What is it with 26 - 30 year old adults these days?

I worked 35-40 hours per week while being full time in school, it was no issue. My son worked 25-35, again no issue. I know I am partial but he has more maturity than some of the people 5 years his senior that work with him.

 

Let's consider the demographic mentioned in the OP. Today, someone 26 years of age would have been 16 in the year 2004. So, we cannot blame the lack of having a job on the down Obama economy. I've spoken with many fellow parents and some had their children work while in HS and college, while others cited that school was their job.

It takes a special kid to want to go out and get a job and build character while their parents encourage them to hang around. I had to pay my own way through school but made the commute each early morning and then headed right out to work each day, 5 days a week and sometimes more.

Having a job builds character, teaches discipline and exposes a child to a valuable experience. I too have passed over college grads who did not work outside jobs through college.

 

Because that is essentially what they are taught in school, see on TV every night, and experience on the internet every day. They are taught not to be judgemental and yet life pretty much requires you to make judgements every day. No matter what mom and dad say the toxic wasteland that is modern popular culture swamps it. With the exception of the Occassional Fox News talking head there is no one telling these kids that there is any reason to delay 'fun' (ie screwing your brains out, drug experimentation or anything else that might feel good at the moment but will likely have horrendous consequences down he road) and leftist decry the disentegration of society but can't for the life of them see their fingerprints all over it. The real reason the modern left, though not their founders, hate the rich is because no sinner wants to be alone in their sin. That's what drives this gay marriage crap why a guy in a bar wil offer to buy you a drink, if he sees you standing there without one and will get positively incensed if you don't accept.

Guys and Dolls that try to opt out of the social scene at college because they think sudying and working is more important at this stage of their lives had better live of campus and preferably as far away as they can get from their classmates other wise they will be taunted and harrassed. Crab pot mentality owns this society as it always has to some extent but the crabs are a nastier vainer sort these days.

 

Really? So how many of those types of people have you hired at your business?

It's easy to say you'll hire a lazy, inexperienced, non-skilled, incompetent, sheltered dumbass with poor work ethic when you don't have to rely upon him to help you run your business.

 

I would guesstimate, many devote 30 - 40 hours per week to gaming/social media...outside of schooling. Who has time to work.

 

It depends. I think working in high school definitely held me back some because I was taking so many advanced classes and some of them were homework intense. Nobody who was ahead of me in the class rankings had jobs during the school year and they had more time to do homework than me. I did well, but I could have done better had I not been working. I would have never overtaken the two stereotypical Asian kids who had no TV's and whose parents were phd's and forced them to study all the time, but I could probably have knocked off a few of the others. I didn't have to work since most all my money went into the bank but it was something I felt like I should be doing.

 

It's the economy. Working at McDonald's or the Gap doesn't do much to help your work skills. Those are pretty much the only jobs available these days.

 

the demographic mentioned are those who are 26-30 years of age

That would put them at age 16 in the years 2000- 2004, well before the down Obama economy and there were jobs for teens

 

You assume too much. Someone pointed out working 40 hours a week is just fine. why should this guy in school, which is work, btw, have to supply more? Why is the student judged differently?

 

No, they're kicking our ass because their labor laws allow worker exploitation. They've also devalued their currency so it's more attractive in international free trade to send all manufacturing there because business owners, probably like yourself, think they're not getting enough of the pie and think as an owner they deserve all of it and the production and services that make your business even possible deserve little if any of that.

 

Yeah, I didn't expect it to be as bad as you say, but I kind of expected that much. Part of it is that parents have been getting lazy. They don't do much to instill work ethic and discipline, and they seem to just do as much as they can to make life as parents as easy as possible - kind of counter-intuitive in the long-term, isn't it? It's the solid parents who usually are 'free' of their kids when they reach 18.

The sad thing is that, for most people in your position, it seems as though no work is really 'valid.' I mean really, I was in the Navy for four years and most employers I talk to think it's no big deal. If anything, it can be bad. My landlord tried to institute separate rules on me when he found out I was a vet because he was worried about - basically, that whole Hollywood TV-ized view of PTSD and all vets. I was an NCO, maintained an updated the digital nautical charts for the largest active warship in the world, drove the damned thing, etc. - but in the civilian world it's no big deal. Kind of frustrating, but I've already accepted it.

So, for what it's worth, I've found that general work experience is dismissed by potential employers, they seem to look for specific work experience. You didn't mention what field you're in but basically, if we're talking about accountants, then a 45year old accountant with 20yrs experience has a definitive edge over a 22 year old accountant with no actual experience.

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Work ethic does make a big difference - you should probably learn a wee bit about Confucianism.

 

Yes, that's why several factories even as recently as last year were full of workers revolting against their employer for (*)(*)(*)(*) conditions. Their work ethic must've really sucked...every one of those employees didn't have good work ethic, right?

 

This sort of generational bashing is absurd. It is literally the same crap that people have been saying about kids and young adults for all eternity.

I could easily, easily bash the living crap out of the Boomers. I could make them look like the laziest, most ignorant, sad, pathetic, self-entitled and selfish generation in the history of the planet... But it would be nothing more than a gross generalization, much like this thread.

 

Again, you should learn what Confucianism is. Straw men and other fallacies won't change that.

 

This. I was in the Air Force, then went to school, now work in a completely different field then what I learned in the Air Force. Military experience doesn't mean much unless it is directly related to the field one is applying in the civilian world

I know lots of hard working under employed late 20 or early 30 somethings. They have degrees and are hard working, but they are not getting ahead. It is easy to say they are lazy or just suck as a generation, but for many it goes further then that.

 

Quite so. I was in class the other day and all these teenies were talking about how our generation is the most selfish generation, this, that, yada yada. I piped and pretty much called that supreme bs. It may be true for some of them, it's a private college and has a lot of yuppies (I think many of them were half speaking to themselves individually), but it's not true of the generation. In the Navy I met some of the best and hardest working people I've ever met. And on public policy, our generation gets screwed. Obamacare is essentially a wealth transfer from the young to the old, as have nearly all large federal programs over the years. The cash for clunkers was a program that essentially added debt the young would pay for, with almost none of the benefits going to the young. That big tax credit for buying a new home - that couldn't be applied to the youth, that's another bennie for the older at the expense (mostly) of the young. Same for the EITC - really, you have to be 25 to get an 'earned income' tax credit? I was working 60+ weeks, every week, when I was in the Navy and somehow that isn't 'earned income'? The youth generation today is getting screwed over more than any previous generation, so far as I'm aware of (this is of course excepting the draft - which was actually cross-generational).

The thing that annoys me is when people complain about the young saying they have no or practically no work experience, when the only work experience they care about is specific. Of course a teen or early twenty-something will have little to no specific work experience. They're just starting. er

 

You can thank the George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and all of the Baby Boomers that elected them for the fantastic economy they've given us over the last decade.

 

They were pretty much the same type types of jobs that were only available when I was in high school unless you were working for a relative. In college most of the people I knew who worked during school had similar jobs--retail, restaurants, bars, etc. It was only in summer that you would see people have more career oriented jobs like internships and the like.

 

The entire narrative of "lazy kids these days" is nothing more than the continuation of a long and illustrious history of older people bashing younger people. It has always worked like this. I can remember my Grandfather calling my Dad lazy. He calls me lazy. I will call my child lazy. It is just the way it is, but intelligent people will recognize it and temper it with the facts (which show no decrease in productivity or intention to work).

As to your point, I think you are pretty much on the ball. The biggest difference I can see these days is that internships don't lead to actual full-time jobs anymore. Corporate America is living off the free labor of tons and tons of interns, with no real intention of hiring them in the future - they will simply get rid of them and hire another intern.

 

Isn't that work? From age 12-18 mowing lawns was my only job, I had school and I played football and basketball at school, so there was little or no time to work at a regular job. 1st summer out of high school I worked at a gas station, then later worked at a paint store a couple years during summers and at a factory one summer. I mean I can't see how it isn't work to work somewhere 10 hours a week, if that's all you can get? I think my 1st job I'd only work 3-4 4 hour shifts per week.

 

And had a very short lifespan..

 

This is basically what the new employment paradigm thinks of us.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/briti...after-overnight-shift-sparks-outcry-1.1704532

The sudden death of a 22-year-old Alberta practicum student, who crashed while driving home after being made to work long hours, has his loved ones pushing for laws to protect unpaid interns from exploitation.

"He was taken advantage of," said his brother Matt Ferguson, from St. Albert, Alta. "If this hadn’t happened the way it happened, it might be easier to deal with."

His family is convinced he didn’t make it home because he’d put in 16 hours in a 24-hour period — with very little rest in between shifts — and was too exhausted to drive safely.

"We believe he fell asleep while he was driving," said Ferguson.

Double duty


Andy's brother Matt Ferguson is on a mission to get better protections for student interns like Andy. (CBC)

Andy was a student in the radio and TV program at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT) in Edmonton.

He had to complete a four-month unpaid practicum for Astral Media’s local pop rock radio stations, ‘The Bear’ and ‘Virgin Radio’, in order to graduate. He was also putting in shifts as a paid intern, over and above his student hours.

"He just wanted to suck it up and he just wanted to finish his program and get it done with and he didn’t get the chance to do that," said his brother.

 

While there is some truth in what you say, no one can speak for a whole generation. The increase in productivity has come largely because it takes fewer people to produce more goods than was possible 50 years ago. Today one programmer one operator and three CNC Machines can produce 100 times the product that one master machinist two journey men machinist 20 engine lathe operators and 20 engine lathes could produce. And even the operator will be replaced by a robot in no more than twenty years.

 

There is no reason for someone aged ~ 25-30 to be lacking in some sort of job experience, and for those people to expect to jump right into highly skilled, highly paid work without having gone to work and developed a work ethic in the first place is laughable. I was once so deluded, in fact. It's a fallacy of naïve, youthful thinking that needs to be stamped out at some point in life.

You know what one of the most popular options is for these underdeveloped youths today? The military. It promises good pay and retardedly generous benefits without the need for prior job experience. Looks like the government will be helping this generation of trust fund babies it has helped to create in the first place. If only this came at a publicly affordable price!

 

Psh. Our parents could drop out of school and hold a good full time paying job for 20 years. Where they were trained. Now? It's all temp jobs and companies refuse to train or hire full time workers. You cannot blame youth for the inherent greed in our world today.

As for the military being a good option, (*)(*)(*)(*) you. Vets aren't treated with respect or dignity and you expect us to get involved in that mine field? Where the hell do you get off telling us to go down that route? There is no honour in the military anymore.