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Baby Boomers Don't Have a Stronger Work Ethic Than Later Generations, Says Study (sciencedaily.com)
A team of U.S. researchers from Wayne State University in Detroit have published research in Springer's Journal of Business and Psychology that dispels the popular belief that baby boomers have a greater work ethic than people born a decade or two later. Science Daily reports: The economic success of the United States and Europe around the turn of the 20th to the 21st century is often ascribed to the so-called Protestant work ethic of members of the baby boomer generation born between 1946 and 1964. They are said to place work central in their lives, to avoid wasting time and to be ethical in their dealings with others. Their work ethic is also associated with greater job satisfaction and performance, conscientiousness, greater commitment to the organization they belong to and little time for social loafing. The media and academia often suggest that baby boomers endorse higher levels of work ethic than the younger so-called Generation X (born between 1965 and 1980) and Millennials (born between 1981 and 1999). [Keith Zabel, the lead U.S. researcher, and his team] compiled a dataset of all published studies that have ever used a U.S. sample to measure and report on the Protestant work ethic. Studies included in the meta-analysis had to mention the average age of the people surveyed. In all, 77 studies and 105 different measures of work ethic were examined using an analysis method stretching over three phases, each phase offered more precise measurement of generational cohorts. The analysis found no differences in the work ethic of different generations. These findings support other studies that found no difference in the work ethics of different generations when considering different variables, such as the hours they work or their commitment to family and work. Zabel's team did however note a higher work ethic in studies that contained the response of employees working in industry rather than of students.
Success is easy when half the rest of the planet had been firebombed and needed to rebuild all of its factories. On top of that a huge portion of the people who would have done said rebuliding were dead from war.
That was always the criticism of the Baby Boomers. That they didn't have the same work ethic as their parents.
When you can't figure out something right away, google it and get 20-30 hits with potential answers.
We didn't have that, we had to figure stuff out on our own. And everything was bigger, slower, clunkier, more expensive. OK, maybe they lasted longer too.
teenagers to early twenty-something are almost always a poor example of a generation's work ethic.
once people end up in their thirties and have mouths to feed, they tend to work as hard as their parents once did.
So that mommy that wants to come in for little precious's job interview or the guy working for me that told me in no uncertain terms that he doesn't answer teh telephone but only takes texts or the young lady who thought that facebook was part of her job and took off two months the first 6 months she worked and then all but one of them quit and moved back in with mommy and daddy (except teh one who moved in with Grams and Grampy and the ones who tried to get their bosses fired by calling mommy and dady who called the Director, are all just outliers?
I had two who worked out well, and even one of those ended up moving to be closer to Mums and Pops.
What happened was the snowflakes got a tast of reality, where every decision wasn't made by their helicoptering parents, and are now trying to make up for wasted teenage years of emotional development.
Universities have spent many millions of dollars trying to give the snowflakes a crash course in becoming adults And I don't blame the kids either. Their parents were the cause, and mumsy and popsy should be strung up for not allowing their children to grow up.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Pretty sure when people talk about hard working generation they say "the greatest generation." The Baby Boomers were those slackers who listened to the Beatles, did drugs, and ran up credit card debt.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The US gave away its jobs to friendly nations. So the stability for many to find work and earn a living wage is gone in the USA.
What took a good educated 10% of the population is now a US brand as a front company with 1% needed. Even that is a global workforce invited in.
Designed in the USA, made anywhere cheap.
Everything of value that was good is gone. More new low wage jobs selling coffee, wine, beer, security every day and night?
Working for the gov/mil or been a mil contractor who enjoys no bid gov/mil work is not a long term solution given the private sector tax rates.
The US needs to rediscover good private sector jobs for its own citizens. Only the US private sector can create the kind of quality, reward and advancement that grows a nation.
Illegal workers have been allowed to flood the lower end of the jobs market to counter unions and be replaceable if any work place issues arise.
Student loans are based on every entry consideration but real merit and academic ability. Creating vast amounts of average graduates with safe, soft degrees in been "fun" years later is not what any advanced work force needs.
Good people still want to learn, study, work, better themselves, move up in society, do better than past generations when asked as always. But the option to do that has been reduced.
The few top university options based on years of hard work are been lost to very average students with no academic considerations.
Local jobs to even support a local college education are few and far between as older workers have to stay on and illegal workers are allowed to fill in.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Wat? Since when is there a popular belief that 'boomers had a stronger work ethic? Say "boomer" and I'm more likely to think "protest" than "Protestant work ethic". AFAIK the more generally held view is that as long as they weren't traumatized by the Vietnam War, they lucked into an optimal economic situation and that's why they did better.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Aren't teenagers to early twenty-somethings the most representative on the internet?
"They are said to place work central in their lives, to avoid wasting time and to be ethical in their dealings with others."
Because if there is one word that comes to mind when one examines the period of history the baby boomers wrought it would definitely be 'ethical'...
A "boomer" born in 1950 has more in common with a non-boomer born in 1944 than with a boomer born in 1962.
A "generation" within an extended family makes sense as a concept, with caveats. For example: if three siblings have kids within a few years of each other, then all those kids who are cousins and siblings could be said to be of a generation within that extended family. But people with little in common and born 15 years apart (as in the baby boomer example) cannot generally be seen as having much in common more than any other set of people within a particular society.
Hillary Clinton was born in 1947. Donald Trump in 1946. They're the same right???
Sorry, but I have known baby boomers who are total slackers and drunks and addicts, and I have known boomers who are the hardest-working people one could meet. I have met members of "the silent generation" who were similarly worthless, and some of that same generation who were amazing, productive, responsible people. I have known Gen-X and Gen-Y people who were excellent and reliable and some who were utterly worthless. Sadly, every millenial I have met is a completely idiotic loser and a snowflake who always seems "put upon" and offended - BUT I am confident that there must be some great ones out there I have simply not encountered yet.
I put no weight on the concept of "generations" within the scope of an entire society - it's a phoney construct that people with too much free time or too much computer power and large political ambitions can use to generalize about populations in order to better manipulate populations. Don't fall for this stuff, and stop answering polls - polls do YOU no good at all, they just help people figure out how to manipulate you by micro-targetting you with messages to fool you into thinking they are "for you".
"Baby Boomers Don't Have a Stronger Work Ethic Than Later Generations, Says Study..."
....
.... performed by millennials.
sig: sauer
This is purely anecdotal, but my experience is that there isn't so much a generational correlation to work ethic as there is an age-based one. Which is to say, a person's work ethic can vary significantly over the course of their adult life.
What I've seen in my own workplace is new entrants (whether at graduate or non-graduate level) entering the organisation but generally (and of course there are outliers) without making a full commitment to it and, particularly in the case of graduate entrants, trying to keep their student lifestyle running for a few more years. Over time, usually by the late 20s, this transitions into a much stronger work ethic; more time spent in the office and more "commitment" to the organisation. Eventually, somewhere usually in the 50s, this lapses into a degree of burnout. Now, all of the above is a huge generalisation and based on personal experiences only, but I've seen a couple of generations go through that cycle now.
Of course, there's a far bigger correlation between work ethic and social class. Behaviours liked to worth ethic, such as the ability to focus on deferred reward have a strong hereditary component, whether based on biology, culture or both. Again, there are exceptions, but this is where I've seen the strongest correlation. In the mid-2000s (at the height of the UK's New Labour touchy-feely period) I worked for an employer which took part in a Government-subsidised scheme to give placements to "disadvantaged" young people. This was actually a pretty cushy detail; the pay for those brought in through the scheme wasn't huge, but it was significantly above the minimum wage (almost £10/hour) and the work was white-collar administrative. Moreover, there was an expectation in place that if you did well, you would be able to turn it into a full-time job (this was in the land of silly-money before the big crash, when the UK economy appeared to be in full boom). Hell, there wasn't even much of a dress code beyond "use your common sense and don't wear anything that would actively harm our reputation".
I was involved with this scheme for three consecutive years, once as a mentor and twice as one of the "lucky" managers "given" one of the apprentices (yes, there was a degree of corporate arm-twisting). Across all three years, with an intake of 8-10 people per year, not a single one stuck with it for more than 2 months. The simple basics of being expected to get into the office at a sane time (we had a flexitime-within-reason system), to come into the office every working day and to follow the instructions of a manager once in the office were too much for the participants.
take everything with a grain of salt. Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science Study Finds: Studies Are Wrong:
The "Greatest Generation". A bunch of over-indulgent assholes whose failings brought about the "greatest" depression.
The "Silent Generation". Raised post-depression. Extremely hard workers. Why? Because their aging parents left them no legacy except for care for them, pay for the welfare state, and fight in at least two wars. Nice.
The "Baby Boomer" generation. Another over-indulgent, entitiled, asshole generation. Why? Because their parents (the silent generation) swore that they'd never make their kids go through what they themselves had to go through. So they gave them everything.
The "X" generation. Another hard-working generation. Why? Because their parents (the baby boomers) are too busy indulging their self-entitles asses to actually care about raising their kids. Gen X-ers have had to bear low wages. Outsourced industries. And an income gap that is worse that it has ever been since ancient Egypt.
The "Millenial Generation". Another over-indulgent, self-entitled, bunch of lazy assholes. Why? Because their parents (the X generation) swore that they'd never make their kids go through what they themselves had to go through. Millennials have been doted over, helicoptered, and are living with their parents as adults at levels not seen since the Great Depression.
There's clearly a pattern. The "Greatest Generation" fucked the country. The "Silent Generation" brought it back. The "Baby Boomers" fucked the country. The "X" generation will bring it back. The "Millenial Generation" will fuck up the country. And their children will bring it back. And so on... and so forth...
"The Greatest Generation gets too much credit. Those World War II guys, if they had all the shit we have today, they'd be assholes too. It's just circumstantial. It's what you're called on to do that makes you great. We haven't been called on to do anything but buy shit and get fat."
I suspect they aren't looking at this quite the right way. Employers used to exhibit some degree of commitment to their employees. Ethical employees returned that commitment with loyalty and hard work.
Unfortunately, this is no longer the case. Most employers these days are conscienceless vampires who would cheerfully burn their employees' children in an incinerator if it would put a few extra bucks on their bottom line. So why would a sane person feel they owed their employer one little bit more than the least they could get away with?
For a while, I think, habit ensured that the Boomers' work ethic kept them working harder. But as they came to realize all the extra work got them nothing but a "Sucker" sticker in their HR folder, they adapted to become just like their younger workmates, who have never known anything else.
Yes, there are still great employers, but they're getting awfully hard to find. I bet their employees, no matter what age they are, will work hard for them.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
WOW! This study is really useful and exact... not. Its more like a homework study. Why someone would publish a paper on this is beyond me.
Baby boomer are full of shit, and their "we worked harder than you" are full of shit on average. The reality is that they are like us (ethically) but had it easier economically.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Most of them are now in politics and academia.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
People have always been somewhat greedy and self serving. You could probably argue that the generation that lived through the war was unique in that they saw first hand the end game for zero-sum conflicts, and decided to find out how to grow the pie rather than fight over their neighbours slice.
What is really causing all those problems you describe is demographics. Western populations are ageing fast, and with that goes any economic growth from population increase. This means that companies cannot simply grow their profits by 3% a year thanks to more people buying and consuming. If they spend on a new plants, or hire a new worker, they cannot rely on a level of base line growth to make the investment work. Indeed, they may find that sales start shrinking, forcing them to idle capital and lay off workers.
Further compounding this natural slow down in growth is that boomers are all freaking out about how they will pay for retirement. This has created the savings glut, as income is not recycled back into the economy through spending or borrowing. The result of this is a giant global asset bubble.
We are basically screwed at this point. Growth will not return to the economy because population ageing is only getting worse, and technology is acting as a circuit breaker for firms to chase their costs down in a stagnant market.
The ONLY solution to the mess is for people to sit down and discuss what the whole point of the economics machine is. Because whatever it was meant to be doing before, it isn't doing now, and it won't be doing that again. I suspect that most boomers would be happy to trade playing the casino markets in the hope of scoring a decent retirement for an explicit guarantee of basic needs by the state. This will reduce the pressure to save. Next their needs to be a much more strategic investment into the things boomers will need in the next couple of decades - things like retirement homes and healthcare workers. At this point we should basically be offering anyone who is smart enough to be a doctor investment banker sort of money, because that is likely to be what it will cost to get a doctor once the boomer healthcare bulge hits.
Instead of trying to plan our way through this difficult transition, lazy governments are leaving it 'to the markets' who are not solving the problem at all, but rather hiding it under the illusions of debts that will never be paid back.
The boomers are the post-war generation of spoiled hippie brats. It's their parents, the ones who lived through the depression and the second world war, that had the work ethic.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I think that in most cases, if employees felt safe in their jobs, they'd do better work. That Millennial who seems to be "slacking" because they won't put in 90 hour weeks for years on end just sees what's going on. SV startups live on fresh college kids who haven't experienced what it's like to work in an unstable environment or for a hostile employer. Older Millennials are more cynical, just like older people of other generations.
Restoring the balance of employer/employee loyalty would be a good start if employers want a more productive workforce. Smart people see employers who will replace them at the drop of a hat and don't put in the extra effort as a result. Previous generations had some employers who would employ you for life...IBM had a no-layoff policy for ages and there are legions of people who worked for large employers like this their entire careers. In return, their employees were loyal, worked hard, put in extra hours where needed, etc.
Unfortunately, I can't see this happening any time soon. Back in the 60s/70s, the US was quite different. Absolutely everything was manufactured domestically, there was very little foreign competition, only 3 car companies of note, etc. And, companies needed thousands and thousands of people just to move paperwork around the organization, all of whom had stable jobs. Now, we manufacture very little, offshore well-paid technical jobs, and companies just keep squeezing harder to get those pennies out of their operational processes.
Baby boomers to Gen X to Millennials? I feel so disenfranchise, and angry that this study llumpsme in with those slacking Millennials.
GenY for ever.
...and very late to turn up to the fucking fight as usual.
The zinger is in the last sentence of the summary "Zabel's team did however note a higher work ethic in studies that contained the response of employees working in industry rather than of students."
You know most of the baby boomers, I've worked with, have been hard working. However I have worked more with the older boomers than the younger ones.
Then again it might be all the hard working curmudgeons are drawn to similar good paying, but challenging work. (Or its the other way around)
I have worked with a few problematic folks. But most of the older ones I've worked with have all been good. The good ones I've worked with also typically do not work for free. (If you're working for 50-60 hours you should be paid for it.)
Also with the baby boomers there is a very wide gap between age and background. My father was born in 1945, the son of a farmer who was unable to enlist during World War 2. He ended up being an electrician and instrument tech. My mother was born in 1955 the daughter of an Air Force Colonel and Spook during the cold war. My father went from low class to upper-middle class over the course of 70 years. My mother went from high class to upper-middle class.
However there is one thing that needs to be acknowledged. The world and USA in terms of size/population and what you can/can't do is much different now then say.... 40 years ago.
In the 70s (baby boomer prime time) the population of the U.S. was 200 million, today it is a little bit past 300 million. Opportunities were a lot different. Land/houses were cheaper. Utilities were cheaper. (Except during the gas crisis) Today you're lucky if you can find a house, close to work, in the 100k to 300k range. If you're in a major city it will likely be 300k to 600k. As population rises, things are not going to get any easier and will in fact get more difficult.
The good cities are built where they are for reasons, and unless they happen to disappear, I do not see us establishing new 'smart' cities. Cities need water, roads, electricity, a substantial amount of infrastructure built over a span of decades.
But hey lets blame everything on the baby boomers instead of you know centuries doing a shite job of expanding cities. Like the sprawl of Houston.
In every generation there is a bell curve of workers. Half of all workers are worse than average and more than half are less than exceptional. As people get older, the less than exceptional workers tend to get replaced by younger and cheaper (not always more talented) workers. Thus those in the older generation that remain are often better workers, or very good a brown nosing.
Both my children are far more serious than I was at their age.
I dropped out of UC Berkeley in 1982 (was a Physics major) because I was too stupid to understand that while university wasn't what I had thought it was going to be, it was still the best way to discover the stuff that would interest you for the rest of your life. I stumbled through the first year there, barely matriculating due to an idiotic policy at the time (maybe still extant)- first come first served enrollment in courses - courses that were mandatory for my major. WTF is up with that ?, surely if they're mandatory, I am just automatically enrolled in them; why the fuck should I have to queue up for hours to enroll ?
Anyway, my kids are much more alert to this kind of thing than I was, they are somehow more used to negotiating these types of issues, and playing them to their advantage. They party less. They work with more enthusiasm for their jobs, which they have chosen because they are genuinely interested in them, rather than for the money.
I spent my youth in a cloudy, dream state - which wasn't bad, I'll admit - until I woke up at about age 20 and realized that I had better get my ass in gear and get something done with my life. Even then it took a 6 year stint in the US Navy to turn myself around and become anything like my children are at an earlier age.
Perhaps they have benefited from me explaining some more of the fundamentals of life to them better than my parents did me - although I don't think that's the case. None-the-less, they are certainly nowhere near as lazy as I was, and more conscientious about their place in society too.
Perhaps they're a bit special for their generation, but my experiences with their friends tells me they're not. I have high hopes that their generation will clean up a lot of the mess brought on by my parent's and my generation.
Said study was conducted by millenials. Two of them got together and talked about this one morning while playing games on their phones and reached the conclusion. Then a baby boomer was hired with a loan from dad to write it up.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I thought "Arbeit Macht frei?" What? they were wrong on that too? Astounding.
The Boomers benefited from the reforms of the New Deal to enjoy the most prosperous time in the nation's history.
Then they systematically worked to dismantle those very same protections they benefited from.
Goodbye 40-hour work week, welcome back Jim Crow.
I don't know which ones are worse, the ones that think they're entitled to a "retirement" or the ones who don't have the good grace to die off and make some room for youngsters in the labor force.
Given that Baby Boomers are retiring and approaching retirement, can the researchers honestly say they have evaluated them objectively? Did they evaluate them 20, 30, 40 years ago when they were in their prime?
Actually, you've got the right idea but there's a problem word here: "Ethic."
If the employer is not fully committed, then an ethical employee should not be fully committed, either. You actually are seeing a functional work ethic even in shitty jobs. It's ethical, just also .. maybe regrettable.
I wonder if the jargon term "work ethic" was coined by people who were trying to take ethics out of the discussion, by advocating for an asymmetric relationship. We should stop using that term; it's too loaded.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
It's the same reason the Army makes people get up early in the morning and do PT, then trains them to do absolutely nonsensical things like crawl through mud and climb obstacles. It's not really about physical fitness - if that were so, they'd insist they all pump iron until they rippled with muscle, and that's not many of the soldiers I know. What it is about is being able to do the nasty hard work when the time comes, and the discipline to make yourself do it. It's up to your brain to figure out when that moment is.
My stepfather was an Italian guy from Brooklyn who had been a failure at every real job (except being a soldier in Korea) he ever had because he was a conniver, a schemer, and a con artist. Then he found his calling - appliance service. It mostly called for selling people way more appliance parts than they needed. If you had a busted defrost timer in your refrigerator, he'd sell you heating elements, a condenser fan motor, the timer and then charge you to vacuum up the dust in the condenser coils (you should really do this yourself if you can...it improves the efficiency of the refrigerator immensely). Then he'd have these women tipping him for doing it all with a nice dose of sweat, while he pocketed $200 extra from them for the additional parts which were largely unnecessary. He trained his son to do the same thing, and he did. I just was along for the ride and it wasn't my calling. I'm not an effective con artist.
Now, you might say that had nothing to do with hard work, but it actually did. He had to get his ass up every morning at 0600 and work his ass off until usually about 1800, then do dinner and work some more afterward most days. He'd do his sales calls at night to people's houses. During the day, he'd do everything in the shop - service calls sometimes (as I described), but would haul around big appliances, rip out washer transmissions, bring big loads of scrap stuff to a metal recycler to make some money off of the hulks, and always keep himself looking good so that if someone came to the front desk, he could bullshit them into buying something without looking like a slob. Besides doing a lot of the carpentry and finish work required to keep the showroom looking good. No one worked harder than he did. When he was home he'd wear cutoff denim shorts and drink Jack Daniel's lying on the bed watching TV mostly.
He just knew when to turn it on and turn it off. I do something similar myself, but with less lying involved. Therefore, i'm less successful. But if you couldn't motivate yourself to the extreme efforts required sometimes, you'd never get anywhere.
That's my big complaint about the slothful mass of youth today. They'll get better (hopefully), but they have a lot of lazy counterexamples today, so I wonder if they would know that the ability to work very hard in the pursuit of a goal is the arbiter of success.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
The study results make sense because boomers were the first generation to be showered with entitlements. I believe we need to compare current generations with the Greatest generation to see the difference in work
From the opening blurb.
"Zabel's team did however note a higher work ethic in studies that contained the response of employees working in industry rather than of students. "
That makes the title very misleading.
Look- I'm a late boomer and I have to say this is almost a literally dead issue. I'm already retired. I know several other boomers who are retired.
And I can say from experience, the young kids are distracted by the latest fads and office romance in a way boomers are not. There was a clearer, brighter line between work and personal life for most of boomer's lives. It's not fair to judge kids who grew up in an environment where work is a 24 hour a day thing to keep up with their personal lives during "work" time. Because work sure as hell infringes on their "life" time.
Likewise, kids are growing up in an environment where they have a more realistic assessment of how companies are going to use and dump them. Loyalty WON'T be rewarded and they know it. It used to be when the boomers were developing their habits.
but anyway- the title is misleading if the last sentence in the summary is true. Big shock-- this is slashdot.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Today they are, but in 10 years won't they be thirty-something?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
xx
It exists and is part of that culture so why the "so-called" qualifier?
I can say with some authority that regardless of the results of any study, work ethic has declined while entitlement has soared.
A rich, healthy person born in 1990 has far more in common with a rich, healthy person born in 1960 than a poor, sick person born in 1990.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it