I have kids in that Millennial generation and have had the opportunity to watch them along with their Millennial friends grow up together...
Didn't mean to give the impression I was dissing the Millennials, actually I think I had some nice things to say about them if you see my above full post earlier in this thread.
...
I don't know how old you are, and I'm not going to argue with you who had it worse (Four Yorkshiremen, anybody?), but it seems kinda silly to me to argue that the current young generation isn't facing greater hardships than those before it, starting with the boomers. The year my Dad graduated, Germany's unemployment rate was 0.7%. The GDP climbed 5.4% that year, and that was considered kind of a down year. The inflation rate was low, too: Just 2.0%. Anybody could get a job in that environment; anybody who was willing and able could expect to have a nice career. Compare that with today.
Made me go check out that old Monty Python sketch again on youtube. Great insight there. All generations face hardships, and sure some more than others. As a boomer I had it very easy compared to my father's generation who went through the depression and WWII. The big bump in GDP was after the war, there was no housing available, no cars, everything had been on hold during the war, a big catchup was needed.
Fast forward to my generation, boomer means a big glut of people all competing for the same resources at the same time. When I went to college, classes that were easy to get previously were full, too many people. Easy jobs? Hey, there was no fast food places to get work, no part time, you were competing against a big bunch of other young people. Yeh, maybe you could pump gas, they still did that. I see my kids have a much easier time finding part time work than I did. Sure there are changes in corporate life, but it also means there are more opportunities today. I got two Millennial kids, one finished school now with a good job, and another getting good grades near finishing college, with no debt, and still working a part time job (which Dad mandated).
Times change, the types of challenges change, opportunities change, but they are still out there. Another boomer friend of mine, had one kid with difficulty finding a job out of college, settling on a cashier job and another who was hired even before they graduated. Guess which one had the degree in history and which one the degree in applied math and mechanical engineering.
I remember complaining that those just a few years ahead of me had taken up all the easy management slots I could have picked up, but were full. But then whole new opportunities and industries arose (microprocessors being one of them) and I followed that lead. There are so many opportunities now, your Millennial generation may end up being the luckiest (hardest working?) and most successful one yet.