Anya Kamenetz Generation Debt

Gen Debt is notorious for its outsized job expectations. Many of us are looking for an extreme level of passion, fulfillment, creativity, social purpose, and customization from our jobs, along with friendly co-workers and a flexible working environment. And if we don't find what we need right away, we are often all too ready to move on.

The eager poster boy for this attitude is Sean Aiken, a 26-year-old Canadian who decided to tackle the job search in a novel way: He's spending a year working a different job every week, with the goal of finding a position that suits him perfectly.

When I caught up with Aiken in December, his resume looked like this: "Fashion buyer and then photographer in New York City, baker in Brooklyn, pizza maker in Cape Cod, winemaker in Washington State; this week I'll be working in a martial arts studio in Vancouver." This being the 2000s, he has a video blog, he's sponsored by a job Web site, he's staying with strangers using Couchsurfing, and he's even donating his salaries to charity.

Sean has clearly thought a lot about the way young adults look at their jobs, maybe because he has answered so many reporters' questions about the meaning of his mission.

"It's about not settling," he says. "Many people in my generation have higher expectations around the workforce. We're not looking for job security and a high-paying salary. Other things are more important in our decisions: job satisfaction, flexibility, the people you're working with. We're looking for more of a balanced lifestyle, where that line between careers and social lives blurs into one. It's a movement of saying, Hey, I want to be happy."

There are many people out there who think trying to be happy in your job is mostly a pipe dream. Some even seem to find the idea personally offensive. When I wrote about Aiken's mission on my own blog, one headhunter responded, "Part of the eventual downfall of our society will be these punks with this stupid, unfounded sense of entitlement and those who enable them."

Now, perhaps young people who hop from job to job are guilty of being a little flaky, and as a parent I probably wouldn't want to bankroll such explorations indefinitely. But I have trouble understanding exactly why someone would feel so negatively about someone else trying to be happy.

As a Brookings Institution survey of the college Class of 2003 found: "[Young people] place the highest value on making a difference in the work that they do and the chance to learn new skills and do challenging work. Salary ranks at the very bottom of a list of very important considerations as they make decisions about future careers." Does that sound like a terrible worker or a terrible person?

What really intrigues me about the trend of youthful idealism is the way it contrasts with young people's actual experience of the changing work world. Workers younger than 30 are the largest and fastest-growing uninsured group in the country -- two out of five recent college graduates go without health coverage.

Gen Debt is also far less likely to have pensions and consists of the least likely workers to belong to a union. The two-thirds of young workers without college degrees dominate the low-wage workforce, occupying half of all minimum-wage jobs and the majority of high-turnover, dead-end service-industry jobs such as barista, waitress, and clerk.

Young people with bachelor's degrees also increasingly spend time in nonstandard work: as unpaid interns, temps, freelancers, contract workers, academic adjuncts, "permatemps," and "permalancers."

The Center for Economic and Policy Research chronicled the declining "good job" in a report by economist John Schmitt, released in November. They defined a "good job" as one that paid at least $17 an hour in 2006 dollars, or $34,000 a year -- the median pay for men in 1979 -- and boasted both a pension and health insurance.

Schmitt found that the share of "good jobs" fell between 1979 and 2006, despite economic growth, mostly because of the decline in benefits. Moreover, "good jobs" declined more sharply in the most recent business cycle than in the previous two business cycles.

It's important to note that the independent workforce is growing quickly and doesn't just consist of young workers but of everyone from working mothers to high-tech specialists to older, semi-retired folks. So, not every independent worker necessarily has a "bad job."

The Bureau of Labor Statistics, in its reports on "alternative employment arrangements," distinguishes between independent contractors and temporary or contingent workers. The former actually earn more than full-time workers on average, while the latter earn less and tend to say that they would rather have a full-time job. The key difference is the ability to negotiate and set your own rates, which of course usually comes with valuable skills and experience.

In some ways, young workers like Sean Aiken are simply reacting to the changing work world by shifting their priorities. Permanent jobs with benefits are scarce, so you can learn to prize independence and flexibility. If the money's not so great, you seek intrinsic rewards.

Getting a graduate degree is another strategy to compete, but it means you must seek an increasingly specialized type of job. And with student loans piling up, the pressure to find the "perfect job" can be economic as well.

I believe it's a good thing that a new generation is bringing new values and attitudes to the workplace. But my view is that a lifetime of job-hopping won't do much to replace bad jobs with good ones. Young workers need to understand their true value in the marketplace and put employers on notice that shortchanging them is not acceptable.

I witnessed a great example of this during the first week of December 2007 in New York City. Viacom, a media industry behemoth that owns MTV, VH1, BET, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, Logo, and other television networks, classifies reportedly up to half of its writers, animators, producers, editors, Web designers, and other creative talents as freelancers or contract workers. These people work full-time, often for years, alongside regular employees, but with lower salaries and benefits.

Just in time for the holiday season, Viacom sharply cut benefits and pay even more for these workers, handing out the information alongside invites to the holiday party. But the permalancers, largely in their 20s and early 30s, didn't take kindly to the coal in their stockings. They walked off the job four days in a row. And they actually won some concessions -- Viacom promised to restore their 401(k)s and original health plan.

Sara Horowitz, the founder of the Freelancers Union, which represents 50,000 independent workers nationwide and is technically the fourth-largest union in New York State, called the Viacom walkout "the beginning of a social movement."

Independence, passion, and work-life balance are all well and good, but young workers shouldn't give up on the old-school rewards our parents looked for when they started out: a living wage, the ability to go to the doctor when you're sick, and some money to put some away for the future. We shouldn't just adjust to the changing workforce -- we should strive to transform it through our own commitment and excellence.