Millennials are rapidly becoming a significant part of the workforce — accounting for more of a third of all workers today, and projected to be close to half by 2020. Still, our PreparedU survey reveals that 66 percent of millennials still feel misunderstood by older generations. The media is trying to help, devoting a bunch of recent coverage and commentary to millennials. Here’s a quick summary of some of the best.
How College is Like Sunscreen
In this intriguing essay on the college debt crisis, full of infographics and charts from the New York Fed, one writer compares the decision not to attend college to mistakenly forgetting to apply sunscreen on a hot day — and effectively argues that, based on the market value of a college degree, there may not actually be a college debt crisis at all. Read more on TheAtlantic.com.
The Year We End of Millennial Bashing
A new Hartford trend report points out that millennials as a generation “are hardly kids anymore,” with the top end nearing mid-career and, at as old as 34, holding leadership roles. Read more in this Money magazine story that calls for the end of “millennial bashing” and presents a valid argument for why workplaces should adapt to millennials — who have now surpassed even Baby Boomers in numbers — and not vice versa.
A Message to Leaders Who Want Millennial Women
In this argument for the need for change in Corporate America, Bentley’s own Betsy Myers points out that “70 percent of new entrants to the workplace [last year] were women and people of color [who] work differently.” Read on for Myers’s tips in Forbes on how companies can learn and rethink their outdated, traditional cultures in order to attract and maintain millennials — especially women and minorities — taking cues from Pope Francis and presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.
Are Millennial Job Prospects Linked to Personal Hygiene?
Everyone is searching for a solution to the under-employment of recent college grads, and a new survey suggests (some might say erroneously) that one reason millennials aren’t getting hired is that up to 93 percent of them have an idealized view of entrepreneurship/startup culture and place a lack of importance on personal grooming.
Weigh in on CNBC.com.
There Are More 23-Year-Olds Than Any Other Age
The best thing younger millennials have going for them right now in the life prospects department is strength in numbers — 4.3 million, a “youth bulge” that makes the U.S. unique in its ability to offset aging Boomers compared to Japan or Europe — and the fact that they’re entering the job market in an improved recession economy than that of their older generational cohorts. Bloomberg BusinessWeek argues that this, and more, is why millennials are “going to save the world.” Read more in Global Economics.
Melissa Massello is a freelance writer, former startup executive, and serial entrepreneur passionate about supporting women’s leadership and gender equality, both in business and at home.