I hear it all the time, “oh you are just a millennial”, as if that is a bad thing.
Why is it a bad thing?
A millennial is described as someone who is born between the early 1980s and the mid-late 1990s.
That coincides with the explosion of technology.
I hear all the time that we are too connected with our technology and while that may be true for the vast majority of “millennials” it is also true for the vast majority of the Generation X population.
Technology is not just limited to millennials.
Another argument I hear all the time is that we act like we are entitled and while that may be true for some it is not the case for all millennials.
Some of us work hard for what we have and those who do not are given the sense of entitlement because the generation before us taught us that we cannot fail and that we are all winners.
I also hear all the time about how millennials do not own their own houses or their own cars and for the vast majority of us that is true but it is also because we simply cannot afford it.
Let us start with school.
As a kid growing up I heard all the time about how I had to go to school to get a good job and have a career.
So I did.
But when I came out of school I was in debt more than $23,000 and I was a lucky one.
Why was I in debt so much?
Because the cost of mandatory fees for college students went from $1,464 in 1990-91 to $6,348 in 2012-13 according to a CBC article posted in 2013.
And I hear the argument all the time about how if we worked harder or if we saved our money better we would be able to afford it without going into debt.
Easy to say in practice but according to inflationcalculator.ca, which keeps track of Canadian CPI and inflation that $1,494 in 1990 would have been worth $2,319.13 in 2012, yet the cost of mandatory fees for school was more than twice that much.
Then once we are out of school we need to find a full time job and according to Statistics Canada the average full time hourly wage in 1990 was $20.67, which would work out to $32.09 in 2012 yet the average age sat at only $23.44.
So when we start our lives we are expected to pay more than twice as much to go to school and then once we are out of school we are being asked to pay off that huge debt, while working a random job making less than average full time wages while we try to get a job in the field we studied in school.
Once we get that job we are still making $9.00 an hour less than what inflation says we should be making based on the wages from 1990.
All this is to say that we do not have it as easy as those people who label us millennials would like to think we do.
Life is tough. I get it.
I was told that by my parents and my teachers growing up but then once I grew up I started being told by people that we had it so easy.
So which is it?
Is life tough or is it easy?
It cannot be both.
The world is a tough place for everyone young and old.
Let us all just work together to get through it the best way we can no matter our age or generation.
And let us also stop being so easy on kids.
If they fail let them fail, if they lose let them lose.
After all, that is not such a bad thing is it
