7 ms·

2018 Deloitte Millennial Survey [pdf]

78 points by wallflower 8y ago

foepys 8y ago
I find it very strange that, according to this study, Millennials and Gen-Z have more faith in business leaders than in politicians. Maybe if they collectively went out to vote instead of staying at home (2016 US presidential election only had a <50% turnout for these groups), they could actually make a difference instead of continuously complaining about how politicians are allegedly ruining their lives. I also fail to see how business leaders that neither have legislating power (besides influencing politicians, which I assume again counts against politicians) nor are interested in anybody not giving them money, could make the world a better place. E.g. Elon Musk, who is regarded by many as a visionary for a better world, is notoriously anti-union. He doesn't want a democratic entity in his businesses. The gig economy (which both groups are apparently liking so much) is an absolute scam. Traditional businesses are getting "disrupted" by the deep pockets of SV VC money to push all (existing and working) competitors out of the market to establish a monopoly or duopoly. See Uber, Airbnb, various food delivery services, etc. which are continuously creating problems for their "workers" (that they insist they don't employ) or others around them (worsening the affordable housing problems like in Berlin and Amsterdam). People put themselves into these markets and lose everything their ancestors fought for, including 40h weeks, paid vacation, health insurance, paid sick leave etc. In the EU it's even worse where all those things and more are guaranteed to employees by the state to a much larger extend.
- Fnoord 8y ago
  > I find it very strange that, according to this study, Millennials and Gen-Z have more faith in business leaders than in politicians. The study is about a specific group of Millenials and Gen-Z: "The 2018 report is based on the views of 10,455 millennials questioned across 36 countries. Millennials included in the study were born between January 1983 and December 1994 and represent a specific group of this generation—those who have college or university degrees, are employed full time and work predominantly in large, private-sector organizations. 5 Millennials are increasingly taking on senior positions in which they can influence how their organizations address society’s challenges. "This report also includes responses from 1,844 Gen Z respondents in Australia, Canada, China, India, the United Kingdom and the United States. Gen Z respondents were born between January 1995 and December 1999. All are currently studying for or have obtained a first/higher degree. More than a third are working either full time (16 percent) or part time (21 percent)." (Emphasis mine. I could've used some more emphasis, FWIW.) > Maybe if they collectively went out to vote instead of staying at home (2016 US presidential election only had a <50% turnout for these groups) On top of the above, the study is about world-wide [1] Millenials; not US-only. > People put themselves into these markets and lose everything their ancestors fought for, including 40h weeks, paid vacation, health insurance, paid sick leave etc. In the EU it's even worse where all those things and more are guaranteed to employees by the state to a much larger extend. 40h work week and paid sick leave is not guaranteed if you work for an employement agency. The gig economy is just the next step in the on-going hype of destroying the rights workers have fought for. Yeah, its worse than employment agencies, but we shouldn't have gone the path of employment agencies in the first place. In the EU, employers need a good reason to fire you if you have a contract; if you're pregnant and employed by an employment agency you just get sacked, poof like that. Ludicrous step backward in women rights. [1] Inaccurate, since specific countries were polled.
- mlthoughts2018 8y ago
  In the US at least, I think it’s naive to believe that greater voter turnout would have much impact on the result of something like a presidential election, which is a first-past-the-post vote affected by millions of dollars in campaign spending to drive particular voting rates and turnout behavior. Comments like this one naively assume the choice you make in the poll is an exercise of free will, but it’s obviously not. Distrust of politicians could be driven by this. Even more basic electioneering, like engineering a nationwide two-party system to ensure no meaningful challenge to the status quo, might also cause political disenfranchisement, especially among demographics that believe they are systematically the target of that entrenched system (and are usually correct to believe so). For many voters, they ought to admit their personal choice is manipulated by ad spending and a priori generally based in ignorance and their vote, especially if it’s for a non-mainstream candidate, has no effect. Abstaining from the vote would be a reasonable choice for these people. And if they do vote, then a good strategy might be to find someone they believe is smarter than they are yet represents the values they want to communicate in the vote, and just copy that person’s vote. But “more people at the polls” is not automatically going to change much from whatever was engineered in the first place (including engineering voter turnout itself). However, the part I couldn’t understand is why anyone would think business leaders are trustworthy in any sense. Both politicians and business leaders generally ought to be assumed to be entirely untrustworthy unless there’s exceptional evidence in special cases.
  - maimeowmeow 8y ago
    Most people who tend to vote liberal are concentrated in select areas, where its a liberal landslide every time. Now you factor in hackers, politicians getting bought, and it seems very pointless if you live in major city.
    - gowld 8y ago
      State and federal executive elections do not turn at the district level.
  - sweettea 8y ago
    And it's a short journey from copying someone else's vote because you trust they are smarter than you and have your values, to questing for that person to be a monarch and appoint subsidiary positions. Millenials seem in my experience more likely to be or to be open to monarchists than any previous generations, seemingly from disillusionment with the practicalities of politicians/demogagues.
- noja 8y ago
  > Maybe if they collectively went out to vote They don't trust politicians.
- dmichulke 8y ago
  > I find it very strange that, according to this study, Millennials and Gen-Z have more faith in business leaders than in politicians. Maybe if they collectively went out to vote instead of staying at home ... An election is basically a choice between two politicians that proved to be sufficiently politician to be voted for by other politicians. So those are probably the most extreme on the politician spectrum, and it's no wonder why people with no trust in politicians wouldn't vote for any.
  - humanrebar 8y ago
    I think President Trump and the near nomination of Sanders undermines your point.
    - gowld 8y ago
      I don't see how a near nomination being held back by the party machine undermines the point. Trump is an interesting case , but not an inspiring one for the Democratic process.
      - stuckinarut 8y ago
        Because Sanders was way too extreme for the DNC. It's entirely the opposite the point the poster made.
  - mikeash 8y ago
    They’re extreme because extremists vote. Who you vote for is secret. The fact that you voted is public. Any politician looking at voter records is going to notice that they’ll get a lot more traction going after old people. Young people stay home, then complain that they aren’t represented. It’s absurd. If you don’t like your choices in the general election, you need to vote in the primaries too. And even if the choices suck, you still need to show up and either choose the lesser evil or at the very least vote for a third party or write in some nonsense or spoil your ballot, so you’re still on record as having voted.
    - 8y ago
- miscreanity 8y ago
  Practices that work during a growth phase rarely work effectively when an organization (business, country, etc) has reached the latter states of its lifecycle. One example is unions: they organized and protected workers in a period when companies were maturing. The growth phase is over. Now that such protections have been augmented by retirement funds and pensions, businesses have little room to maneuver when an economic downturn hits. Unions prevent those businesses from being able to maintain competitive pricing in global markets due to labor costs, so those obligations eventually put the company out of business or force it to move operations - normally out of sheer survival since other companies in the space will be doing the same. The end result is that, in a mature market, unions can strangle a business until both that business and the retirements of employees are lost. Many other points exist that may seem counterintuitive without understanding the perspective of both the employer and employee as well as international capital flows and cycles.
  - maxerickson 8y ago
    The simple way out of the pension trap is to fund them with real actual money instead of promises to pay.
    - jessaustin 8y ago
      True, but history has shown that unions are no help with that. Lots of union members trusted that their pensions were funded. Union leaders knew they weren't, but somehow were convinced not to care about it...
  - cryoshon 8y ago
    >businesses have little room to maneuver when an economic downturn hits sure they do. they just underpay their workers the whole time. oh yeah, and most places don't offer pensions anymore.
  - Spooky23 8y ago
    Business picked up lots of flexibility, they outsource and offshore. Even if it costs more, the books look better.
- scottLobster 8y ago
  Vote for who? The next iteration of Trump vs Hillary? Don't get me wrong I'd love to see my generation get more politically active, but looking at the US I understand their apathy. Business leaders on the other hand can often affect positive change in a more direct manner without the need to squeeze corrupt politicians into doing a half-assed job for them. For example I have more long-term faith in SpaceX and Blue Origin furthering space exploration than I do NASA (yes, I know SpaceX wouldn't exist without the NASA ISS contract several years ago, that's a broken clock right twice a day though) Given the option of being Bill Gates or being the President of the US, I'd pick Bill Gates every time.
- ben_w 8y ago
  > I find it very strange that … Millennials and Gen-Z have more faith in business leaders than in politicians. Maybe if they collectively went out to vote instead of staying at home … they could actually make a difference instead of continuously complaining The strangeness is because your model doesn’t fit reality, not because reality is wrong. In the USA, I suspect that negative campaigning is a big part of the problem — if a person hears about “pizzagste”, “russiagate”, “her emails”, “his sexual misconduct”, “half the world will go to war with you if she wins”, “he’ll cause a nuclear apocalypse if he wins”, and believes half of it, would you expect them to care which disaster gets in? Myself, I’m not in the USA. I’m from the UK, which has very different political rules. But, even here I feel disenfranchised by the political system — to the extent that I will move out as soon as family obligations allow, because that’s more likely to get me a result I’m satisfied with than any plausible amount of political activity.
- briandear 8y ago
  > He doesn't want a democratic entity in his businesses. A union is “democratic?” You haven’t spent much time around unions then. Unions are essentially a conspiracy to create labor monopolies and they deny individuals the ability to negotiate their own wages and benefits based on their perception of their own value. I don’t want to make the same wage as everyone else with the same years of experience because my skills might be better or worse than the guy with the same job title and same seniority yet somehow unions consider everyone equal in terms of value? Not every is equal. A teacher with ten years experience isn’t inherently more valuable than a teacher with two years experience. Yet if unions call the shots, the ten year teacher gets paid more just in the basis of that seniority — regardless of actual performance. I am perfectly capable of negotiating my own salary, I don’t need some collective to do it for me. Unions benefit he mediocre and harm the high performers. There is nothing democratic about forcing me to accept a contract I had no say in negotiating or being forced to join a union (or pay for it) as a condition of employment. I should have the right to not have to contribute to, or join a union. Unions are bastions of cronyism. Try to get a job as an electrician in Chicago without being in the union.. it won’t happen — I wouldn’t have the freedom to work unless I join a union. There is nothing democratic about that.
  - gowld 8y ago
    You seem to be confusing democracy with libertarianism. Not liking democracy in the workplace is your choice, but that doesn't make it undemocratic.
- stuckinarut 8y ago
  Politicians who would actually do anything to help young working class people seem rare, and lose in primaries.
twoslide 8y ago
Interesting, any idea if they release the full (individual response level) data?
opportune 8y ago
I wonder how many of millenials’ problems are due to baby boomers reaching their peak wealth/earning capabilities, likely continuing for another ~15 years. Certainly this would be a huge impediment to career advancement in industries outside of tech, as well as making buying a house very difficult I’m also tired of all of this inexact labeling of “generations” rather than explicitly identifying these groups by age. I think creating a split between “millenials” and “Gen X” and “Boomers” fosters an us vs them mentality that does more harm than good. My parents are “boomers” and I’ve started hearing them talking about how Millenials are X Y and Z (mostly bad things). I doubt they would be as willing to say the same of “young people” or “young adults”. Most age-related issues aren’t due to intrinsic cultural differences but the combination of economics and demographics
- economistrator 8y ago
  The problem with calling them “young people” or “young adults” is that the members of these groups change all the time while the boomers or Millennials will always be the same people. This makes it difficult to read or write about differences between “young people” and "old people" because the situation might be different 10 years later. But naming the generations will mean that the writing stays accurate.
- cmjqol 8y ago
  >likely continuing for another ~15 years It's not that simple, I doubt the boomers working at Google now are the one creating problems and preventing the company from moving forward. When you see how much stuff they did for ahead of their time ( Big Table , Piper etc...) and now the same tech is being ported to the cloud. My point here is to say that it's a mentality issue rather than an age issue. If the companies you are working did not invest to transform you and to make you adequate toward current society , you are going to slow down your company otherwise you'll be just fine. >I’m also tired of all of this inexact labeling of “generations” The age group are identified page 3. I personally consider this labelling accurate , but as you mentioned it "boomers" are okay to label others but not to be labelled themselves.
  - opportune 8y ago
stuckinarut 8y ago
I really can't wait until we're finally old enough that we don't need these asinine "how to understand millenials" style articles and reports.
joshka 8y ago
Was anyone else annoyed that the color for Millennial vs Gen Z kept swapping back and forth in the doc?

78 points by wallflower 8y ago

I find it very strange that, according to this study, Millennials and Gen-Z have more faith in business leaders than in politicians. Maybe if they collectively went out to vote instead of staying at home (2016 US presidential election only had a <50% turnout for these groups), they could actually make a difference instead of continuously complaining about how politicians are allegedly ruining their lives. I also fail to see how business leaders that neither have legislating power (besides influencing politicians, which I assume again counts against politicians) nor are interested in anybody not giving them money, could make the world a better place. E.g. Elon Musk, who is regarded by many as a visionary for a better world, is notoriously anti-union. He doesn't want a democratic entity in his businesses. The gig economy (which both groups are apparently liking so much) is an absolute scam. Traditional businesses are getting "disrupted" by the deep pockets of SV VC money to push all (existing and working) competitors out of the market to establish a monopoly or duopoly. See Uber, Airbnb, various food delivery services, etc. which are continuously creating problems for their "workers" (that they insist they don't employ) or others around them (worsening the affordable housing problems like in Berlin and Amsterdam). People put themselves into these markets and lose everything their ancestors fought for, including 40h weeks, paid vacation, health insurance, paid sick leave etc. In the EU it's even worse where all those things and more are guaranteed to employees by the state to a much larger extend.

Fnoord 8y ago
> I find it very strange that, according to this study, Millennials and Gen-Z have more faith in business leaders than in politicians. The study is about a specific group of Millenials and Gen-Z: "The 2018 report is based on the views of 10,455 millennials questioned across 36 countries. Millennials included in the study were born between January 1983 and December 1994 and represent a specific group of this generation—those who have college or university degrees, are employed full time and work predominantly in large, private-sector organizations. 5 Millennials are increasingly taking on senior positions in which they can influence how their organizations address society’s challenges. "This report also includes responses from 1,844 Gen Z respondents in Australia, Canada, China, India, the United Kingdom and the United States. Gen Z respondents were born between January 1995 and December 1999. All are currently studying for or have obtained a first/higher degree. More than a third are working either full time (16 percent) or part time (21 percent)." (Emphasis mine. I could've used some more emphasis, FWIW.) > Maybe if they collectively went out to vote instead of staying at home (2016 US presidential election only had a <50% turnout for these groups) On top of the above, the study is about world-wide [1] Millenials; not US-only. > People put themselves into these markets and lose everything their ancestors fought for, including 40h weeks, paid vacation, health insurance, paid sick leave etc. In the EU it's even worse where all those things and more are guaranteed to employees by the state to a much larger extend. 40h work week and paid sick leave is not guaranteed if you work for an employement agency. The gig economy is just the next step in the on-going hype of destroying the rights workers have fought for. Yeah, its worse than employment agencies, but we shouldn't have gone the path of employment agencies in the first place. In the EU, employers need a good reason to fire you if you have a contract; if you're pregnant and employed by an employment agency you just get sacked, poof like that. Ludicrous step backward in women rights. [1] Inaccurate, since specific countries were polled.
mlthoughts2018 8y ago
In the US at least, I think it’s naive to believe that greater voter turnout would have much impact on the result of something like a presidential election, which is a first-past-the-post vote affected by millions of dollars in campaign spending to drive particular voting rates and turnout behavior. Comments like this one naively assume the choice you make in the poll is an exercise of free will, but it’s obviously not. Distrust of politicians could be driven by this. Even more basic electioneering, like engineering a nationwide two-party system to ensure no meaningful challenge to the status quo, might also cause political disenfranchisement, especially among demographics that believe they are systematically the target of that entrenched system (and are usually correct to believe so). For many voters, they ought to admit their personal choice is manipulated by ad spending and a priori generally based in ignorance and their vote, especially if it’s for a non-mainstream candidate, has no effect. Abstaining from the vote would be a reasonable choice for these people. And if they do vote, then a good strategy might be to find someone they believe is smarter than they are yet represents the values they want to communicate in the vote, and just copy that person’s vote. But “more people at the polls” is not automatically going to change much from whatever was engineered in the first place (including engineering voter turnout itself). However, the part I couldn’t understand is why anyone would think business leaders are trustworthy in any sense. Both politicians and business leaders generally ought to be assumed to be entirely untrustworthy unless there’s exceptional evidence in special cases.
- maimeowmeow 8y ago
  Most people who tend to vote liberal are concentrated in select areas, where its a liberal landslide every time. Now you factor in hackers, politicians getting bought, and it seems very pointless if you live in major city.
  - gowld 8y ago
    State and federal executive elections do not turn at the district level.
- sweettea 8y ago
  And it's a short journey from copying someone else's vote because you trust they are smarter than you and have your values, to questing for that person to be a monarch and appoint subsidiary positions. Millenials seem in my experience more likely to be or to be open to monarchists than any previous generations, seemingly from disillusionment with the practicalities of politicians/demogagues.
noja 8y ago
> Maybe if they collectively went out to vote They don't trust politicians.
dmichulke 8y ago
> I find it very strange that, according to this study, Millennials and Gen-Z have more faith in business leaders than in politicians. Maybe if they collectively went out to vote instead of staying at home ... An election is basically a choice between two politicians that proved to be sufficiently politician to be voted for by other politicians. So those are probably the most extreme on the politician spectrum, and it's no wonder why people with no trust in politicians wouldn't vote for any.
- humanrebar 8y ago
  I think President Trump and the near nomination of Sanders undermines your point.
  - gowld 8y ago
    I don't see how a near nomination being held back by the party machine undermines the point. Trump is an interesting case , but not an inspiring one for the Democratic process.
    - stuckinarut 8y ago
      Because Sanders was way too extreme for the DNC. It's entirely the opposite the point the poster made.
- mikeash 8y ago
  They’re extreme because extremists vote. Who you vote for is secret. The fact that you voted is public. Any politician looking at voter records is going to notice that they’ll get a lot more traction going after old people. Young people stay home, then complain that they aren’t represented. It’s absurd. If you don’t like your choices in the general election, you need to vote in the primaries too. And even if the choices suck, you still need to show up and either choose the lesser evil or at the very least vote for a third party or write in some nonsense or spoil your ballot, so you’re still on record as having voted.
  - 8y ago
miscreanity 8y ago
Practices that work during a growth phase rarely work effectively when an organization (business, country, etc) has reached the latter states of its lifecycle. One example is unions: they organized and protected workers in a period when companies were maturing. The growth phase is over. Now that such protections have been augmented by retirement funds and pensions, businesses have little room to maneuver when an economic downturn hits. Unions prevent those businesses from being able to maintain competitive pricing in global markets due to labor costs, so those obligations eventually put the company out of business or force it to move operations - normally out of sheer survival since other companies in the space will be doing the same. The end result is that, in a mature market, unions can strangle a business until both that business and the retirements of employees are lost. Many other points exist that may seem counterintuitive without understanding the perspective of both the employer and employee as well as international capital flows and cycles.
- maxerickson 8y ago
  The simple way out of the pension trap is to fund them with real actual money instead of promises to pay.
  - jessaustin 8y ago
    True, but history has shown that unions are no help with that. Lots of union members trusted that their pensions were funded. Union leaders knew they weren't, but somehow were convinced not to care about it...
- cryoshon 8y ago
  >businesses have little room to maneuver when an economic downturn hits sure they do. they just underpay their workers the whole time. oh yeah, and most places don't offer pensions anymore.
- Spooky23 8y ago
  Business picked up lots of flexibility, they outsource and offshore. Even if it costs more, the books look better.
scottLobster 8y ago
Vote for who? The next iteration of Trump vs Hillary? Don't get me wrong I'd love to see my generation get more politically active, but looking at the US I understand their apathy. Business leaders on the other hand can often affect positive change in a more direct manner without the need to squeeze corrupt politicians into doing a half-assed job for them. For example I have more long-term faith in SpaceX and Blue Origin furthering space exploration than I do NASA (yes, I know SpaceX wouldn't exist without the NASA ISS contract several years ago, that's a broken clock right twice a day though) Given the option of being Bill Gates or being the President of the US, I'd pick Bill Gates every time.
ben_w 8y ago
> I find it very strange that … Millennials and Gen-Z have more faith in business leaders than in politicians. Maybe if they collectively went out to vote instead of staying at home … they could actually make a difference instead of continuously complaining The strangeness is because your model doesn’t fit reality, not because reality is wrong. In the USA, I suspect that negative campaigning is a big part of the problem — if a person hears about “pizzagste”, “russiagate”, “her emails”, “his sexual misconduct”, “half the world will go to war with you if she wins”, “he’ll cause a nuclear apocalypse if he wins”, and believes half of it, would you expect them to care which disaster gets in? Myself, I’m not in the USA. I’m from the UK, which has very different political rules. But, even here I feel disenfranchised by the political system — to the extent that I will move out as soon as family obligations allow, because that’s more likely to get me a result I’m satisfied with than any plausible amount of political activity.
briandear 8y ago
> He doesn't want a democratic entity in his businesses. A union is “democratic?” You haven’t spent much time around unions then. Unions are essentially a conspiracy to create labor monopolies and they deny individuals the ability to negotiate their own wages and benefits based on their perception of their own value. I don’t want to make the same wage as everyone else with the same years of experience because my skills might be better or worse than the guy with the same job title and same seniority yet somehow unions consider everyone equal in terms of value? Not every is equal. A teacher with ten years experience isn’t inherently more valuable than a teacher with two years experience. Yet if unions call the shots, the ten year teacher gets paid more just in the basis of that seniority — regardless of actual performance. I am perfectly capable of negotiating my own salary, I don’t need some collective to do it for me. Unions benefit he mediocre and harm the high performers. There is nothing democratic about forcing me to accept a contract I had no say in negotiating or being forced to join a union (or pay for it) as a condition of employment. I should have the right to not have to contribute to, or join a union. Unions are bastions of cronyism. Try to get a job as an electrician in Chicago without being in the union.. it won’t happen — I wouldn’t have the freedom to work unless I join a union. There is nothing democratic about that.
- gowld 8y ago
  You seem to be confusing democracy with libertarianism. Not liking democracy in the workplace is your choice, but that doesn't make it undemocratic.
stuckinarut 8y ago
Politicians who would actually do anything to help young working class people seem rare, and lose in primaries.

twoslide 8y ago

Interesting, any idea if they release the full (individual response level) data?

opportune 8y ago

I wonder how many of millenials’ problems are due to baby boomers reaching their peak wealth/earning capabilities, likely continuing for another ~15 years. Certainly this would be a huge impediment to career advancement in industries outside of tech, as well as making buying a house very difficult I’m also tired of all of this inexact labeling of “generations” rather than explicitly identifying these groups by age. I think creating a split between “millenials” and “Gen X” and “Boomers” fosters an us vs them mentality that does more harm than good. My parents are “boomers” and I’ve started hearing them talking about how Millenials are X Y and Z (mostly bad things). I doubt they would be as willing to say the same of “young people” or “young adults”. Most age-related issues aren’t due to intrinsic cultural differences but the combination of economics and demographics

economistrator 8y ago
The problem with calling them “young people” or “young adults” is that the members of these groups change all the time while the boomers or Millennials will always be the same people. This makes it difficult to read or write about differences between “young people” and "old people" because the situation might be different 10 years later. But naming the generations will mean that the writing stays accurate.
cmjqol 8y ago
>likely continuing for another ~15 years It's not that simple, I doubt the boomers working at Google now are the one creating problems and preventing the company from moving forward. When you see how much stuff they did for ahead of their time ( Big Table , Piper etc...) and now the same tech is being ported to the cloud. My point here is to say that it's a mentality issue rather than an age issue. If the companies you are working did not invest to transform you and to make you adequate toward current society , you are going to slow down your company otherwise you'll be just fine. >I’m also tired of all of this inexact labeling of “generations” The age group are identified page 3. I personally consider this labelling accurate , but as you mentioned it "boomers" are okay to label others but not to be labelled themselves.
- opportune 8y ago

stuckinarut 8y ago

I really can't wait until we're finally old enough that we don't need these asinine "how to understand millenials" style articles and reports.

joshka 8y ago

Was anyone else annoyed that the color for Millennial vs Gen Z kept swapping back and forth in the doc?