Older Americans Are More Millennial Than Millennials
To understand both changes to the workforce and changing attitudes toward work, don’t watch young people. Watch their parents (and uncles, aunts, and grandparents).
Young people are the supposed vanguards of a new economic age. Unlike their parents, young people are said to value happiness over money. They prefer gigs over jobs. They prefer flexibility and meaning rather than status and hours at work. Rather than attach themselves to a single company, they are ushering in an economy of coffee-shop “creatives,” hot-desking between WeWork-style shared work spaces in pursuit of their individualistic dreams.
But there is another generation of U.S. workers with those non-monetary values and gig-style jobs. It’s not
