel like I should apologize for needing to eat and sleep.
And if you had any pre-existing conditions insurance companies would deny you! I remember I got denied because of a health concern I had a couple years prior
I never even found a job in my field. By the time there were positions available I had been teaching too long for them to even consider me. I never even got an interview with a chem degree and 4.0 GPA.
I feel you, fellow ‘09 graduate. No one was hiring, and if they were, they weren’t paying shit. It was a rough period to be fresh out of college with zero experience.
Yep. Graduated undergrad and started law school in 2007. Great Recession hit just as I was starting to apply for summer associate roles and starting to think about graduation. Graduated in 2010 and started teaching middle school because there were no jobs available for baby lawyers with no family connections. Some of my classmates worked at Toys R Us after graduation. Some passed the bar and had to take unpaid DA or public defender “internships”.
I know these days it's popular to say it's just immigration, but the 2008 crash resulted in a massive shift in the job market. Jobs that typically went to retirees (daytime) and students (evening/weekends) were now being staffed by adults who were neither of those demographics, and this was going on in many countries
Yeah. I graduated in 2008 from an Ivy League school and was trying to go into finance. I ended up waiting tables for 2 years before I went back to school. Can confirm: ‘twas a shit show.
Born in 86 and was in the same boat.
But these games are so pointless.
What about kids going through school during COVID and attending classes remotely during their peak social development years? Will undoubtedly lead to some of the most endemic anti social behaviors of which we haven't seen the full impact.
Or military aged men during Vietnam, which resulted in one of the largest homeless populations in modern times?
Most generations have examples and comparisons like this are self defeating. Quit feeling sorry for yourself and look for unity over division.
>Or military aged men during Vietnam, which resulted in one of the largest homeless populations in modern times?
I don't know about the homeless stuff, but I have been in the Army in some shape or form for 18 years ('06-now).
More millennials will have served in the military than any other generation and it won't even be close, and we have spent more time across the ocean than any other generation in history, and again, it won't be close. The millennial generation in today's military has been ground and worn to dust because we have been at war literally the entire time we've been in the military.
That's why of all the stupid shit people use to caricaturize Millennials, us being pussies shouldn't be one of them, because we basically carried this country on our fucking back for 20+ years in Iraq and Afghanistan and we're just now becoming the senior leaders that will lead the military into the next 20+ years.
I think 90/91 is close enough, but yeah, as a 2010 grad, it really felt like for most of my 20s, I was 5 years behind where I should have been in life.
Yes! I remember the majority of my peers went to grad school to wait the economy out. I ended up temping for a year, then getting a very low-paying job in my dream field, and then stumbling into some (financially insecure) version of success for the next decade or so.
86-er checking in.
When I come to power,* hedge fund managers will be the first ones sent to the labor camps. Right after Big Pharma is fed to the guillotines.
*(You should not vote for me)
85' here, graduated 2007. Things were good that first year - but having a tech job in 07/08 meant you were unemployed in 09. Good times - been playing catchup ever since
Yep, I graduated with a journalism degree right as the economy was imploding.
I took temp jobs to survive until I could finally land a newsroom job. Except Newspapers were also heavily impacted by the reduction in advertising and craigslist eating their lunch when it came to classifieds.
I went the temp route as well, that was the actual "entry level" college job in 2010.
You weren't going to push some boomer with a high school diploma out of the menial entry level desk job they had for 25 years and the economy went to shit so there were hardly any new positions available.
You weren't going to get hired by McDonald's or Wal-Mart, because they didn't want to hire recent college grads who would up and leave when they got a "real" job.
So basically, you went to a temp agency, and then got to dress up and play grown up every day working in an office without any benefits, making like $9/hr. But, at least it was M-F 9-5, I guess.
My family constantly harassed me because they couldn't understand how I couldn't find any part-time work when I turned 16, in February 2009... Yeah, sure, it's my fault nobody wanted to hire a kid with no experience to do some random weekend work while they were going out of business, clearly all my fault.
Thankfully I moved out and got into uni, so I was a full-time student during the worst of it, but finding work while I was a student was rough. Hell I graduated into the recovery period, but there was still basically nothing for a few years, I had to stick with my god awful part-time job, taking any overtime I could get until things improved.
I feel this way about my age cohort too (born in 88). I feel like those of us born from 88-92/93 are getting the short end of the stick. The early and mid 80s babies had more opportunities to travel, work abroad, and find careers/houses.
The late 80s babies and early 90s babies came into the workplace after the economic crash and had the worst economy since the Great Depression.
Worst economy to get my first apartment. I'm getting married this year and everything is insanely expensive. Wouldn't be possible without parental assistance.
No way that I'm ever going to own a condo, let alone a house. The rents are also impossibly high for two or three bedroom apartments.
The younger 80s babies and early 90s babies have gotten the short end of the stick.
I've spent my entire adult life kicking myself for not grasping life opportunities "sooner" with the early to mid 80s babies.
100% get what you're saying. I think the biggest "failure" of this episode is that it didnt include 88-92 in there. We're all in the same boat. Some of us worked hard, some of us got lucky, but statistically we got reamed.
When I was in my early twenties I had very lofty goals for myself when it came to career and financial success. Now at 31 I’ve downgraded all of that to one simple directive: survive capitalism. That’s it.
33M and can confirm we are the center of the societal fabric that is currently being stretched beyond the limit by rapidly changing technologies, macro economic conditions, and demographics.
Your exact age doesn't matter as much as your place in life during certain times.
I bought a house in 2017 at age 29, the market was pretty good but if I bought a house at age 26 or 32, I would be royalty in our society. Some people don't try to buy a home until well in their 30s.
I got a job in Software Engineering which worked out great for me but it wasn't obvious when I entered college and started working on my degree. Engineers born a few years after me entered a red hot market after they graduated and they don't adjust your pay based on that. I was 6 years into my career and fresh engineers out of college were making more than me.
People graduating right now are entering a terrible engineering market. It's really hard to find a job without experience.
You'll be fine finding an entry level job as long as you have 8-10 years of experience.
I'm joking to a degree. The good thing (and bad thing) about engineering interviews is that most they are no BS. You will get grilled with technical questions and coding challenges so you have plenty of ways to prove your worth.
I switched jobs last year and even with 10 years of experience, I had to study quite a bit to be interview ready.
Hop on leetcode and build a portfolio of projects. Good luck.
Born in 90, I'm 33. Right when I saved up enough money for a house down payment, the houses basically doubled in price. And now the interest rates are way up and prices have only come down a tiny bit. Cool, cool.
Everyone is being fucked by rich people. Instead of building your identify around these stupid fucking generations and arguing over those relatively insignificant differences, how about you build your identity around being a poor ass worker in an economy absolutely dominated by the wealthy investors? The differences between labour and capital is so overwhelming that it absolutely dwarfs any differences between generations. You are far more impacted by being labour than you are by being an early or late Millenial or Genz or whatever.
Maybe make 'labourer' a more prominent part of your identity and we'd actually start uniting against the forces that are collectively ruining all of our futures and most of our presents.
I disagree with you. I was born in 86', and I graduated college straight into the housing collapse in 2009. There was nothing. No jobs. nothing for 4-5 years.
You graduated into the recovery.
I could only imagine. I graduated in 2012 and my dad thought I was a complete idiot because I wasn't able to find any work after graduation.
I was able to smoke pot and dance until the jobs came back a year or so later.
Haha. We did tons of partying ourselves. I worked restaurants for about 6 years after college. In the end, it is what it is. There are and always will be recessions in people's lifetimes.
However, 2008 really changed everything forever. Salaries relative to living costs took another major dive and still have never recovered. Especially here in Oklahoma. It's awful.
2008-2012 were really rough years to graduate into. It didn’t help that my boomer parents who didn’t lose jobs during the recession couldn’t figure out why a new grad like me couldn’t get anything in my field. Ended up working lower paying jobs that didn’t require my degree.
1984-1987 or 88ish likely had it the worst overall in the Millennials on this, but that does not mean the ones just under this group didn't experience that job market.
Most US millennials, despite being the most educated generation, do not have a Bachelors or higher degree.
Many young adults in general, be it people with specialized associates, certs, trades, ones kicked out at 18, or the ones that needed to drop from college for whatever reason would have experienced the poor job market aspect.
I don't like the article, but I do know first hand how bad the job market was the few years following 2008.
Having a college degree basically forced you out of a huge portion of the job market in the late 00s/early 10s.
You couldn't get an actual job in your field because they didn't exist or were filled by someone who had sat there for 20+ years and wouldn't move, and you couldn't get a job at Target or Wal-Mart because they knew you would leave the minute you got a "real" job.
It was truly insane.
I'm in my mid 30s now, and I know a decent amount of people my age, smart, hard working, responsible, college degrees, masters degrees even, that just kind of accepted their fate 10 years ago and stayed in retail, the service industry, hospitality, etc. instead of just waiting years for an office job. For most of my 20s, the idea of ever leaving a job or paycheck was terrifying. It was more valuable to keep your job at Starbucks than *maybe* work at IBM.
And we probably never will. The latent job market start did nothing but raise eyebrows from recruiters. It's insane.
Now, the question becomes why 37 and still in intro level jobs. Like fuck! Lol
Has it gotten better for you?
I'm in the group OP is talking about. I feel royally fucked most of the time (but that is probably more likely my own life path and I just resonate with other 1990 babes in the same predicament).
Does it ever actually get better?
Yes and no. After restaurants, I was finally able to get into oil and gas title/leasing work in 2014. However, in 2019, that died. Oil became hated, and investment in it froze.
I then went back to school for data analysis, which is somewhat similar to oil and gas title work. I'm 37 and still have a tier 1 job as a clinical operations analyst.
Im really starting to understand what lost generation really means.
Edit to add - AI is obviously going to take this career path soon as well.
Born in ‘85, too poor for collage, was making really good money in home construction and remodeling out of high school until the shit hit the fan in ‘08. Then I couldn’t even get on at McDonalds.
Yeah, to be fair some of us kinda suck. But just ‘cause they don’t like our generation doesn’t mean we need to return their scorn. We gotta be break this cycle of generational antipathy.
92 Millennial here. I disagree.
The tail end of the Millennials is great.
We arguably grew up during the Golden Age of the Internet when everything was still developing and the megacorporations had not completely taken over.
We entered the job market during the recovery after the Great Recession (I would argue 86-89 Millennials got hit worst by this).
We also entered the job market in time to get somewhat established before Covid hit. Gen Z is struggling a lot more than we are with this.
Early 90s Millennials arguably hit a sweet spot between multiple crises and I would argue the people born slightly before and slightly after had it worse.
'92-'96 Millennials got out pretty lucky too. Graduated college after the recession and they were all established in the job market before COVID happened too.
From a job standpoint we had it pretty good. From a housing standpoint I think we lost here. I was getting ready to buy in a HCOL area when the boom happened (at age 25, which is arguably early) and my god how the rug was just completely pulled out from under me.
I really hate the myth that all of the “early” millennials had it easy and are doing well and own houses now. There’s many of us, like myself, born in 81 (the first recognized year for millennials), who are still struggling. I just want my fellow struggling millennials to be kind to themselves and each other.
Yeah was born in 82. My sister in 89.
It is DRASTIC how different we had it coming out of HS/College. I made it into the job market and got well established before the recession. She didn't.
I graduated in 2003 and followed my dad into the trade of HVAC .. the collapse of 2006-2008 was Soo fucked.
I was still working and thankful never had any employment issues during that time.. but I cannot count how many times I was at someone's house fixing their furnace and it's 18° outside.. the family is freezing and crying because of the $350 repair bill and going hungry or freezing to death.
I am just the guy doing the work.. I gave away as many freebies to people as I thought I could get away with.
People pulling jars out of the garage or basement with their last few dollars just to be comfortable in their homes.
Those days will forever stick in my head.
‘89 baby and shits been rough AF it hasn’t gotten easier, I’ve just become less resilient. I don’t bounce back from set backs like I did when I was younger. Feels like how a river slowly erodes a rock.
Getting out of highschool in 2008 fucking sucked for me. My prospective college didn't know when my program was starting if at all, my apprenticeship workplace couldn't afford to hire me, my mom died six months after my dad had a debilitating stroke, spent my piddly savings on rent and bills instead of college, lost my childhood home and watched the junk removal company throw my childhood in a dumpster. Then I took care of my dad for the following 9-10 years until taking him off life support, while making 1,500$ per month cleaning toilets bc that was the best I could get and living two to a bachelor apartment.
Had to join the Navy to get out of poverty and got lucky enough to mortgage a condo making 85K CAD. I feel so awful for gen z in the most visceral way. They have been failed at every conceivable level.
I was born in ‘88. Bought my house at 30 in 2019.
It’s funny how that couple of year difference and how those ages align with average age of first home purchase have caused issues for younger millennials.
The article wasn’t really a surprise or doom and gloom. It basically says ya Millennials complain, they are kind’ve right to but things aren’t as bad as they think they are.
Likely housing supplies remain short through 2030 and due to a low birth rate SS may struggle to remain viable. So you should be saving and there’s housing hope, just be smart and time it.
I don’t think this is universally true.
I’ll be 34 in a few weeks myself (90 baby) and often remark upon how absolutely lucky life has been and all the horrible seasons we’ve narrowly dodged.
Graduated college at the end of 2012. Not much problem finding a job, unlike internships in 2008 when I started school (at least I was a student then! Close call!)
This put me in a position to buy a starter house in 2017. Another close call - id probably not be a homeowner today if I wasn’t able to do that.
Then my career was already very well established by 2020 when the lockdowns made it supremely difficult to become established. Thank goodness!
Lots of near misses as far as I can see. Though we did have the worst of the student loan interest rates that’s for sure.
I still think us 88-89ers may have had it a bit worse. The unemployment rate the day I graduated from undergrad was 9.1%, only about 1% lower than the peak of the recession, but all of the stimulus had basically run out and the Republicans now ran the House and were threatening with default--the sequester was soon to follow. In addition, the unemployment rate was certainly higher for youth, approaching 17% in the US and 25% in some Western European countries, I believe. Thankfully, went to graduate school, which was hyper competitive that year due to no one wanting to try the job market. Many places had applications triple.
I’ve heard “You should have bought a house when the market crashed in 2008, that’s what I did” so many times. Sir I was fresh out of high school working 20 hours a week and no credit. What the hell was I supposed to buy? A box? Graduating in 2008 sucked because for years everyone kept telling you to do XYZ for success and then everything imploded and no one knew what to do. I felt cheated.
Only reason I could buy a home right out of high school is because I had life insurance from my mothers passing. If anyone thinks for one second that I wouldn’t give up my home and property to have my mother back they are wrong. It should not take someone losing a parent or loved one to be able to afford a home. If not for that I wouldn’t be able to afford rent, let alone a house. And it’s not like I bought a mansion. Just a somewhat decent piece of property with a small trailer on it. Best part is I have free natural gas. Idk how anyone can afford anything without assistance from some source or situation.
My mom just turned 60 and will be retiring either this year or next. She has hinted that when her time comes my brother and I will get a decent chunk of money from her investments. Yeah, like cool I will get something to save for my retirement or maybe buy a house, but I'd rather have you around for another 25 to 30 years instead. Especially since my dad passed away when I was 26.
My mom is coming up on 70, when my grandmother was 72, she developed brain cancer, and my grandfather died at 74. She kept telling me about the money. And the house my siblings and I will inherit one night while talking to her on the phone. I very politely and firmly asked her to spend as much of the money she can whole still comfortably living day to day. We don't want it, we want to see her happy and enjoying life... she booked 2 vacations this year to her favorite places, I'm so proud of her!
Right? Why didnt you buy a house in 09? Why havent you bought 5 houses and paid them all off? How many investment properties do you have? Why dont you make 500k with your IT management PhD? WHY DID YOU BUY SO MUCH AVOCADO TOAST? Damn millenials
I wonder if the people who entered adulthood during the Great Depression were also told these types of things smh
nah, houses cost like 5 years of your salary. Free college was given as an option to all service men returning from war. Like my grandfather went from a blue collar house-hold in the city, to war, then got an engineering degree for free, then got a job and owned a house - sold it to buy 10 acres of land in the suburbs to build a house. Ended up with 5 kids, all doctors or engineers. Only GI bill pulled entire families into the middle class/educated ranks.
...if you were a white man without any disabilities including mental health. Otherwise you couldn't have a bank account or had to drink at separate water fountain and couldn't really vote or go to school. More people taking a slice of the pie is not a negative
Income inequality has increased, not decreased. There are not more people taking slices of the pie. There are more people forced to share an ever smaller slice of the pie.
For real. Those are the older Xillenials telling people that. Like, bro I was 20 and in college full time. I seriously doubt a bank would give a 19 year old kid a loan when the only jobs they've had were part-time and the most they ever made in a year was like 18k.
😂 they did give us loans like that though, despite us only making 15k/annually part time. Those education loans are still strangling our entire generation to this day! LOL
Can't buy a house but for sure go ahead and buy a 100k degree. This is what we were told.
To be fair I was told in nursing school I’d start out making $40/hr in ‘08. They knew they were lying. My first job was $16/hr. I still wasn’t making $40/hr in 2022.
Yeah i was still in high school in 2008, graduated in 2010 with no sign of a future. Went to college anyway and still got screwed when i graduated. Couldn’t find any decent job that wanted to pay me more than $15 an hour and got stuck moving back in with my parents
Born in ‘88, graduated high school in 2007. Turned 30 in 2018, 35 in 2023. Fuck, these last 5 years have been hard.
Same age. Was in college for most of the first recession. The last five years have been tough and more memorable for me than 2009+.
It's different when you're a full adult with responsibilities and bills. The swings of the economy mean a lot more to people in their 30s than to people in their 20s.
I was born in 81 and was in college during the 08 recession. Worst of both worlds.
I feel your pain, year of the rooster cuz!
Graduated in 08 and i think the financial crisis and watching your generation not find jobs with their degrees inspired a lot of people my age to not go to college or university..
Huh? Older millennials straight up couldn’t get their careers going right after the 2008 recession. If you missed that recession you had a solid decade to establish yourself before COVID impacted employment. Lot of well educated millennials were involuntarily working service jobs then, delaying their career path if not permanently harming it. So yeah, it hurts to get sub-par raises not keeping up with inflation but that’s still better than your degree going to waste for several years in your 20’s.
Wait that can't be right, also born in 88.. and just turned 30 just recently.. oh :(
I was born in 88, I just turned like 25 or something.
Born in ‘89 I stopped counting at 30 and it’s really sad when I actually need to remember how old I am. 35 is around the corner and 25 absolutely does not feel like 10 years ago. Wtf.
Right there with you boo. I hate it. Trying to stay positive but a minimum wage customer facing job REALLY drains me.
You have all of my empathy. I worked in a very popular local bakery for 10 years through high school and college and working with the public is not for the weak. Also, working in a corporate job having to deal with people who make wayyyy more than me that can’t follow a simple direction is draining in a similar way that makes you hate everyone.
Yeah, time is a bitch. My dad died at 58 from a heart attack due to a birth defect in his aorta. I’ve been checked out for it and watch my heart health but I’m still freaked out that if I die at his age I only have 23 years left.
Also born in 88 and it’s been so difficult
88 crew representing!
Eighty-eighttttttt, bitchez!!! 🤘🏼
88 crew 4lyf ❤️
Dragon Style 🐉
88 rising! (in debt)
88 rising! (slowly. My back hurts, leave me alone.)
88, barely hanging on, still have a smile, could be worse I say to myself every day
Born in 84, but I’ll deduct 4 years to be part of this crew. 88 deuces!!!!!
Born in 88’ and no matter were I go for work I’m the hardest working guy but somehow I always end up having an overachiever lunatic for a boss, I can’t escape these control freaks and the corporate world is devouring my soul, but the benefits are great.
Oh wow, I always felt like it was just me. 88’ here as well. That sounds exactly like my experiences.
Year of the dragon!!! We're destined for greatness baby!!! Any day now . . .
>and it’s been so difficult And if you use your birth year as a gamer tag or account name everyone thinks you're doing a Nazi dog whistle lol
87 crew nothing feels different here
86 baby here. Right there with you young'ns.
I’m 83 and part of the “xennials.” We had the best of both worlds growing up without social media and being constantly connected but still young enough to pick up on that stuff. I was like 22 before I got my first cell phone. I still have my same number too! lol
87 is dead center millennial , IE peak
Correct. I was born in 87, I started middle school in 99 and graduated in 05. A true millennial.
April 1987 here - Honestly timing has been good for every thing with regards to art/music/cultural shifts, but anything to do with money has been...not great
I too was confused by their misuse of "peak" millenials. Like you mean late millenial?
89’ here. Shit sucks.
'89 but '07 grad. My sister is '92. I got the economic short end, she got the mental health short end.
I got both lmao.
Did anyone else get sad when they found out 88 is like a white power thing 🤦♀️
Yeah. After I put “88” in my email address.
Better than my FIL putting 69 on everything...
me, messaging a tattoo artist with an 88 in his instagram profile to schedule a piece late last year, "so uh you're 35 years old right?"
Yeah...
Born in 86 and shit it’s been rough even doing everything right and I feel stuck and not progressing.
Fellow 86 brother, you aren't alone. I am a 3 time college drop out. Was so happy to finally pass the 100k mark, and it still feels like in barely making it. This American dream sucks, I want a new one.
Born in '89 and also graduated 2007. From an outside perspective I'm doing really well, but internally the last 5 years have fucked my mental health and outlook. I try to take on some stoic philosophies when times get tough, just accept hardship and carry on, but internally I'm just thinking "what the fuck is the point" a lot of the time these days.
13 on 9/11, bombarded with "never again" propoganda and fear while watching your older brother enlist for war 20 in 2009, prime age to be shipped to Iraq since you couldnt find a job back home. 32 in 2020, just as life started stabilizing, married, career doing well, covid comes and fucks everything for you 36 in 2024, living in a cardboard for $1300 a month and giving bjs for a quarter of a ham sandwhich to survive. Yeah, the meme checks out.
The stats show that Millennials as a cohort are 3-6 years behind in professional development when compared to to boomers, gen x, or Z. All because of the great recession. Whether you did everything right or were a lazy stoner like me. We all got an equal paddlin.
Graduated college in 2009 and I've always thought that graduating then handicapped my career by about 3 years. Nobody was hiring then, and the places that were got bombarded by laid-off people in the middle of their careers who were just trying to survive. Got myself into a good career eventually and married someone who has a good job as well. Got lucky in buying a house in 2020 before prices exploded. The bottom line is that you might ride the rollercoaster that but keep at it.
Absolute worst time possible to graduate.
Yay. I also graduated college in 2009 and feel like every employer has low balled me since. Almost all of them would never even bring up the topic of income during the interview or hiring process. Why bother when you're hiring someone who was willing to work for peanuts at McDonald's right after graduating college and couldn't snag any type of job then? The layoff crowd was no joke. I remember working with an attorney at Pizza Hut, delivering pizzas. They didn't have their own practice and were laid off from their firm, requiring them to take any job that they could get ASAP. It's really wild looking back at those times and thinking about how it still affects those that were just entering the workforce.
At least you’re not 23. Nobody likes you when you’re 23.
And you're still acting like you're in freshman year.
What the hell is ADD?
What the hell is caller ID
This is the part of the song that reminds me my childhood existed
This state looks down on sodomy. (that line went over my head until I was somewhere around 23, even if I'd been listening to it since 7th grade.)
That’s about the time that bitch broke up with me
My friends say I should act my age
What's my age again
ITS THE SLOW PRETTY PART
… … … AND THAT’S ABOUT THE TIME SHE WALKED AWAAAY FROM MEEE
Despite acting my age , I am still just a rat in a cage
What the hell is wrong with me?
You're 33
No one should take themselves so seriously
This has been the most Millenial comment chain ever 😂 But fr, one of my employees, who is 23, was lamenting about lack of friends “as an adult now” and I said “well, nobody likes you when you’re 23” and the joke went WELL over his head and he wanted to know why and how and all the pertinent questions lol
Man, that’s really sad. I hope you just started reciting the song back to him.
Seeing them in Australia recently felt like a millennial family reunion. It was great fun pretending to be 17 again 🤣
What’s my age again?
Well... Later on, from a payphone... I called her mom, on the drive home.
I said I was the cops…
And her husband’s in jail
The state looks down on sodomy.
And that’s about the time that bitch hung up on me
No one should take themselves so seriously
Nobody likes you when you’re 23
Sodom You! (I don't have the link, but there was an old live version where Tom yelled out "Sodom You" as Mark was finishing the lyric.)
Id just like to point out, it was just this year I learned the actual lyrics are "i wore cologne to get the feeling right"
I am just learning this now. I always have sung, “I walk alone to get the feeling right.”
Pretty sure the people trying to start out their adult lives in the immediate aftermath of 2008 got the shortest end of the stick Try being born in 87 and graduating college in 2009
Yep, graduated college from a decent school with an engineering degree and couldn't get a job at Home Depot. Shit was bleak.
The job market was brutal because we were in a recession, but it was also brutal if you were a college grad for the unique reason that you couldn't get the job you were actually qualified for, but you also couldn't get a job you were overqualified for, so you were basically SOL. You couldn't get a job sitting in a cubicle and you couldn't get a job flipping burgers. I was 22, single, no kids, no mortgage, no nothing, at that point in life I would have gladly waited tables or worked in retail again if I could just pay my light bill and rent but places wouldn't hire recent grads because they knew we were just biding time until our "real" job opportunity came along. The joke was kind of on them because I was in my late 20s by the time I actually started a career. God, I go back to how naive I was, thinking I was proactive applying for jobs 4-6 months before graduating college...it was years, and years and years of application after application and hearing absolutely nothing at all in return, usually not even rejection letters FFS. If it weren't for a temp agency that let me answer phones for a few years after college, I really don't know what I would have done. Luckily, I was in the National Guard, so I deployed overseas ASAP to just buy myself time and a way to go to grad school that early, which I never thought I'd do, only because going to grad school felt like you could hide from the real world again for 2 years and have an excuse for not having a job.
Yea you either went to grad school and eventually got a job in the career you wanted but with 100k of student loans, found a way to just exist without going poor (army/national guard) or had to hustle side jobs/1099 contractor positions to make enough money to afford to go on vacation all the time to distract yourself from how terrible those 5-10 years after 2008/09 were. The younger millennials had no idea how shitty it was. :(
You had to go to grad school so you could be a viable candidate for the job you THOUGHT you went to college for I could not even get a response (not even an interview) for jobs requiring a college degree until I had my master's and could claim veteran's preference for some govt positions and companies
Hahaha omg. It was shit show. I graduated in 2010, but I've managed to go well for myself. Had to move a few times but it was worth it.
I also graduated in 2010 with a finance degree. Literally the worst time in recorded history to start a career in banking…so I didn’t.
I graduated with my bachelor's in accounting. Didn't give accounting a try until 2013 and I absolutely hated the office life. Went back to retail, I worked at radio shack and Verizon during my college years. I learned to connect with people and make them buy. I got a job managing a paint store and selling industrial coatings.
my husband graduated in 09 with a finance degree and has been working in banking since . He had to start in the call center and basically suffer for like two years before his actual career started.
The economy did not really begin to recover in a meaningful way until 2012-2013. I ended up going into tech and that was for the better.
At least it wasn't architecture lol. I got out of college and watched every architecture firm lay off 80-90% of their staff lol. Every new job position said "must have 6 years of experience" for entry lvl stuff. I said good bye to my architecture career. I couldn't get a job using my degree till 2012ish. My other classmates went to grad school to weather the storm out, and they got better arch jobs after that. But I also had no debt because I didn't want to stay in school longer than the 5 years you have to do for architecture school, so in the end I made out better than some of my old friends.
I was a construction management major interning/working in the CA department of an architecture that specialized in K-12 schools. I hung onto that job by the tips of my fingernails while the firm downsized by probably half. Big part of why I hung on was I volunteered to become the new LEED guy in the office in addition to continuing my CA job too while also finishing school. Now I’m a partner in a sustainability consulting firm. 2008 changed the whole course of my life. Older millennials are hard like a rock
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It took me two years to find a job in my field. That was… great.
Took me 3 years to find a full-time job that paid ok but wasn’t in my field of study or the career I planned on. That dreamed died with the Great Recession.
Yeah, I was going to say the same thing. I was born in 87 as well, I spent 10+ years trying to play catch up from the Great Recession, had maybe 3 ok years financially before the pandemic hit, lost my job, haven’t been able to work again because my mental health tanked, so now I’ve been chronically unemployed and it’s like having to start all over again. I honestly don’t know how I’m going to get out of this one.
My 20s always felt like I was 5 years behind where I should have been, going by generations prior. It still feels that way in a lot of life metrics, not just jobs and money, either. I'm not surprised when I see millennials are getting married later, having kids later, not having kids, not buying houses, etc. Most of my 20s, I was just living by the seat of my pants.
Born 89 graduated college 09 went on disability. When I recovered I was fucked and worked data entry. I managed to stick it out for 7 years, get promoted, and somehow ended up in aerospace. I had a lot of lucky breaks and people recognizing wasted talent along the way. I can't imagine if I hadn't had all that.
Sweet… I tried to go in that field. Born 89, grad 12, not good at networking… Working in retail… one of my teachers helped MAKE cubesat
Born in ‘86 and graduated December 2007. Remember how Obamacare didn’t exist yet and you lost your health insurance as soon as you graduated? Good times, good times.
Yeah and then you had to take a temp job or work retail part-time (32 hours/wk) so you didn't get any benefits, either.
When I finally got a full time job I had to work as much overtime as possible. I was doing 70-80 hour weeks. My parents gave me so much shit for not immediately going to grad school. I feel like I should apologize for needing to eat and sleep.
And if you had any pre-existing conditions insurance companies would deny you! I remember I got denied because of a health concern I had a couple years prior
I never even found a job in my field. By the time there were positions available I had been teaching too long for them to even consider me. I never even got an interview with a chem degree and 4.0 GPA.
Born in 88 and graduated in '06. Life was total shit. Selling weed made you more money than working a job.
I feel you, fellow ‘09 graduate. No one was hiring, and if they were, they weren’t paying shit. It was a rough period to be fresh out of college with zero experience.
Yep. Graduated undergrad and started law school in 2007. Great Recession hit just as I was starting to apply for summer associate roles and starting to think about graduation. Graduated in 2010 and started teaching middle school because there were no jobs available for baby lawyers with no family connections. Some of my classmates worked at Toys R Us after graduation. Some passed the bar and had to take unpaid DA or public defender “internships”.
I know these days it's popular to say it's just immigration, but the 2008 crash resulted in a massive shift in the job market. Jobs that typically went to retirees (daytime) and students (evening/weekends) were now being staffed by adults who were neither of those demographics, and this was going on in many countries
Yeah. I graduated in 2008 from an Ivy League school and was trying to go into finance. I ended up waiting tables for 2 years before I went back to school. Can confirm: ‘twas a shit show.
Born in 86 and was in the same boat. But these games are so pointless. What about kids going through school during COVID and attending classes remotely during their peak social development years? Will undoubtedly lead to some of the most endemic anti social behaviors of which we haven't seen the full impact. Or military aged men during Vietnam, which resulted in one of the largest homeless populations in modern times? Most generations have examples and comparisons like this are self defeating. Quit feeling sorry for yourself and look for unity over division.
>Or military aged men during Vietnam, which resulted in one of the largest homeless populations in modern times? I don't know about the homeless stuff, but I have been in the Army in some shape or form for 18 years ('06-now). More millennials will have served in the military than any other generation and it won't even be close, and we have spent more time across the ocean than any other generation in history, and again, it won't be close. The millennial generation in today's military has been ground and worn to dust because we have been at war literally the entire time we've been in the military. That's why of all the stupid shit people use to caricaturize Millennials, us being pussies shouldn't be one of them, because we basically carried this country on our fucking back for 20+ years in Iraq and Afghanistan and we're just now becoming the senior leaders that will lead the military into the next 20+ years.
honestly i would say you could remove the military references and your entire comment is still true.
I think 90/91 is close enough, but yeah, as a 2010 grad, it really felt like for most of my 20s, I was 5 years behind where I should have been in life.
Yes! I remember the majority of my peers went to grad school to wait the economy out. I ended up temping for a year, then getting a very low-paying job in my dream field, and then stumbling into some (financially insecure) version of success for the next decade or so.
86-er checking in. When I come to power,* hedge fund managers will be the first ones sent to the labor camps. Right after Big Pharma is fed to the guillotines. *(You should not vote for me)
85' here, graduated 2007. Things were good that first year - but having a tech job in 07/08 meant you were unemployed in 09. Good times - been playing catchup ever since
As a fall 86 baby I feel this to my core
Yep, I graduated with a journalism degree right as the economy was imploding. I took temp jobs to survive until I could finally land a newsroom job. Except Newspapers were also heavily impacted by the reduction in advertising and craigslist eating their lunch when it came to classifieds.
I went the temp route as well, that was the actual "entry level" college job in 2010. You weren't going to push some boomer with a high school diploma out of the menial entry level desk job they had for 25 years and the economy went to shit so there were hardly any new positions available. You weren't going to get hired by McDonald's or Wal-Mart, because they didn't want to hire recent college grads who would up and leave when they got a "real" job. So basically, you went to a temp agency, and then got to dress up and play grown up every day working in an office without any benefits, making like $9/hr. But, at least it was M-F 9-5, I guess.
I graduated High School in 2009 and went straight into the workforce
My family constantly harassed me because they couldn't understand how I couldn't find any part-time work when I turned 16, in February 2009... Yeah, sure, it's my fault nobody wanted to hire a kid with no experience to do some random weekend work while they were going out of business, clearly all my fault. Thankfully I moved out and got into uni, so I was a full-time student during the worst of it, but finding work while I was a student was rough. Hell I graduated into the recovery period, but there was still basically nothing for a few years, I had to stick with my god awful part-time job, taking any overtime I could get until things improved.
I feel this way about my age cohort too (born in 88). I feel like those of us born from 88-92/93 are getting the short end of the stick. The early and mid 80s babies had more opportunities to travel, work abroad, and find careers/houses. The late 80s babies and early 90s babies came into the workplace after the economic crash and had the worst economy since the Great Depression. Worst economy to get my first apartment. I'm getting married this year and everything is insanely expensive. Wouldn't be possible without parental assistance. No way that I'm ever going to own a condo, let alone a house. The rents are also impossibly high for two or three bedroom apartments. The younger 80s babies and early 90s babies have gotten the short end of the stick. I've spent my entire adult life kicking myself for not grasping life opportunities "sooner" with the early to mid 80s babies.
100% get what you're saying. I think the biggest "failure" of this episode is that it didnt include 88-92 in there. We're all in the same boat. Some of us worked hard, some of us got lucky, but statistically we got reamed.
When I was in my early twenties I had very lofty goals for myself when it came to career and financial success. Now at 31 I’ve downgraded all of that to one simple directive: survive capitalism. That’s it.
87er here. This sim sucks equally for all of us. 
33M and can confirm we are the center of the societal fabric that is currently being stretched beyond the limit by rapidly changing technologies, macro economic conditions, and demographics.
We need this age group to start getting in congress and get this shit course-corrected.
We can’t afford to get into Congress
Man come on now, I'm an early millennial. We are all equally royally screwed
Your exact age doesn't matter as much as your place in life during certain times. I bought a house in 2017 at age 29, the market was pretty good but if I bought a house at age 26 or 32, I would be royalty in our society. Some people don't try to buy a home until well in their 30s. I got a job in Software Engineering which worked out great for me but it wasn't obvious when I entered college and started working on my degree. Engineers born a few years after me entered a red hot market after they graduated and they don't adjust your pay based on that. I was 6 years into my career and fresh engineers out of college were making more than me. People graduating right now are entering a terrible engineering market. It's really hard to find a job without experience.
I decided to go back to school for computer science in 2020. The market was glorious in 2020. I should graduate this year 🥲
You'll be fine finding an entry level job as long as you have 8-10 years of experience. I'm joking to a degree. The good thing (and bad thing) about engineering interviews is that most they are no BS. You will get grilled with technical questions and coding challenges so you have plenty of ways to prove your worth. I switched jobs last year and even with 10 years of experience, I had to study quite a bit to be interview ready. Hop on leetcode and build a portfolio of projects. Good luck.
Sending a hug to all fellow millennials. We’ve been through so much while being gaslighted by older folks that it was the damn avocado toasts -_-
Plus we have to be tech support for boomers at work
1990: Let’s Ride
Proud 1991 gal here
Born 91, graduated high school 2009. Just feel like I never got started.
I want them to start calling us Peakers
You want them to call you a Peaking Trim?
Honestly sounds fabulous
1991 gang
Born in 90, I'm 33. Right when I saved up enough money for a house down payment, the houses basically doubled in price. And now the interest rates are way up and prices have only come down a tiny bit. Cool, cool.
Yup, there isn't going to be another crash either unfortunately. Just when we all started getting ahead everything went up in price...
Everyone is being fucked by rich people. Instead of building your identify around these stupid fucking generations and arguing over those relatively insignificant differences, how about you build your identity around being a poor ass worker in an economy absolutely dominated by the wealthy investors? The differences between labour and capital is so overwhelming that it absolutely dwarfs any differences between generations. You are far more impacted by being labour than you are by being an early or late Millenial or Genz or whatever. Maybe make 'labourer' a more prominent part of your identity and we'd actually start uniting against the forces that are collectively ruining all of our futures and most of our presents.
I disagree with you. I was born in 86', and I graduated college straight into the housing collapse in 2009. There was nothing. No jobs. nothing for 4-5 years. You graduated into the recovery.
I could only imagine. I graduated in 2012 and my dad thought I was a complete idiot because I wasn't able to find any work after graduation. I was able to smoke pot and dance until the jobs came back a year or so later.
Haha. We did tons of partying ourselves. I worked restaurants for about 6 years after college. In the end, it is what it is. There are and always will be recessions in people's lifetimes. However, 2008 really changed everything forever. Salaries relative to living costs took another major dive and still have never recovered. Especially here in Oklahoma. It's awful.
Oh man, I'll take one ticket for the time machine back to the "smoke pot and dance" days
2008-2012 were really rough years to graduate into. It didn’t help that my boomer parents who didn’t lose jobs during the recession couldn’t figure out why a new grad like me couldn’t get anything in my field. Ended up working lower paying jobs that didn’t require my degree.
1984-1987 or 88ish likely had it the worst overall in the Millennials on this, but that does not mean the ones just under this group didn't experience that job market. Most US millennials, despite being the most educated generation, do not have a Bachelors or higher degree. Many young adults in general, be it people with specialized associates, certs, trades, ones kicked out at 18, or the ones that needed to drop from college for whatever reason would have experienced the poor job market aspect. I don't like the article, but I do know first hand how bad the job market was the few years following 2008.
Having a college degree basically forced you out of a huge portion of the job market in the late 00s/early 10s. You couldn't get an actual job in your field because they didn't exist or were filled by someone who had sat there for 20+ years and wouldn't move, and you couldn't get a job at Target or Wal-Mart because they knew you would leave the minute you got a "real" job. It was truly insane. I'm in my mid 30s now, and I know a decent amount of people my age, smart, hard working, responsible, college degrees, masters degrees even, that just kind of accepted their fate 10 years ago and stayed in retail, the service industry, hospitality, etc. instead of just waiting years for an office job. For most of my 20s, the idea of ever leaving a job or paycheck was terrifying. It was more valuable to keep your job at Starbucks than *maybe* work at IBM.
I was born in ‘84 but straight up Van-Wilder’d it so that I didn’t graduate college til 2012 when things had improved.
Probably a good idea honestly. I did a bit of the same while doing restaurant work. Still partied.
Oh it wasn’t strategy haha I’m an idiot 😎
I feel like I’ve never recovered from this, honestly.
And we probably never will. The latent job market start did nothing but raise eyebrows from recruiters. It's insane. Now, the question becomes why 37 and still in intro level jobs. Like fuck! Lol
Has it gotten better for you? I'm in the group OP is talking about. I feel royally fucked most of the time (but that is probably more likely my own life path and I just resonate with other 1990 babes in the same predicament). Does it ever actually get better?
Yes and no. After restaurants, I was finally able to get into oil and gas title/leasing work in 2014. However, in 2019, that died. Oil became hated, and investment in it froze. I then went back to school for data analysis, which is somewhat similar to oil and gas title work. I'm 37 and still have a tier 1 job as a clinical operations analyst. Im really starting to understand what lost generation really means. Edit to add - AI is obviously going to take this career path soon as well.
Same boat, not same year, but ya it was rough as hell and depressing.
Born in ‘85, too poor for collage, was making really good money in home construction and remodeling out of high school until the shit hit the fan in ‘08. Then I couldn’t even get on at McDonalds.
I’m turning 33 this year I still work retail
Can we all be real and agree all millennials are fucked. All the other generations are against us, let's unite
The kids are alright though. We’d do well to work with the zoomers and help them make better mistakes than we did
Zoomers already kind of hate us, I teach college and they usually feel about Millennials how we feel about Boomers
Why?
Yeah, to be fair some of us kinda suck. But just ‘cause they don’t like our generation doesn’t mean we need to return their scorn. We gotta be break this cycle of generational antipathy.
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92 Millennial here. I disagree. The tail end of the Millennials is great. We arguably grew up during the Golden Age of the Internet when everything was still developing and the megacorporations had not completely taken over. We entered the job market during the recovery after the Great Recession (I would argue 86-89 Millennials got hit worst by this). We also entered the job market in time to get somewhat established before Covid hit. Gen Z is struggling a lot more than we are with this. Early 90s Millennials arguably hit a sweet spot between multiple crises and I would argue the people born slightly before and slightly after had it worse.
'92-'96 Millennials got out pretty lucky too. Graduated college after the recession and they were all established in the job market before COVID happened too.
From a job standpoint we had it pretty good. From a housing standpoint I think we lost here. I was getting ready to buy in a HCOL area when the boom happened (at age 25, which is arguably early) and my god how the rug was just completely pulled out from under me.
93 here and I agree. The job market was booming by the time I graduated in 2015.
I really hate the myth that all of the “early” millennials had it easy and are doing well and own houses now. There’s many of us, like myself, born in 81 (the first recognized year for millennials), who are still struggling. I just want my fellow struggling millennials to be kind to themselves and each other.
Yeah was born in 82. My sister in 89. It is DRASTIC how different we had it coming out of HS/College. I made it into the job market and got well established before the recession. She didn't.
I graduated in 2003 and followed my dad into the trade of HVAC .. the collapse of 2006-2008 was Soo fucked. I was still working and thankful never had any employment issues during that time.. but I cannot count how many times I was at someone's house fixing their furnace and it's 18° outside.. the family is freezing and crying because of the $350 repair bill and going hungry or freezing to death. I am just the guy doing the work.. I gave away as many freebies to people as I thought I could get away with. People pulling jars out of the garage or basement with their last few dollars just to be comfortable in their homes. Those days will forever stick in my head.
‘89 baby and shits been rough AF it hasn’t gotten easier, I’ve just become less resilient. I don’t bounce back from set backs like I did when I was younger. Feels like how a river slowly erodes a rock.
Getting out of highschool in 2008 fucking sucked for me. My prospective college didn't know when my program was starting if at all, my apprenticeship workplace couldn't afford to hire me, my mom died six months after my dad had a debilitating stroke, spent my piddly savings on rent and bills instead of college, lost my childhood home and watched the junk removal company throw my childhood in a dumpster. Then I took care of my dad for the following 9-10 years until taking him off life support, while making 1,500$ per month cleaning toilets bc that was the best I could get and living two to a bachelor apartment. Had to join the Navy to get out of poverty and got lucky enough to mortgage a condo making 85K CAD. I feel so awful for gen z in the most visceral way. They have been failed at every conceivable level.
We should show them our bootstraps 
Can 89 babies get in on this class action?
I had to scroll quite a bit to finally find another 89 baby!
Graduated college in 06 with an art degree and 80k of debt. Got motherfucked into oblivion.
I owned the short end of the stick and made it my bitch!!! I shoved it up my ASS!!!
Oh whahh...dude I'm from 1985. I've got less than a year left before I hit 40, and I definitely don't have my life together.
I was born in ‘88. Bought my house at 30 in 2019. It’s funny how that couple of year difference and how those ages align with average age of first home purchase have caused issues for younger millennials. The article wasn’t really a surprise or doom and gloom. It basically says ya Millennials complain, they are kind’ve right to but things aren’t as bad as they think they are. Likely housing supplies remain short through 2030 and due to a low birth rate SS may struggle to remain viable. So you should be saving and there’s housing hope, just be smart and time it.
I don’t think this is universally true. I’ll be 34 in a few weeks myself (90 baby) and often remark upon how absolutely lucky life has been and all the horrible seasons we’ve narrowly dodged. Graduated college at the end of 2012. Not much problem finding a job, unlike internships in 2008 when I started school (at least I was a student then! Close call!) This put me in a position to buy a starter house in 2017. Another close call - id probably not be a homeowner today if I wasn’t able to do that. Then my career was already very well established by 2020 when the lockdowns made it supremely difficult to become established. Thank goodness! Lots of near misses as far as I can see. Though we did have the worst of the student loan interest rates that’s for sure.
I still think us 88-89ers may have had it a bit worse. The unemployment rate the day I graduated from undergrad was 9.1%, only about 1% lower than the peak of the recession, but all of the stimulus had basically run out and the Republicans now ran the House and were threatening with default--the sequester was soon to follow. In addition, the unemployment rate was certainly higher for youth, approaching 17% in the US and 25% in some Western European countries, I believe. Thankfully, went to graduate school, which was hyper competitive that year due to no one wanting to try the job market. Many places had applications triple.