Just ran across this nice piece by Frog Orr-Ewing. Frog is the Vicar of The Latimer Minister in Beaconsfield, UK. My son Tim spent just about 7 months working with Frog and Amy (his wife) on the start-up of the church plant.
The Millennials are entering the working environment, and adult society (out of the bubble of full-time education) with a thump. Long gone are the certainties of jobs for graduates, and of finding fulfillment to their long-nurtured dreams of entitled success and achievement. Many have been raised within an educational and parenting environment, which, though fragmented and perhaps unsatisfactory, nevertheless was looking for opportunities to build self-esteem and involvement. Social commentators have occasionally called them the ‘trophy kids’ or ‘Generation me’. They have been used to an environment where they matter, where they have a role, a place and something to offer. So the last two years have been particularly hard – as the fiercest bite of the recession has taken a big chunk out of their future prospects – and more are feeling ‘never-employed’ (as opposed to unemployed) than ever before. Recent figures have ranged from 10% to 25% of graduates failing to find employment. The number of 16- to 24-year-olds classed as “NEET” – not in education, employment or training – has topped one million for the first time. Even unpaid internships, now only for the elite, are on the rise, with young adults ‘buying’ the privilege of working somewhere interesting for a year for several thousand pounds.
There are two possible problems that this creates:
