San Diego Metropolitan - Career Advancement - March 2001

The Millennial Generation Is No Gen-X

Today’s youngest workers are demonstrably among the smartest, most optimistic,team-oriented and respectful in generations

Increasingly, employers are noting that their youngest workers are different — cut from a different mold than the now-infamous Generation X. Precisely. Many Xers spent a lot of time alone when they were young. They became, as should have been expected, profoundly individualistic and independent. The Millennial Generation that is following them was raised in a radically different way — more group activity, more parental involvement, higher expectations. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the results for those born between 1980 and 2000 are different — if you use a different recipe, you get a different cake. In addition, major demographic trends having to do with race and gender are having an impact.

Following are the more predictable and notable differences between the two generations. You can bank on all of them. They are that solid and, with a single exception, substantiated by mountains of evidence.

• Greater ethnic diversity. Genera-tion X was our nation’s most ethnically diverse with just more than 32 percent nonwhite members. Millennials will accelerate the trend — nearly 36 percent of them are nonwhite. In California, of course, these portions are much greater. Nonwhite boomers, by the way, only accounted for 24 percent of that generation.

• Diminished roles for men. Not only has it become common for women to enter the workforce, they are now doing so with generally stronger qualifications than their male counterparts. Women do better in high school and in college and their enrollment in graduate and professional schools is rising dramatically. The workplace is just next in line in a pattern that has gone beyond gender equity and is becoming gender dominance.

• Greater academic excellence. Politicians can’t say enough good things about supporting education and obtaining greater achievement, but the facts already speak for themselves. SAT scores are at a 30-year high. Our youngest generation is the most thoroughly educated we have had in quite some time.

• Institutional integration. Unlike Generation X, Millennials are mostly positive about the status of current conditions, believing that society’s future, as well as their own, is bright and positive. In the words of generational analysts Neil Howe and William Strauss, Millennials in the workplace will be “more cooperative, standard, and loyal.”

• A rise in group behavior. A common complaint about Generation X was that its members didn’t take a liking to teamwork or show much proficiency at it. Millennials will thrive on it. Why? For starters, consider the fact that they have spent 13 percent less time watching television and 86 percent more time in organized sports.

• More technical sophistication. Xers haven’t been techno-slouches, actually qualifying as our nation’s first technically adept generation, but Millennials, naturally, will up the ante. For example, in 1998, 42 percent of our nation’s children between the ages of 8 and 17 regularly went online. And, as we all know, Millennials have been the in-house technical experts in their families since they were toddlers, called upon to adjust the VCR and install new software. Never before has a generation of children taught technology to its elders.

• Willing to work hard. Most Millennials expect to work more than 40 hours per week and have no complaints about it. Although they spent less time in paid employment as teen-agers (they simply didn’t have the time and/or their parents preferred them to be engaged in other activities), compared to Generation X they spent 138 percent more time doing household work and 58 percent more time studying. For good measure, throw in the hard work aspects of athletic participation. Count on effort.

• Increased self-confidence. Nearly all Millennials, 98 percent, agree that they will accomplish their life goals. Most of them believe that they will be better off than their parents and be able to afford the lifestyle that they had as children. Very few of them believe that success comes from lucky breaks. Instead, their confidence is rooted in their belief in the virtue of hard work.

• Stronger communication skills. This point has not yet been precisely documented, but it is certainly logical. Millennial upbringing involved much more engagement and interactivity than that experienced by the “home alone” Xers. It is implausible to think that they would not have developed stronger communication skills as a result.

• Lower tolerance for nonconformity. If anything, Generation X goes beyond tolerance and assigns value to nonconformity. What other generation would have made a hero of Dennis Rodman? Millennials, on the other hand, weaned on “zero tolerance,” tend to favor more authority and regulation from institutions. More of them, by the way, wore uniforms to school than any other American generation.

• Respect for older generations. It has been documented repeatedly — Millennials have the greatest admiration and trust for their grandparents’ generation (mostly members of the Silent Generation), followed closely by the esteem they have for their parents’ boomer generation. They like and trust Generation X the least. The cross-generational dynamics of the workplace will be quite different since Generation X holds a general disdain for older generations.

Collectively, these are not changes to take lightly. Nearly every workplace is inherently intergenerational and the dynamics that take place between people of different ages can work either for or against the well-being of the organization. Understanding each generation — what it brings to the table — is the all-important first step.

Neil Murray is director of career services at UCSD.