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from Social Intelligence
Would Better Jobs Solve Millennial Burnout?
Op-ed columnist Noah Smith pinpoints what he sees as the root of the Millennial burnout problem: the economy-wide scarcity of careers as opposed to mere jobs. Smith is onto something: For all the talk about their embrace of the informal gig economy, Millennials truly thrive in secure, full-time roles with defined opportunities for advancement.
Older generations may see references to "Millennial burnout" as an invitation to a pity party, roll their eyes, and then move on. But the phenomenon is real. The American Psychological Association's annual "Stress in America" survey finds that, for several years running, Millennials (their definition: age 22-39) have been America's "most stressed" generation--and by a growing margin. (See also: "The Young and the Anxious.")
What's driving the burnout is very much at odds with the Millennial stereotype. It has nothing to do with being entitled or unmotivated or whiny. Rather, it's the outcome of being raised since early childhood to behave, to achieve, to optimize, to risk manage, to fit in, and to please others. Millennials, accordingly, have prepared for and taken vastly more exams than any prior generation. They have overloaded themselves with the sorts of educational credentials they earnestly believed older people wanted--mortgaging their future in the process. They leave vacation days unused due to work shame (see: "Give Me a Break") and their mobile phones on during weekends in case the boss calls (see: "White-Collar Millennials Love E-Mail"). They skimp on sleep, turn "adulting" into a menu-driven checklist, and cram free time into overlapping bits (giving rise to entirely new product lines, like "athleisure"). What the older edge of this generation wanted in return was pretty modest: Just the same expectation of career security and advancement that their Boomer parents had at the same age.
But of course that's not what they're getting. Hence, burnout. The best single book on Millennial burnout and its causes is Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials by Malcolm Harris (himself a Millennial). Perhaps the best single article is "How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation" by Anne Helen Petersen. “We are encouraged to strategize and scheme to find places, times, and roles where we can be effectively put to work,” writes Harris. “Efficiency is our existential purpose, and we are a generation of finely honed tools, crafted from embryos to be lean, mean production machines.” To this, Petersen adds: "Yet the more work we do, the more efficient we’ve proven ourselves to be, the worse our jobs become: lower pay, worse benefits, less job security. Our efficiency hasn’t bucked wage stagnation; our steadfastness hasn’t made us more valuable. If anything, our commitment to work, no matter how exploitative, has simply encouraged and facilitated our exploitation. We put up with companies treating us poorly because we don’t see another option. We don’t quit. We internalize that we’re not striving hard enough. And we get a second gig." True enough. The gig economy is part of the problem, not the solution.
Burnout afflicts young women more than young men, perhaps because women choose less remunerative jobs or are more burdened by the pleasing-others ethic and almost certainly because they are more burdened by family responsibilities. But it equally affects both young educated professionals and young noncollege workers. To be sure, Millennials aren't the first generation to face declining upward mobility relative to parents (that honor goes to late-wave Boomer cohorts: See this study I coauthored for the Federal Reserve back in 2015). But unlike Xers or Boomers, Millennials truly want the system to work. So they may become the first to try to do something about it politically, if a national leader offers them a plausible way forward.