The Great Millennial crashout
Falling from corporate ladders, lies, deceit and unmet expectations - why so many Millennial's don't want to work.
We’ve heard it a billion times - ‘this generation just doesn’t want to work anymore!’. From the same people dishing out outdated advice of walking into a building and handing in your CV to the first person who will listen, the way of the working world has shifted - and is ever shifting - but we Millennials weren’t prepared for any of it.
The Big Promise
This promise started young, but it was all that ever mattered. Get a good education, go to University, get a degree, land some internships and soon you’ll be in your dream job earning great money - life will be good, you’ll be excited to work and your salary will fuel your life.
From parents, teachers, politician’s and the random older couple you met on that one night out after a few drinks - this was all it took. You just had to get through school and life would finally start living. Success was around the corner!
So you abide. You do all the right things. Make choices that will dictate your future from a young age all for the promise of The Good Life. Maybe you’re the first generation with the opportunity to go to University - you can’t believe how much time has changed in a lifetime. You feel grateful, lucky, like you’ll break the generational financial curse.
It’s not your parents fault. Either they didn’t go to University and genuinely believed it would make your prospects easier… Or they did go to University and, in comparison to their peers who didn’t, life was easier for them.
You accumulate thousands in debt, but everyone tells you not to worry - you won’t see it leave your pay cheque and, eventually, you’ll pay it off when you’re in your high-flying corporate career… what could go wrong?
At the foot of the ladder
Education? Completed it. Debt? Up to your eyeballs. Hope? Dwindling on a thread. But now, you’re at where life begins - the foot of the corporate ladder. All of the opportunities and possibilities are just above you; get ready to climb.
So you climb. You climb and climb and climb. Making promises to yourself at each step.
“Once I hit this salary, I’ll make more time for travelling.”
“Once I make it to Manager, I’ll start prioritising my health more.”
“When this project is over, I’ll stop working late nights.”
To what end? There will always be something else to achieve. Something else to sacrifice yourself for. Something else for that hit of validation.
The salary increases rarely meet inflation. The promotions add extra responsibility to your shoulders, often for very little reward. The projects never stop coming. And years later, you wonder why you’re no longer happy. Confused to how you lost yourself along the way.
The reality
The working world we were promised no longer exists. The hazy dream of having a job, a life and money to spare was never our reality. Demands are too high, salaries are too low and workforces are too short-staffed. No amount of free fruit, cycle to work schemes or a monthly ‘mental health day’ will change the fact that the working environment just isn’t appealing anymore.
When people are burnt out from their jobs, unfulfilled & dissatisfied with the work they spend 40+ hours a week doing and have no spare cash (or energy!) to enjoy life outside of work, it is genuinely no surprise so many of us ‘don’t want to work’.
Gone are the days where even an entry-level salary could promise a future of owning property, going out with friends weekly and having at least one holiday per year. Now we must choose: between a life of stress, unhappiness and burnout but with the potential of a good salary or choose freedom, ownership and sanity - but the liklihood of struggling to make ends meet.
So it’s all doom and gloom?
Not necessarily. Look, I know the majority of this article has seemed negative - but there is always hope. I’ve seen so many people find incredible companies or jobs that have helped them bring their spark back. It might not be your reality now, but the good news is that your reality is yours to change.
Take a leap of faith. Try something new. It doesn’t have to be quitting your job with no back up plan (I did this and it’s been an interesting ride - more for another day), but it could be carving out time for you - for once. Connect with your inner child (here comes the woo woo), but seriously, do. What brought you incredible joy as a child? Rediscover that - trust me, it’s beautiful.
The reality is, we all have to work (unless you come from a lotta money - and if so, are you adopting?), but you don’t have to lose yourself to it. We underestimate just how resilient we are, how we’re able to adapt and bounce back. We’re scared of change - it’s deep wired within us for survival. But what if it all worked out?
This makes me think of bell hooks in Art on My Mind and how she talks about the way art is tied to imagination, power, and what we’re taught to believe is possible. And also her critique in Where We Stand: Class Matters around the American Dream as something that presents itself as open and universal, but actually hides how structured it is by class and access.
What you’re describing, a “faux American Dream” really shows up in that tension. It looks like equal opportunity on the surface, but in practice it becomes a story people are asked to keep believing while navigating systems that don’t actually offer equal footing. So when we’re looking at work life, especially millennial work culture, it can feel like individual struggle or ambition, but hooks would push us to see how much of that is shaped by larger structures being normalized and even aestheticized. Are we required to romanticize the burn out and imbalance of it all?
That’s what makes your reflection feel so resonant. It brought me lots of clarity.
The days of the 60 hour week golden handcuffs and "pension" are most definitely gone. I've been in recruiting for 20+ years now and see the same issues for the 50+ crowd. Their jobs are all disappearing. I've started redesigning my life over the last 18 skiing things that open my heart. I haven't made much money yet but the work makes me feel connected to life and the beauty of people.