NPR recently launched a series of podcasts featuring millennials, in their own words, talking about why companies should start taking them seriously as employees, as leaders, as consumers, and as creators of ever more products and services in our economy. In #NewBoom, NPR ponders why “there are [now] more millennials in the U.S. than there are baby boomers, so why do they get so many eye rolls?”
Millennial reporter Selena Simmons-Duffin expands upon it this way:
"I’m going to go ahead and guess that if you're not a millennial, you kind of hate us. We seem so lazy, so entitled, we live with our parents, we love our selfies, and we’re always talking about ourselves. But here is my case: Millennials have already shaped your life. Millennials aren’t simply users of social media – we invented it...We picked it out and showed everybody else how to use it… we are all living in a millennial world. It’s connected, it’s open, and it’s more diverse, because millennials look different en masse than generations past. Millennials have already steered the country to a place where diplomats tweet, gay marriage is turning mainstream, and running a blog can be more financially secure than a company gig. If we've done all that before 35, get ready."
And it’s absolutely true: Generation Y, the 80+ million Americans born between 1980 and 2000, have already shaped society in ways that differentiate modern culture and workplaces and life in general from all the decades that came before, yet they continue to be satirized and chided by older generations. All this despite the fact that they already make up more than 25 percent of the American population, will soon make up the majority of the workforce, according to Fast Company, and by 2017 will wield an annual spending power of up to $200 billion – or $10 trillion in their lifetimes, according to AdAge.
Boomers in particular love to bash millennials, though Salon argues that people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, or in other words, “Baby Boomers ruined America: Why blaming Millennials is misguided – and annoying.” Basically, millennials have overcome ridiculous obstacles and neglectful oversight from the generations preceding them to succeed at life and business, nonetheless – and smart companies and brands are taking notice of that tenacity and might, even if they don’t fully understanding them.
“Corporate America is currently caught up in a torrid infatuation with millennials, who befuddle and torment the companies who want their dollars,” NPR also writes, in a story about how agri-business leviathan Monsanto has recently gone so far as to hire a Director of Millennial Engagement to help the company win over this massive generation of powerful consumers.
“The importance of millennials in today’s business landscape has been emphasized so much that it has almost become a cliché within the startup world,” says Christian Lanng, in his recent piece on ‘The Business of Millennials” for the Wall Street Journal. “This makes it all the more shocking that some companies still aren’t listening.”
April Lane is a free-lance writer.