We are officially half way through the integration of our college graduated Millennials into the workforce. The commonly recognized births of the Millennials are from 1981 to 2000, which puts today’s current crop of college graduates born at the beginning of the 1990’s. It’s time for the Millennials born in the 80’s to move over, the “kids” of the 90’s are here to take their place scraping bottom of the workforce barrel.
As the 90’s were ushered in, Regan was done giving out jelly beans in the Oval Office, the Cold War was over, and Microsoft was fighting for computing supremacy. The Millennials born in the 1990’s were coming into the world and taking their first steps with Clinton in the Whitehouse, to them George Bush was the guy that had Dick Cheney as a Vice President. Their war in the Middle East was started over 9/11 and WMD’s, not the invasion and annexation of Kuwait. When they were born news came from papers, pagers were on the hip, and babies were named Dylan with Beverly Hills, 90210 on the TV.
I was part of the first boots on the ground in the Millennial invasion of the work force over 10 years ago. I graduated from college and the next day moved half way across the country with my Jeep and an eight foot U-Haul trailer. Enron had collapsed and more people were looking for jobs in the energy industry than there were openings, so who was this Millennial kid born in 1981 that just showed up to take their job and force them in early retirement? I recall my first day on the trading floor; the guy who trained me asked if I rode the school bus to work that morning or if my Mom dropped me off. I was told on a daily basis from my co-workers that they had shoes older than me; I wasn’t around when Kennedy was shot, I didn’t watch the moon landing, and hell, to me the Beatles played oldies and Bruce Springsteen played Classic Rock.
Now we are welcoming the kids of the 90’s into our offices. We “first wavers” of the Millennial generation from the 80’s have been paving the way for our generation for the last 10 years. Like every generation we Millennials have had to prove our worth and earn the respect of our seniors, despite the fact we thought we should be running the show from day one. Now that we are halfway through the Millennials entering the workforce the 90’s are upon us. This new wave of college graduates are dead center of the Millennial generation, one foot pre-internet and one foot post-9/11.
These kids from the 1990’s have seen boom and bust, and they are the same men and women that have been on the front lines fighting the war on terror across different continents their entire adult life. They have seen more advances in science, medicine and technology in their lifetimes than occurred in centuries before; they know computers, war, recession, and recovery. They grew up in a world of now, they live on their smart phones and get news as it happens, they don’t ask for directions or use maps, they know how to get where they are going…they have GPS.
Try as you may to yell at these damn kids of the 90’s to stay off your lawn; they have arrived and are invading your office. Like it or not the 1990’s are back and they are here to stay. Just when you started to adjust to us Millennials from the 80’s our reinforcements from the 90’s are here. So to all you “kids” of the 1990’s, make us Millennials of the 80’s proud. It’s not too late, maybe you can earn us Millennials our place in history and make us the generation to bring back a World Series title to the Chicago Cubs, but then again we know you aren’t miracle workers. Just know it will be only a handful of short years before the Boomlets of the 2000’s arrive to be handed the entry level baton, and maybe they can help us solve all the world’s problems that were caused by all you generations before us.
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