millennials, looking for work, expect a better economic life than their parents, says new study

Although large segments of the Millennial Generation born between 1980 and 2000 have yet to find what might be described as career jobs, they nonetheless have faith in their own economic future.

So much so, says a survey compiled by the University of Chicago, that they fully expect to at some time in the future outpace their Baby Boomer parents.

Officially called GenForward, the survey indicates that members of the Millennial Generation who are either African American, Asian American, or Hispanic American indicated by margins ranging between 63 percent and 76 percent that they expected to do better economically than their parents.

That finding was lower among responding white Millennials, 56 percent of whom said they expect to have a better economic future than their mothers and fathers.

In an interview with the news site Marketplace, Cathy Cohen, GenForward founder, said that even though Millennials overall expressed confidence in their economic future, they also “want some real protection.’

That real protection means that they are for what Cohen described as an “active state” that would see wealthier Americans paying higher taxes for programs to retrain workers displaced by technology.

While the Millennials have less wealth and own less property than recent preceding generations, the survey also indicated that large majorities of them are willing to be a part of an American tradition that was probably embraced by their elders: a willingness to move for a good job.

According to the survey, an average of 75 percent across all of the Millennial racial and ethnic groupings said they would relocate for the right job opportunity.

Not unlike surveys of Generation X, those born generally between 1964 and 1980, the Millennials could be classified as Social Security skeptics.

A synopsis of the survey said that “Majorities of Millennials across race and ethnicity do report feeling not at all or not very confident in the future of Social Security.”

Those expressing skepticism ran from 55 percent of African-American respondents to 68 percent of the white respondents.

The GenForward survey tracks the opinions and views of more than 1,700 respondents and is conducted every two months.

By Garry Boulard

---