In yesterday's
Toronto Star, Rosie DiManno recently wrote
"Boomerang kids home to roost" in response to a
recent Statistics Canada report on the sharply increased likelihood that, after leaving the parental home, young people will at some point return.
[T]he tendency to return home at least once has increased in each of five successive generations, starting with the first wave of baby boomers who were born between 1947 and 1951.
Among these early wave boomers, the probability of returning home within five years of first leaving was less than 12% for men and 10% for women.
In contrast, the probability for the later wave of Gen Xers (born between 1972 and 1976) was just about three times higher: 32% for men and 28% for women.
DiManno was appalled, addressing her article to a fairly harsh critique of Canada's
Generation X, though (I have to admit) her conclusions seem to be relevant to my own
Generation Y.
[T]he reasons for this are varied, the primary factors can be distilled thusly: money and mommy.
Not enough of the former and a pining for the there-there ministrations of the latter. (By Mommy, one can just as easily say Daddy, except most burdens of Parenting Without Borders tend to fall upon the shoulders of mothers.)
While economic realities are driving the bulk of this trend--a quarter of the once-and-again dependants apparently crushed by financial encumbrances from education debts and lost jobs--just over one in 10 reported returning home because of "a broken heart,'' in need of parental refuge because a relationship has ended.
DiManno ends her article by mourning the fact that "the most- and best-educated crop ever reaped in Canada [. . .] can't cope and can't cut it. These are adults now between the ages of 29 and 33, presumably well enough ripened to look for work and look for apartments. Instead, in the tens of thousands, they are cocooning anew, childhood redux, and with not a great deal of protest, apparently, from their parental units."
Is there a lack of nerve in my age cohort? Possibly. But then, as Jim Coyle
pointed out earlier this year, also in the
Toronto Star, there's good reasons for this.
Young adults [. . .] should probably run, not walk, to their local bookstore and pick up a copy of Strapped, a new book by Tamara Draut on the plight of 20-and-30-somethings in America who have essentially been shut out of the new economy and have--to their own considerable cost--all but tuned out of politics.
Draut's analysis--both a lament for a generation and a call to arms--is as dire for young people as it is difficult to refute.
Even if they've followed all the rules, getting ahead for the under-35s is tougher by far than it was for their parents and grandparents, with many marooned in low-wage jobs and their parents' basements.
The problem is not, Draut says, the sign of some generational character flaw or lack of ambition. Instead, it reflects the failure of public policy "to address the changing realities of building a life in the 21st century."
Though for Draut, who works for Demos, a progressive think-tank based in New York, the focus is obviously American, the lessons are applicable north of the border. University degrees cost a fortune to get, even if they're merely the new high-school diploma, a must-have just to get in the door. Good jobs are ever scarcer in an economy polarized between a minority at the lucrative top and a majority struggling to make it or hang on to what they've got.
"Young adults who came of age in the mall culture are still trolling the malls," Draut says. "Only this time, they're looking for work."
Over the last 35 years, unions have grown weaker. Benefits have disappeared. The minimum wage is of far less real value than in decades past. Housing costs have soared. Visa and Mastercard, she says, have become the new social safety net.
"In each decade since the 1970s, these trends have made getting into the middle class and staying there more difficult for each successive generation."
Even as the '90s mythologized 20-something, dot.com millionaires, most young adults were struggling to find a job with a decent salary and benefits, Draut says, "not obsessing about the best time to cash in their stock options."
She quotes one economic study which says that, other than having a larger array of entertainment and goods to purchase, "members of Generation X appear to be worse off by every measure."
Worse still, today's young adults came of age to the drumbeat of a toxic conservatism--especially in the U.S., but in Canada also--portraying government as the cause of all problems and the solution to none.
"When it comes to political participation, the distrust and skepticism toward government expressed by our nation's highest-level politicians has left young adults turned off and tuned out," Draut says. "The last place they'd look for help is the government. And that's exactly what conservatives hoped to achieve.
Leaving aside the question of Draut's political leanings, I suspect that she might be write. In a
recent post over at Demography Matters my co-blogger Edward Hugh examined some of the reasons for the underperformance of Generations X and Y. He suggested that it might lie in the demographic patterns of my generation, particularly in the trend towards sub-replacement fertility worldwide and the relative scarcity of young people, and that this has to be addressed somehow by population policy. If not, "we risk is a permanent drift down the value chain, as the scarce resource (young people) is over-priced in under-performing activities (someone has to care for the growing number of young people, and look, for eg at the growing importance of the health sector in the US economy). This creates, of course, a growing sense of frustration and increasing inequality, and a permanent feeling that what we have is a weak labour market, rather than the reality which is, of course, a shortage of young people."
Is this the case in Canada? I wonder. Certainly the apparent recent prevalence of job-search books that recommend aspirant employees try to establish personal connections with potential employers might be taken as evidence of a difficult and fragmented job market, though I can also imagine that this prevalence might simply more accurately reflect the situation on the ground.
Thoughts?
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