It’s been over a decade since I wrote the original “screwed generation” piece for Newsweek. In the subsequent years, the idea that younger people face a difficult future has become commonplace in public debate.
In the United States, the basics have been evident for some time – low rates of marriage and property ownership, and diminishing demand even for educated workers. Overall, notes the Financial Times, under-40s are less conscientious, more neurotic and less agreeable than previous generations. The political ramifications can already be seen, from the swelling numbers of socialist hipsters in New York’s “commie belt” to the angry, alienated incels living in parental basements, mostly in suburban and exurban areas.
We should sympathise with this “screwed” generation but also suggest ways that they can improve their prospects. After all, every generation faces some sort of existential challenge, like those who lived through the Depression and the World Wars or Vietnam, the Civil Rights era, de-industrialisation, and the sexual revolution.
If millennials and their successors, the so-called Gen-Zs, want to get ahead, maybe it’s time to stop complaining and start changing. In my mind, there are several things that could provide a roadmap to a successful adulthood – moving to places of opportunity, getting married and starting a family, and finally seeking out jobs that actually are in demand.
The first step is to move. People have been gravitating away from expensive, elite-controlled areas throughout history; the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are all products of this kind of aspirational movement. Indeed, America’s great national myth, Manifest Destiny, was shaped by people who left the East Coast for the opportunities west of the Appalachians.
The hipster socialists backing Zohran Mamdani in New York or the various Left-wingers on the Pacific Coast may demand that landlords and taxpayers underwrite their preferred lifestyle as largely childless, and unmarried, permanent renters. But many others are taking the plunge and moving to smaller towns and less expensive metropolitan areas. In fact, after dominating migration among people between the ages of 25 to 44 for much of the past half century, the share of that age group moving to big metro areas has fallen since 2010, while smaller cities, and particularly areas with under 250,000 people, have surged in appeal.
More young people should look at migrating to places that can accommodate their aspirations. As the Brookings Institution’s Mark Muro has noted, salaries across the central states, adjusted for the cost of living, are above the national average. A recent study by Jed Kolko, formerly economist for Indeed Hiring Lab, found this true of smaller metros; in 2019, of the 10 areas with the highest adjusted incomes, eight were in the Heartland. In contrast, those with the lowest adjusted incomes were entirely on the ocean coasts.
Home ownership remains the key driver for this shift. Despite media accounts about how young people do not want to start families or own homes, most surveys show that the vast majority want to replicate the essentials of the middle-class lifestyle, including starting a family and buying a house.
As numerous studies have found, both homeownership and marriage are key elements for success in life, leading to higher incomes, less child poverty and probably higher fertility rates. Even Warren Buffett, at the 2009 Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting, said that to “marry the right person … will make more difference in your life. It will change your aspirations, all kinds of things”.
The next shift lies with career choices. For the past few decades, parents have tended to encourage their offspring to “follow their passion”, taking degrees in such things as gender and race studies, and environmental engineering. But there is little market – outside government and the nonprofit world – for such “skills”. These young people face a job market getting tougher for college graduates.
For years, young people have been told that a university degree is essential for a good career, but many increasingly don’t buy this line. Between 2020 and 2023, new enrolment at trade schools grew by 10 per cent.
Trade schools are far less expensive, and can leave their enrollees with more opportunity without the huge debt. In contrast to many traditional university-enabled professions, there is an ever growing shortage of industrial and craft workers. Such jobs should offer hope for the rising number of young people disengaged from the labour force; the rate of prime age men not in the labour force is three times what it was a few decades ago while that of young men under 25 is twice that of baby boomers at the same age. Europe has, if anything, a larger cohort of the young and disengaged. In some countries, almost 20 per cent of the population under 30 is neither in school nor a job; in Britain, parents worry about “generation jobless”.
Taking these steps may not be as appealing as living by the beach, indulging in singular fantasies, accessing pornography, or working in a protected job in government or a non-profit. But if attitudes don’t adjust to reality, the next generation will be forced to depend on the generosity of our increasingly parlous state for their sustenance. Then they really will be permanently screwed.
This piece first appeared at: Telegraph.
Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and and directs the Center for Demographics and Policy there. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas in Austin. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.
Photo: Kindel Media via Pexels.
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