Does Our Generation Work Harder Than Previous Ones?

Social analysts, and the general public, love to look at the generations that make up our society, from Baby Boomers to Gen Z and make lots of assumptions about how they’re different.

This has led to quite a bit of intergenerational conflict, particularly when it comes to how hard we work.

Somewhere in the mix, the folks in Gen Y have been labeled as lazy, shiftless slackers who want everything to be placed in front of them on a silver platter. Both Baby Boomers and Gen X love nothing more than to moan about the crybaby millennials who don’t know how to work hard and chase success.

So is it really true?

The experts say… No.

One of Australia’s eminent social researchers and psychologists Dr Hugh Mackay has said that it’s time to end what he calls “generational warfare” between all the generations, particularly that which is directed at Gen X by both Gen Y and the Baby Boomers. There’s no evidence that either generation works ‘harder’ than the other overall, and in reality, it’s difficult to compare generations because our world changes too quickly.

Oh The Irony

One of the biggest criticisers of Generation Y is, quite ironically, the Baby Boomers. These are the parents of Gen Y who, despite raising them with a more materialistic and touchy-feely ethic, now aren’t happy with their results. Dr Mackay explains:

“They’re the ones who were determined to be the children’s friends rather than parents. The boomers were experiencing unprecedented levels of affluence their parents couldn’t have imagined, so they were able to provide all sorts of things to their kids that they hadn’t enjoyed.”

What they ended up with is Gen Y, the tech generation with the notion that they’re all special and important and destined for a creative life. These are the young people who may never be able to buy their own houses in today’s property market, are trying to find a place in a rapidly changing job market, and are living with higher costs and more material expectation than any generation before them.

Where Gen Y Differs

Now, we aren’t saying that Gen Y doesn’t approach work differently, because they clearly do. A study by the University of New Hampshire found that Gen Y employees tend to approach jobs with highly unrealistic expectations along with “a strong resistance towards accepting negative feedback”. And there’s certainly a trend for Millenials to look endless for their ‘great passion’ or ‘calling’ in life, even if it doesn’t necessarily pay the bills.

Gen X and the Baby Boomers are quick to point out that uselessly seeking out ‘dream jobs’ while complaining that you don’t make enough to live on isn’t productive, but they forget that without that searching, experimenting, and (sometimes) failing, things don’t ever change. The ones who are shaping the world right now are those in Generation Y, and although we may not be doing it in the way that Gen X or the Baby Boomers envisioned, change is certainly happening.

So What Happens Now

Based on the past, we think there’s always going to be an aspect of generational warfare in our lives. The fact is that every generation feels like they did it better, and everyone is trying to figure out how to best prepare the generation that is coming (known as Generation Z) for the game. But let’s be honest here.

We can’t prepare the next generation for anything.

Baby Boomers couldn’t have prepared their children for the rapidly changing world of technology anymore than Generation X can deal with their children living an online life. We are educating kids in Gen Z for jobs that don’t even exist yet, jobs that we might never understand.

Faced with such an impossible task, it seems clear that the only thing we can really do is understand that each generation will tackle the unique challenges of their lifetimes in a different way. It probably won’t be perfect, as we’ve seen it hasn’t been perfect before. But it might be what works for them, and for the planet, and that is better than nothing.