This probably won’t come as a surprise to either employers or millennials themselves, but today’s young people are finding jobs in different ways than our predecessors, and we’re looking for different things too. At the same time, and we already know this too, millennials are taking over.
How millennials choose where to work not only concerns the job search itself, but our ideas about what a job should be in the first place and the types of companies we want to work for. According to a recent CNN Money report, large corporations are one of the least attractive workplaces for recent grads, with 15% of 2015’s college graduating class voicing a preference to work for a big company. The survey, conducted by Accenture, also found that medium-sized businesses fared more than twice as well with 35% of respondents attracted by the prospect of an employer that size. Meanwhile, start-ups and government agencies reportedly only attracted 10% of participants.
It’s not just the size of companies that millennials take heed of with more than half—60%—of surveyed grads expressing a preference for a “positive social atmosphere,” even at the expense of higher pay. With that in mind, it’s worth pointing out that 70% of the surveyed bunch admitted that their parents are paying the majority (or at least half) of their rent and living expenses. (Ouch.) As for what millennials look for in a job in general: 39% want to pursue interesting, challenging work; 34% said opportunities for promotion were important; and 37% are after flexible hours.
Another changing dynamic: 64% of surveyed 2015 grads said that their job search would be executed at least in part through mobile apps.
But there’s some worrisome news for this demanding graduating class, and we should probably remind them now that beggars can’t always be choosers: even though a majority of them are expecting jobs related to their majors, only 43% of the 2015’s class’ slightly older peers—the classes of 2013 and 2014 specifically—were able to find work in their original fields of study. Not to mention, things are bleak for the millennial workforce in general, and despite much-touted improvements in the national unemployment rate, millennials still represent 40% of America’s unemployed, according to Newsweek. And as of May of this year, 13.8% of 18 to 29-year olds specifically were currently out of work.
Underscoring the importance of all this information, CNN also points out a staggering bit of new information from the Pew Research Center: millennials now represent the biggest share of current U.S. workers, and we’re expected to account for 46% of all American workers by 2020. Not all of the news is good, but at least companies are adapting to and with millennials either way, and our country’s young people are already changing work itself in other ways.
