Look, I'd love to give up my job for a Gen Y, but....
They are confident, tech-savvy, armed with university degrees and eager to work, but too many youth are struggling for that career break, writes Damien Murphy
They're better educated and way cooler than any generation that went before.
Their dream job may well be the stuff of Silicon Valley dreams - chinos, T-shirt and laptop.
They may not live to work, but they certainly want to work to live, and the cockiness that goes with their assurance with new technology ensures heaps of abuse. Unemployment figures show Gen Y are sinking into poverty: Dr Tessa Boyd-Cain, Deputy CEO of ACOSS.
Unemployment figures show youngsters are sinking into poverty: Dr Tessa Boyd-Caine, Deputy CEO of ACOSS.
They may be the most vilified generation in history: some call them no-collar workers; others look at their endless hugging and dismiss them as teacup kids; in economically devastated Europe, they are boomerang kids who always come home, Peter Pans who never grow up.
But Generation Y is in danger of becoming the lost generation, the first since those Australians who survived the Depression to face a downwardly mobile work life. . . . But Generation Y is in danger of becoming the lost generation, the first since those Australians who survived the Depression to face a downwardly mobile work life.
Most will not earn as much as their parents. Working in a mobile store, computer shop, call centre or IKEA just won't cut it. The education that was once the key to high pay and better lives now offers vistas of dead ends and detours as service industries shrivel, and state and federal government jobs vanish or are outsourced.
And while Ford flees and General Motors begs, the manufacturing industry - the traditional absorber of first-generation immigrants - is flatlining, leaving the school-to-work crowd out in the cold.
Some, such as Professor Michael Quinlan, from the University of NSW's Australian school of business, wonder if government policy is creating a pool of permanently unemployed.
He says the 457 visas and the advent of backpackers from economically ruined countries are taking jobs from young people who once occupied the lower end of the job market. ''There's a complete mismatch in Australia's labour market,'' Quinlan says. ''There must be thousands of people working here from overseas. Other countries have learnt to their cost what happens when you create a market that cannot absorb the young men who are the sons of the first generation of immigrants who come seeking a better life.''
