We’ve certainly seen our share of divergent reports about millennials in the workplace.
We’ve all seen and read the ones suggesting they’re a privileged generation with a less-than-stellar work ethic and an eagerness to jump ship on the smallest of provocations.
More recently, we’ve seen research that disputes those reports, such as one study from Project Time Off, mentioned in an HREOnline™ story on this demographic by Senior Editor Jack Robinson just last month. That study finds many millennials not only want to contribute and stay with their companies, but are putting in extra time — some even being referred to as work martyrs — to prove themselves as committed, loyal employees.
As Katie Denis, a senior director of the U.S. Travel Association, puts it in that story:
“People really do have this deeply ingrained assumption that it is an entitled generation, [but] if you look at the totality of their experience, you see something very different. Millennials do have a desire to grab a job, hold a job, prove themselves.”
Just late last month, an emailed release from the newly launched Levo Institute, a website run by and dedicated to millennials, introduced me to another often-overlooked faction of millennials: blue-collar millennials — more than 80 percent of whom say their employers are not providing them with the tools needed to appropriately scale their careers.
They want very much to work and stay with their companies; they just need help.
“As blue-collar workers make up 20 percent of the U.S. workforce,” the report states, “Levo’s study found that nearly 15 percent of its respondents are actively working as full-time blue-collar employees,” which is significant considering millennials will make up 75 percent of global talent over the next seven years. It goes on:
“Additionally, while nearly 60 percent of the millennial generation graduated from a four-year college, the perception is often that hiring a younger worker means lack of core professional skills, such as [energy and commitment], communicating effectively and working in teams.
“As the economy has continued to add [blue-collar] jobs in construction, manufacturing and transportation over the years, these findings are particularly important, especially as millennials [in these jobs] are not experiencing companies taking a vested interest in their development.”
In many cases, millennials are saying no to four-year college degrees altogether to avoid the miseries of having to pay off huge student loans for a significant chunk of their working lives, according to this story in the New York Post. They’re also pulling down some of the biggest salaries and best benefits while their fellow four-year graduates take up residence in their parents’ basements.
And there are plenty of four-year graduates turning to trades too. According to the Post, there were an estimated 1,000 who got in line in July in New York City for applications as apprentice plumbers.