i’ve noticed more millennial articles on washington post, but there’s a very common theme, it’s all people born in the early 1980′s. definitions of millennials vary by institution, it seems like millennials should be born in the middle part of the 1980′s at the earliest.
A person born in 1985 was 16 when 9/11 happened, they weren’t old enough to experience the cold war mentality and only knew about the brief era of peace and prosperity in the 1990′s. The sudden change into the war on terror was not something they knew about or grew up with.Whereas someone born in 1980 had grown up through 11 years of the cold war, admittedly as it was winding down. further, they were 20 when 9/11 happened and better able to process what was happening than a teenager or younger could (although everyone experienced it in different ways).
More importantly however was that a person born in 1985 was only 23 when the Great Recession hit. they probably only had a little work experience and lots of debt if they went to college. in fact, it gets worse the younger a person was, someone born in 1990 either had to try to find work as hundreds of thousands of them vanished in 2008 or went to college and then tried to find a job in the molasses recovery with little work experience, but a lot of debt.
Someone born in 1980 meanwhile would have been 28 when the recession happened, with lots of time to get a degree if they wanted and build up a resume and work experience. they might have lost more because they had more to lose, but with a stronger resume the recovery would have been easier, at least on the aggregate. to say nothing of how much cheaper college was in the 90s.
certainly people in the early 1980′s had trouble in the next 30 years, but no where near as much as those born in the later 80′s and early 90′s.
drinking-tea-at-midnight poses an interesting question here: how do *you* define millennial? and why (or why not!) does that definition matter to you?
