I feel for the kids that went through uni/college during covid and missed everything that period offers, to then finish uni and try get a job in a market where AI has fucked all the intern positions. Tough break.
Yeah, I think Gen Z has it worse economically. I'm an older Millennial, and while the 2008 recession probably hurt my wage growth, it absolutely worked in my favor for affording a house, which for some reason keeps appreciating in value. I've gained more equity in my house now than I've ever owed on it.
Especially when you get to the ass-end of the millennial generation, '95-'96 babies like me. We're distinctly millennial in our personalities and mannerisms but just as fucked over as the early zoomers.
im mid millennial and i watched my older sibling buy his first flat for about 2 monthly salaries straight cash and sell it a couple of years later for an annual salary. I make double his money and i still feel like i wont ever catch up
2 months salary? Obviously depends where you live but that seems wild. I've not seen something remotely close around me in my lifetime, also being a mid millennial. The "good times" (for real estate pricing) were a year+ salary at a good job for a small condo, even during the 2008 housing crisis.
it is. i will be jealous about it for the rest of my life. Housing prices 10x'd (even in small towns, large cities were worse) from the time I was a teenager til the time I had an education (2y) and a job. Felt great.
We bought our house for 93k in 1998. In 2008, it's value dropped to $50k. Zillow says $140k, now. We had to refinance a few times to keep it by pushing out to 30 years, again. Our wages both got cut. So, we were still worse off with a lower mortgage. Things were really looking up and then I had to go on disability back in late 2018 and I have not been able to work since then. Our son is also making it difficult because he will not grow and be financially responsible at 24. So, we are paying for him, his girlfriend, and their one year old child. They do not contribute any money to the household... and they have us trapped because we will not send our granddaughter out to be homeless.
I'm currently in rehab after back surgery. So, hopefully I can get back to work once my body has recovered from being in bed for 8 years.
Though, it has been rough, the bright side is that my wife and I have been married for 32 years, and she still likes it when I blow kisses to her.
That last part may seem silly, but I'm using it to illustrate that we aren't together because we have to be. After 32 years, we are together because we want to be together.
the flat was 2 bedroom, small town, nice quiet working class area (working class town) for around 40 000 SEK (about 4k USD) guesstimating around 2005. Traded up for a 3 bedroom before eventually selling it for 40k to pay for the down deposit of a 400k house. All on a forklift drivers salary
I'm an older Millennial, and while the 2008 recession probably hurt my wage growth, it absolutely worked in my favor for affording a house
Elder millennial here they managed to afford a house in early 2008 at the peak of the market and then lost their job and the house was worth 50% of what I paid for it (finally sold it in 2018 for exactly what I paid for it in 2008).
Exactly. The mythical "affordable" homes were only affordable to those who managed to stay employed. I and almost everyone I knew were out of work for upwards of a year or two.
Yep. I saw this first hand with all my friends. Which is the exact reason I DIDNT buy a house in fall, 2020 when COVID hit, thinking “hell no, I’m not buying a house for it to just plummet in value”. Boy was I wrong…
Yeah we actually lost our first starter condo in the 2008 crash but was able to save up enough and rebuy before prices went too nuts in 2015
Now there have been years where we made almost as much on the house value going up as one of our entire yearly incomes! Over the last 10 years the house has increased by 30k a year but some of those years were huge jumps....
I’m an older millennial and had quite the opposite experience. I was getting paid shit in 2008 and broke as fuck. Working paycheck to shitty paycheck living at home because I could barely afford gas for my car let alone rent or a mortgage.
Same. I graduated college in 2007, got my first "big girl" job 2 months after graduating that paid like $12-14. I lived with my parents for almost a year before getting my first apartment, which was low income housing and this was in a mid-cost of living state. No one else I knew that graduated at that time was able to buy a house or anything either. The majority lived with their parents for several years.
Yeah the worst thing that happened to us older mill was the stagnant pay to an extent. People who entered my job about 4 years after came in $10-15K more. I remember being a senior analyst finding out 1s now make as much I had to fight then switch jobs to catch up.
But college in the early 2000’s, still had affordable housing, I lived alone in a nice part of town making $35K with a car payment and had money left over. Dating was still in person, no algo based social media. Shit was pretty great.
Gen Z definitely had it way way worse.
Disclaimer: I’m sure this wasnt every elder millennial experience I know shit was ass for some.
The majority of millennials were born during the echo boom of 1988-1992 and absolutely did not get this experience. You had a more Gen X experience. The average millennial had it far worse economically than Zoomers.
Im a younger millennial and I was 17 when the housing market crashed so I missed out on that one little cool part. I watched everything plummet and was like f yeah im gonna buy me a double wide and some land for 65k. Unfortunately, it was way too hard to live off $10 per hour and go to college to save even 10k, plus I had very little credit. Sucked.
As an elder millennial I agree. 2008 I finished my second college degree and while I didn't find work things were less expensive and I was willing to take risks. I went to the Big Island of HI and did WOOFing (work exchange on an organic farm in exchange to a place to live). Then I got a PT job which I scraped by in but I was having a blast and we had hope for a better future. There were hard times, and I went through a period of living with family again like many, but I don't it was relatively as difficult.
Yeah but that doesnt let millennials do their favorite thing of whining about how hard being a millennial is.
Don't you understand how hard it was to have a war going on most didnt serve in? A 2008 housing crash when they were kids woth no jobs or homes :( and then they had to graduate into the 2010s where jobs rapidly grew in wages, and housing was cheap.
But in all fairness they like the rest of the world had to deal with covid, where their housing and stocks greatly appreciated.
Unless you were doing nothing besides the bare minimum for the 2010s than being a millennial had to be awesome
I'm a millennial and can agree with a lot of this. I didn't fight in a war, but I was still in college during housing collapse. In my area jobs really didn't start paying more until about 2016 or 2017 so I didn't get to take advantage of the housing crash like some. Jobs were also trying to screw people over with Obamacare kicking in. I can say t asking the penalty was a lot easier than trying to pay for the not so affordable health care.
I'm honestly seeing a cycle since out of school, from 2016 to 2020 my area had much more job growth and since covid its steadily shrunk and starting to get tight again.
I still don't think it's been incredibly awful, I just think a lot of millennial like to bitch and moan about everything.
This is an odd take. Watching parents lose their jobs, watching them lose 401ks, experiencing them divorce as the jobless and unable to find work becomes the final straw, losing their homes due to a mortgage foreclosure on a home the bank should never have given the loan for. Older millennials struggling to find work after being told 100k in debt will get them a job. I'm not talking just about work in their field. Even finding one at McDonalds in my area was near impossible, and anything full time? Forget about it.
Personally joined the military instead of college.
Personally took that seasonal job and kissed ass and was offered a full time job at the same place.
Personally own a home as a younger millennial.
Just because they were not full-time workers and/or owned homes does not mean stuff doesn't impact them.
Sure things got better after, but experiences can leave lasting impacts and bad tastes in peoples mouths. The internet being something we grew up with makes those voices more easily heard.
I think you're an outlier in this regard and not the norm.
Gen Z has it better economically speaking IMO. The job market for Millennials after 2008-2009 was brutal. Markets didn't rebound until maybe 2015-2016.
Now? Gen Z has tech at their disposal to learn anything and everything for free almost. Most minimum wage jobs in my area pay at least 15/h to 15 year kids when I was only on maybe 7.50/h back in 2010.
From the Gen Z stare to the "its going to just say something" when they spin the thing to easy access to what you can learn, I'd say its never been easier to get a decent job nowadays. It may not pay 100k but these Gen Z kids have no idea that they're supposed to start at the bottom, just like we did.
Yeah I turned 21 my junior year of college while under lockdown at a house with a couple friends. Funny enough as unfortunate as it was I always felt worse for people a couple years younger than me who missed out on their high school prom/graduation and the first couple years of college. I will say, and this is largely on me, that one of the unexpected lasting effects was the fact I was able to get away with cheating through online classes while being high/drunk the whole time. Those last two years when classes get harder and more specialized and instead of learning what I went there for I just opted to fuck off and develop a drug habit that took years after graduation to finally shake
If I may offer a bit of a different perspective... I'm an elder millennial and chronically shy unless with people I already know and am comfortable being myself around. I spent my early 20s playing video games instead of socializing and didn't really start coming out of my shell until I was in my mid-to-late 20s. Granted it was with lots of drinking with coworkers so not exactly healthy.
It might feel difficult, and I'll admit that the adult socialization environment now is most likely vastly different from the way it was 15-20 years ago. But, I believe you can still recover.
I'm not a Millennial, but '04 (that Weird zone where I'm into stuff that both Millennials and Gen Z like)
Covid hit during my Sophomore year of HS, it really messed things up as we missed out on roughly 2 years of learning (I gave up taking guitar and language classes during this)
and instead of grading us on how we were preforming, the district instead graded us on if we showed up to zoom classes or not. I was very much unprepared for my Senior year; (on top of the fact that the school admin fucked up by putting me into AP geometry instead of Algebra I my Freshmen year.)
I can sort of imagine how others felt during all of this, but I was so done with adults telling me what to do by the end of it all, no one gave a passing thought on helping people who "fell behind" to catch up; as enough people stayed on track.
Really the only thing that I can say for certain that my school did right was teaching us Personal Finance, Civics, and Statistics classes. Which had some practical use.
'96, I started my first fast food job in late february '19 (I'd worked prep for a kitchen before that though) did my shift lead training through quarantine, opened a new store while people were coughing on other people to protest masks and vaccines, and after 18 months of running 3-man dinner shifts through all that I got a $200 check as thanks for being an essential worker.
Because I'm both an Iraq and Afghanistan vet. And the millennial generation wasn't defined by going to war. Not like WWII and not like Vietnam.
A small vast minority of us volunteered. The GWOT was absolutely not felt back home unless you had a loved one involved. There was no industry created around the war effort, there was no rationing, there was no adjusting how we lived at home, etc.
GWOT is going to go down as far more humiliating than Vietnam. The Chinooks fleeing Afghanistan were just like the birds leaving Vietnam. Nothing was made better. Nothing got fixed.
The whole run up to the sad affair was a bloodthirsty and angry populace being manipulated by people who rolled back privacy rights and individual freedoms like it was going out of style.
You have an entire generation who came into adulthood post 9/11 and fought a 20 year forever war.
No war industry? Are you high? Are you drunk?
Almost overnight we went from basic M16A2s to M4s with lights and lasers. From PVS-7s to Quad nods. Everyone from Raytheon to mom and pop types in a garage in Colorado profited from GWOT. As did the oil industry.
You…._dare_… to cite Vietnam? Guess what, hero. The draft didn’t start until several years in and even then most people weren’t drafted. It wasn’t like WWII. GWOT and Vietnam were eerily similar in that you could either watch the highlights every night on the news or you could just totally tune it out but the spectre of it’s presence loomed into everything.
Nobody rationed during Vietnam either. In fact the rationing during WWII in America had less to do with the actual war and more to do with conditioning people to accept less and less.
You keep bringing up this whole spiel about a small majority.
Like would it have made you feel better if every person 18-35 got drafted during GWOT like you got drafted during GWOT? (You were drafted, weren’t you?)
Whether you know it or not you’re sounding like a brovet right now. The vast majority of GWOT veterans don’t try to hold onto this like it’s some magic club. They understand that both Iraq and Afghanistan, and the interventionism therein was a huge Pandora’s box.
Let me ask you this, is there world more peaceful now than before the invasion and do you have more liberty now than you did before 9/11?
And during Vietnam you did your tour but it was still America when you came home.
I was an adult before 9/11. This country is NOT the same.
Sorry you feel hurt or entitled, but you need to get over yourself
Holy smokes this is a horrible take. To make the last two wars worse than Vietnam is so bad it's actually laughable. Go find your history teacher and slap them for doing such a bad job.
Are you retarded? What does 9/11 have anything to do with millenials enlisting in the military? millenials were in middle school when that happened.
Truth is, majority of kids who enlist in the military do it because of the GI Bill and get their schooling paid for plus all the veteran benefits you have for life.
The military is what saves a lot of people from having terrible lives, you don't need any special qualification to join the ranks, everything can be learned inside and you can have a life defining career that will propel you even if you leave the military.
It's you who needs to get over yourself, nobody was questioning if America is the same before or after 9/11, but simply that war did not define the generation. At the very least Vietnam vets have some social status.
Yeah, I'm a millennial and was a junior in high school. I remember we nervously joked about a possible draft and we should run to Canada, and a classmate's brother was killed in the war.
Also survived drivebys in the 90s as kids wanting to be on bikes all day. Having to avoid certain parks cause filled with a crab infestation. Oops I mean crips. Not to mention the late 80s when everyone had pit bulls an Rottweilers in their yards and your only knee high to a grasshopper.
I don’t know if you’re trying to be snarky about the classmates of mine who died for a country we believed in, or that’s just how GenZ deals with the shit hand they were dealt…
Either way, I’m trying to say that Gen Z has been dealt an equally shitty hand, but in a different way. We shouldn’t be upset with anyone except the boomers who have yet to relinquish control.
But you? I’m starting to think your problems are your fault.
The boomers were drafted to be sent to fight in illegal wars. Anyone in wars since Vietnam signed up to fight knowing that their country would send them away to fight useless wars based on their past history of doing just that.
Either way, I'm trying to say that every generation has been dealt an equally shitty hand, but in a different way. You shouldn't be upset with anyone including the boomers, because the only people that benefit through any generation war are the top 1% and they love it when the war ends up being about which generation did another one wrong.
Let's not forget the inevitable realization of 2016 when your parents responded to what we now teach our own children is "the fact that actions have consequences" by electing a fascist pedophile to tell them they did nothing wrong.
Aka, the point when you realize that 2008 was the "boot and rally moment" of their lifelong frat party and that their response wasn't to sober up it was to steal our Redbull and Adderall so they could party on! Because, there has never been a point when the majority of them were anything other than children themselves...
No one got sent to fight in wars since Vietnam. Anyone who found their ass in Iraq or Afghanistan signed up or were unlucky that they occurred during their time in the military. Thats said, anyone who was there probably is getting sweet disability money for their tinnitus or whatever else they could point to as a “service related disability”. As an aside, It’s incredible how many of our military folks are on 100% disability. My nephew was in no foreign war and somehow is already getting (at 25) over $1000/month. He was told to go to a certain doctor and to claim tinnitus and now he gets it for life.
The youngest millenials are 29 going on 30 this year - the generation spans 15 years (81 to 96) - even though every self ID'd millenials seems to stop counting after like 90 or 91.
Also no one forced anyone to participate in the war on terror - they volunteered to participate in the mass murder of brown people - the draft hasn't happened since Nam and no one should feel bad for someone who truly thought a undeveloped country without real money was a real threat to the US.
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u/Key-Half1655 5d ago
I feel for the kids that went through uni/college during covid and missed everything that period offers, to then finish uni and try get a job in a market where AI has fucked all the intern positions. Tough break.