Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We also dealt with rapidly rising house prices (as did Millenials but they had much much richer parents who could help them out).

Layoffs were the norm for our generation, as our parents were the first to experience them and being unemployable at middle age and the fall out from that.

My husband and I are millennials and received zero help from our parents to buy a house.

Millennial, this actually isn't about you. But thanks for chiming in with your anecdote.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We also dealt with rapidly rising house prices (as did Millenials but they had much much richer parents who could help them out).

Layoffs were the norm for our generation, as our parents were the first to experience them and being unemployable at middle age and the fall out from that.

My husband and I are millennials and received zero help from our parents to buy a house.

So you paid off your student loans? And no help for kids college savings?

But in aggregate Millenials are set to inherit a huge amount from boomers which allows for you to take more risk in careers and make different choices.

Maybe. A lot of them don't plan on leaving much of an inheritance even if they have money. They're going BIG in their 70s/80s burning it down and then will be in expensive senior living to the tune of 250k/yr pp. That's totally their right, but I think they're a unique generation in this regard that that is an approach we are increasingly seeing.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We also dealt with rapidly rising house prices (as did Millenials but they had much much richer parents who could help them out).

Layoffs were the norm for our generation, as our parents were the first to experience them and being unemployable at middle age and the fall out from that.

My husband and I are millennials and received zero help from our parents to buy a house.

So you paid off your student loans? And no help for kids college savings?

But in aggregate Millenials are set to inherit a huge amount from boomers which allows for you to take more risk in careers and make different choices.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just finished reading this article two minutes ago.

I think we need to go back to when people had their own businesses. It wasn’t so long ago! The trouble is that America is optimized for large corporations and it’s hard to survive as a mom n pop operation.

Impossible without universal healthcare.

+1

This is accurate.

Anonymous wrote:While I never worked in a directly in a creative field, I still appreciate this Gen X jobs article and feel that many of the industries our generation entered went through big changes during our working years.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/28/style/gen-x-creative-work.html?unlocked_article_code=1.8k4.eKMA.WgUHKCw0Qe88&smid=url-share

And if nothing else, I feel seen in the comments:
- No one could have predicted the rapid pace of change we've gone through, and now again with AI.
- We're resilient, latch-key kids and will get through this.
- Feeling lucky to have grown up without smartphones and in the pre-digital era.

From the beginning of the article:

In “Generation X,” the 1991 novel that defined the generation born in the 1960s and 1970s, Douglas Coupland chronicled a group of young adults who learn to reconcile themselves to “diminishing expectations of material wealth.” Lessness, Mr. Coupland called this philosophy.

For many of the Gen X-ers who embarked on creative careers in the years after the novel was published, lessness has come to define their professional lives.

If you entered media or image-making in the ’90s — magazine publishing, newspaper journalism, photography, graphic design, advertising, music, film, TV — there’s a good chance that you are now doing something else for work. That’s because those industries have shrunk or transformed themselves radically, shutting out those whose skills were once in high demand.

Gen X'r here. I graduated from an urban fine arts college with a degree in theater in 1993. Worked in theater and did some modeling and got a few national tv commercials. Did relatively well but always needed a side gig. Got sick of the hustle -- the nonsense of desperately working to get work in bite-and-smile tv commercials to pay the rent when what I'd loved studying was Shakespeare -- and went to law school in 1999. If I could go back I'd tell myself to stick it out as an actor and not go to law school. I wouldn't have the money I have now, or the respect from people who don't understand artists and thought I "got my life together" by becoming a lawyer, but money isn't everything and my life always was "together." Probably more so when my focus was a life in the arts.

Oh well.

Anonymous wrote:Identifying as a latchkey kid in your 50s is weird

Come on. The PP meant we WERE latchkey kids. You knew that.

Anonymous wrote:We also dealt with rapidly rising house prices (as did Millenials but they had much much richer parents who could help them out).

Layoffs were the norm for our generation, as our parents were the first to experience them and being unemployable at middle age and the fall out from that.

My husband and I are millennials and received zero help from our parents to buy a house.

Identifying as a latchkey kid in your 50s is weird

My friend was a graphic designer. She’s now a bartender.

Not to mention I entered the job market in 99 — which seemed amazing and then dot.bomb.

Anonymous wrote:I just finished reading this article two minutes ago.

I think we need to go back to when people had their own businesses. It wasn’t so long ago! The trouble is that America is optimized for large corporations and it’s hard to survive as a mom n pop operation.

Impossible without universal healthcare.

Anonymous wrote:I just finished reading this article two minutes ago.

I think we need to go back to when people had their own businesses. It wasn’t so long ago! The trouble is that America is optimized for large corporations and it’s hard to survive as a mom n pop operation.

That is not possible. Large firms have enough capital to come to a market underprice and wipe you out.

We should look at the model of Germany and how they support smaller manufacturer?

We also dealt with rapidly rising house prices (as did Millenials but they had much much richer parents who could help them out).

Layoffs were the norm for our generation, as our parents were the first to experience them and being unemployable at middle age and the fall out from that.

I just finished reading this article two minutes ago.

I think we need to go back to when people had their own businesses. It wasn’t so long ago! The trouble is that America is optimized for large corporations and it’s hard to survive as a mom n pop operation.

While I never worked in a directly in a creative field, I still appreciate this Gen X jobs article and feel that many of the industries our generation entered went through big changes during our working years.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/28/style/gen-x-creative-work.html?unlocked_article_code=1.8k4.eKMA.WgUHKCw0Qe88&smid=url-share

And if nothing else, I feel seen in the comments:
- No one could have predicted the rapid pace of change we've gone through, and now again with AI.
- We're resilient, latch-key kids and will get through this.
- Feeling lucky to have grown up without smartphones and in the pre-digital era.

From the beginning of the article:

In “Generation X,” the 1991 novel that defined the generation born in the 1960s and 1970s, Douglas Coupland chronicled a group of young adults who learn to reconcile themselves to “diminishing expectations of material wealth.” Lessness, Mr. Coupland called this philosophy.

For many of the Gen X-ers who embarked on creative careers in the years after the novel was published, lessness has come to define their professional lives.

If you entered media or image-making in the ’90s — magazine publishing, newspaper journalism, photography, graphic design, advertising, music, film, TV — there’s a good chance that you are now doing something else for work. That’s because those industries have shrunk or transformed themselves radically, shutting out those whose skills were once in high demand.