Helping young professionals succeed in work and life

Gen Y and the Recession

Hi there!

I've just had a journalist ask me how Gen Y has dealt with and continues to deal with the recession. Has it shaken some of the core traits of Gen Y or has these traits prepared us for the recession? Or did you even feel the effects of the recession in the first place??

I'd appreciate your thoughts!

Alicia

0 members like this

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Reuben Metcalfe on September 21, 2011 at 8:09pm

Everything within the greater context, right?

To begin with, have the Gen Y's been alive long enough to experience anything else in their professional lives?

The recession really started to bite around 2008... I'd say that for most Gen Y's, they were in the very early stages of their career - and that's if they weren't still studying something.

Working with tech start-ups, I see two attitudes often;

1: 'Oh no! Recession! This is a big problem!' and

2: 'Fantastic! Recession! This is an amazing opportunity!'

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the latter attitudes can be found in disruptive technology start-ups, and the early-adopters of those technologies/supplemental industries (Apps on the back of smartphones, social media consultants on the back of Facebook and Twitter etc,) who directly challenge established, lumbering behemoths who grew to power in a very different environment.

In terms of having dealt with, and continuing to deal with the recession, I'd say it's far easier to deal with having never really known what it was LIKE to work professionally before the recession... after all... the Gen Y's are really only starting to come into the space where they have enough experience to tell the difference between what's "normal" and what's genuinely new... at least in terms of the greater environment. (Work culture, consumer expenditure patterns, investor risk profiles, prioritization in life and work decision making process, global/local product or service price sensitivity, whether or not it's a habit for people to drink after work etc.)

However in contrast to other generations - I do believe we're going to see a generation of scrappers... people who 'know the value of a dollar' (A penny pinching generation follows every historical recession - goes back as far as economics do.) I also believe with more information sources, we're likely to see an increase in the diversity of work-life styles, and lower change-reluctance in terms of taking on new ideas, government styles, cultural phenomena and actual products (As opposed to the 60's, where you wouldn't buy anything without the trusted brand-name... we're more fickle than we used to be.)

All in all, Gen Y's reacting to the recession as every generation has reacted to every recession throughout history... only now we can tweet about it.