The Age Workforce Spectrum Sit The Baby Boomers

There is a significant value gap between degrees held and jobs worked by Generation Y. Without available positions in their fields, Millennials must take unskilled jobs, while waiting for their elders to give turn. Millennials who are not educated and working toward a professional career are the hardest hit by situation, creating a new echelon of poor Americans. Economists think that Millennials should accept this current economic climate as the "new normal." (Kotkin 3).

I believe that all four of the generations in the work place can work together without having any conflicts. Many professional facilities and companies have people of different age groups working together in the same field. There are many articles written by different people who say that studies show that there are many conflicts between the generations, while working together. The four different types of generations are the veterans, the baby boomers, the generation X, and the generation Y. I will talk of all their important characteristics and compare and contrast their qualities based on work ethics, education, and multi-tasking.

Nearly 3.7 million American babies born in 1982 were the first members of the new Generation Y, or more affectionately known as millenials (Thompson, par. 1). Many things play into whether a generation is considered to be faring ‘better’ than another one; job opportunities, the state of the environment, whether the U.S. is at peace or at war, income vs. living expenses, the general happiness of the people, and the list goes on. Millenials are part of a special generation because

However, businesses now a day tend to be more diverse in term of age. The two main generations who have very little in common are the millennials and the baby boomers. While millennials are more tech savvy, (a quality that most businesses require), baby boomers have more wisdom and intellect (qualities that are much needed to run a successful business). Both generations have different communication style and approach to perform duties. Another importance difference between the two generation is adaptivity to changes. Millennials are always looking for new opportunities and therefore are more adaptive to changes, whereas baby boomer do not feel comfortable with frequent changes at

In a study about the civic engagement of Generation X, the U.S. Census Bureau defined this segment of the population as consisting of individuals born between 1968 and 1979. However, the upper limit of Generation X in some cases has been as high as 1982, while the lower limit has been as low as 1963 (Karp et al., 2002). This generation was also called the baby bust generation, because of its small size relative to the generation that preceded it, the Baby Boom generation. The term Generation X spread into popular parlance following the publication of Douglas Coupland’s book about a generation of individuals who would come of age at the end of the 20th century.

This generation watched their parent’s marriages fall apart and their mothers enter the workplace. This left the generation to spend their childhoods watching television and earning the title of latchkey kids. They had to learn to do for themselves and take care of themselves. They grew skeptical of the government when they learned programs like Social Security and Medicaid were slowly drying up and vanishing. This fostered an attitude of take care of yourself and depend on no one; welcome to the Me Generation. Members of Generation X have a just-do-it attitude and are technologically adept. With these two skills, Generation X bridges the old with the new, or the Baby Boomers with the Millennials (Gurwitt, 2013). But does Generation X know how to build a workplace that attracts, motivates, and engages Millennials while reducing multigenerational

Every work environment is teeming with people from various generations. Though, the majority of people wish for a healthy work environment this is not the easiest to come by. People from these different generations have different ways of looking at the world. They were raised differently and though theoretically want the same things they want to reach these goals in different ways. Rising to leadership, the understanding of technology, adapting in the workplace, and communication are the four criteria you need to know to understand how the people of Generation X and Millennials function together in the workplace.

“Baby Boomers are called time-stresses and materialistic (strauss and Howe 1991), Generation Xers are identified as skeptical and individualistic (kupperschmidt 2000), and Millennials are believed to be socially conscious, yet highly cynical and narcissistic (Twenge et al. 2008)” (Costanza, 2012). Each generation has their own strengths and weaknesses that come with them. “Boomers are stereotypically described as achievement oriented (O’Bannon, 2001), independent, in control of their own destinies (Mitchell, 1998), respectful of authority (Allen, 2004), loyal and attached to organizations (Hart, 2006; Loomis, 2000), and diligent on the job (YU & Miller, 2003).

The conflicts or differences can be caused due to various reasons like the preferences in the Communication Style, the Traditionalists and the Baby Boomers prefer more of face to face communication and the GenX and the Millennial prefer email and text messaging ([16] Glass ,2007:[52]Wagner,2007) Differences can also happen how they view authority and Management like Traditionalist believe in a chain in command , Baby Boomers believe in a consensus Model ( Roy,2008a,b) And when it comes to career stability, Traditionalists and Generation X likes to focus on employability over climbing the career ladder. And Generation Y has a high preference for engaging workplaces

Recently, the debate about Millennials in the workplace has been on the rise due to the concern that the habits associated with Millennials will creep into the workplace and change the industry forever. In their recent works, Joel Stein (2013) of Time Magazine and John Crist (2017) of YouTube offer their opinion in this hot topic debate about Millennials and whether or not their habits benefit the workplace. The recent discussion about Millennials focuses on their habits and how they will affect the workplace while also focusing on the effect these habits hae in everyday life. Stein (2013) suggests that the habits of Millennial’s are continuation habits of previous generations that are going to bring positive changes to the workplace. On the other hand, Crist (2017) suggests that the habits of Millennials cause them to be lazy, entitled, and spoiled therefore bringing bad ideals to the workplace. My view is that the habits of Millennials will bring positive impacts to the workplace and change the workplace in a way that shapes it to not only fit the ideals of this generation, but also the ideals of the next generation.

According to the Goldman Sachs (2017) website there are about 9.2 millions Millennials in the United States. This generation is beginning to enter the work world or already has and the older generation doesn’t seem to understand them. Millennials can be hard to understand because with each and everyone of them technology has played into their lives and shaped them differently from older generations. The Millennial generation is looked down upon because of the amount of technology they use, but others don’t understand that technology is what makes the generation millennials. Millennial has had technology to help them become their own bosses, more informed and aware, and more educated.

According to the Pew Research Center, “One-in-three American workers today are millennials” (Fry). Generation Y makes up the largest generation in the workplace today. Millennials are those individuals born between 1980 and 1996. They are coming out of college and looking for purposeful work. But, even though this generation makes up the majority of the workforce, they also face concerning problems. Millennials endure the problems of “job hopping”, adapting to modern technology, and student debt.

Many have seemed the Millennials appearances into the workplace as problematic. A recognized newspaper, The New York Post, have labeled our generation with names such as “The Worst Generation” or “Generation Why Bother”. These opinions based on the grounds that members, instead of helping the economy by searching for jobs, have preferred leisure activities. Another fact that supports this idea is that a third of 25-34 years old are still dependent on their parents.

Millennials have many factors that affect them, such as communication and information technologies, economics, globalization, and the socialization of having very involved parents. This generation is likely to have a different and often wider perceptions about certain topics such as ways that communication and information systems/ information technologies can be used to maximize organizational performance and to boost productivity, world marketplace, cultural diversity and so on. A lot of organizations view these behaviors as opportunities rather than problems. (Myers & Sadaghiani, 2010).

Gen Xers learned independence early in life and turned it into a valuable hallmark as they progressed in the working world. Just as Gen Xers were about to hit the workforce to make their mark in the world, the economic decline at the end of the 1980s occurred. (“Managing generation X: How to bring out the best in young talent,” 2001) Suddenly the future looked crowded. Competition for jobs was tight. The American dream had changed. For the first time in history, this generation was being told that they would not be able to replicate the lifestyles of