Newsweek: The Workers of the Future Are millennials better at navigating the current job market?

The Workers of the Future

Are millennials better at navigating the current job market?

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/02/25/the-workers-of-the-future.html

by Nancy CookFebruary 26, 2010

Since Andrew Benton graduated from college less than four years ago, he has dropped out of a Princeton Ph.D. program in economics, moved to rural Georgia to start a Web-software company that he's trying to sell, and now works freelance for a cloud-computing company in Silicon Valley. He buys his own health insurance and contributes to his retirement accounts; neither his policy nor his accounts receive corporate contributions. Does his job instability and lack of benefits worry him? Nope. The 26-year-old does not expect to hold a traditional 9-to-5 job unless he starts his own business again, and he is not overly pessimistic about the recession's long-term effect on his career. "I don't pay that much attention to what is going on in the economy," he says. "I just found stuff I was interested in."

Whatever you make of this attitude—smart, entitled, tech savvy, risky, or bold—Benton is arguably the prototype of the new and perhaps ideal worker in the post-recession economy. Like many millennials, a.k.a. Generation Yers, he does not mind flitting from project to project and doesn't miss the traditional climb up the corporate ladder. He does not look to companies to provide safety nets such as health insurance, 401(k)s, or paid sick leave. "The recession has confirmed a skepticism that's very deep for Gen Yers that there is no such thing as job security. You've got to be a free agent to pay the bills," says Bruce Tulgan, founder of RainmakerThinking, a Connecticut-based research firm that studies young people in the workplace... http://www.newsweek.com/2010/02/25/the-workers-of-the-future.html

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