This Month’s issue of the Atlantic has as a lead story “How a new jobless era will transform America.”  I highly recommend it.  I generally take these doom and gloom stories with the proverbial “grain of salt”.  Unfortunately there is a section entitled “the recession and America’s youth” that resonates with me.

There is a phenomenon that I have observed with my 20’s and 30’s clients that has raised alarm bells.  As the article points out, and as I have observed, many young adults do not have the proper perspective or temperament to deal with the circumstances of this recession.  The problem stems from the fact that too many young people have very high material expectations, but also expect that jobs and careers tailored to their lifestyles will be readily available if they just wait.  Based on a lifetime of esteem building by loving parents, these young people have enormous expectations with little appreciation of the hard work needed to achieve those expectations.

Why is this a problem now?  In the 90’s with enormous economic growth, explosion of new business formations and ready capital, the jobs were available, the young people in demand, and expectations were largely met.  Yet even in those years I encountered many who had the tools and the expectations, but not the motivation, and failed to find satisfying careers.  The number of young people I am now seeing has greatly accelerated during this decade and I fear that it will get much worse.

An associate professor of psychology, Jean Twenge is quoted extensively in the article.  She noted that self-esteem in teenagers began rising sharply in the 80’s and 90’s and continues to this day.  Earnings expectations were high, much higher than the reality, in fact as much as 3 times higher.  But the confidence and individualism they gained as young people may not benefit them in adulthood because “self-esteem without basis encourages laziness rather than hard work”.  Her research suggested that the “ability to persevere and keep going is a much better predictor of life outcomes than self-esteem.  She concluded by observing that too many young people have a sense of entitlement.  They expect other people to figure out things for them.

So what does this all mean and how is today different?  The current economic climate, which some believe will persist for a long time, is particularly challenging.  A sense of entitlement and a structured childhood reduces independence and entrepreneurialism in a harsh economic environment that calls for perseverance, adaptability, humility and risk taking.

Another researcher concluded “Trained throughout childhood to disconnect performance from reward, and told repeatedly that they are destined for great things, many are quick to place blame elsewhere when something goes wrong.  They are inclined to believe that bad situations will sort themselves out, or will be sorted out by parents or other helpers.”

The article concludes that because so many were not integrated into the work force in any meaningful way prior to the recession, the outlook is very poor.  It means that large numbers of people in their 20s and 30s entered the recession with many of the characteristics that contribute to joblessness.  For this group, without remedial action, the future is bleak.

This is a problem that I am seeing with increasing frequency.  Parents have to understand that once their children become adults they have to be treated like adults with all that implies relative to personal ambition and hard work.  Of course, for young adults the process is more difficult because in many cases neither parents nor their schooling adequately prepared them for the world of work, a world far more competitive and demanding now.