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SALT LAKE CITY — In her April 13 story titled "Millennials Don't Stand a Chance," The Atlantic writer Annie Lowrey described millennials as a new "lost generation."
Lowrey's point was that millennials had faced something of a double-whammy: The oldest of the millennial generation — which the Pew Research Center defines as born between 1981 and 1996 — was greeted rudely by the Great Recession upon entering the workforce. Now, millennials are staring down at recession again, and the youngest among them only recently started careers.
This has left millennials uniquely "vulnerable," Lowrey writes: "They have smaller savings accounts than prior generations. They have less money invested. They own fewer houses to refinance or rent out or sell. They make less money and are less likely to have benefits like paid sick leave. They have more than half a trillion dollars of student loan debt to keep paying off."
How can Utah make sure its millennials and young workers aren't left behind? After all, Utah is one of the youngest states in the nation.
We posed that question to the remaining gubernatorial candidates following the GOP candidate forum held in Salt Lake City on Thursday night (and to Democratic candidate Chris Peterson on Friday morning). Here's what they said about helping young Utahns:
Former Utah GOP Chairman Thomas Wright
“I really believe what I said on the stage, and I've said it in multiple debates and I said it in town halls all across the state: Vocational training is the key. Not everybody wants or needs to go get a four-year degree.
“There are trades out there that are fantastic professions, and if we can do a better job of improving our ability to communicate with our high school kids the pathways to different careers, they'll choose those pathways. They'll take them. They'll get on them quicker, they'll spend less getting their degrees and certificates, they'll have less debt at the end of it, and they'll be contributing members of society much more quickly.
“I believe in this vocational training. I have a friend — I didn't get a chance to say it on the stage, but I had a friend who's in his 50s, and he called me, and he was going through some tough times. He said, ‘I just need a friend to talk to.’
“And we talked, and I said, ‘Hey, why don't you go start a new career? Why don't you do some retraining?’ And he got this twinkle in his eye, and he said, ‘Really? What do you mean?’ And I said, ‘I don't know, why don't you frame?’ And he said, ‘What? Well, OK!’
“And so, I've been on the State Board of Regents. I just got online, I didn't have any special treatment. I just got online and found the — I think it's called the framing assistant certificate? And in not that much time and for not that much money, he became an assistant framer.
“He's framing homes. He loves it. The economy needs him in that role, and he's totally reinvigorated. He has a new outlook on life. So, I really believe we need to identify career pathways earlier for people of all ages, but especially millennials, and make sure that we're inspiring them to head down those pathways to fulfill their dreams.”
Former Utah House Speaker Greg Hughes
“This is a powerful question. I've got young (kids) — my oldest is 21, I have an 18-year-old and a 16-year-old. So they're coming into the workforce, and they're younger.
“What I'd say is this: This virus, fortunately for young people, they are not as vulnerable as, say, older people, or people that are medically frail. And this is why, I think that if you're resolved — if you've been quarantined long enough that you're not showing symptoms, if you've had it and you now present the antibodies that show that you're resolved, medically resolved." (Note: As of this writing, scientists are not yet sure to what degree COVID-19 antibodies provide immunity from future infection.)
“We can't let our younger generation — and sometimes, now the studies that are emerging, because we're learning so much in real time, you can be asymptomatic the entire time. This means you could have it, and you could be spreading it, and you've never felt a symptom yourself.
“What that tells me is, we're not going to contain this virus. It's with us. We're going to have to change our behaviors. And the last thing we want, especially for our young, emerging workforce, young people that are just making their way — we can't short-circuit that. We've got to let them know: We need you in this workforce.
“We have to find smart precautions. I spray this (hand sanitizer) on my hands all the time when I go places, if I'm touching doorknobs or things other people touch. We're going to take precautions that maybe pre-COVID-19 we haven't. But I am bullish on, and as governor I would tell our young people: We need you. We need you in this economy, and we need you working hard, and you're going to lead us out. Because we know that, as far as this virus goes, it's our strongest population.
“And I just think, like you said, the Great Recession — I just don't want people to lose hope or think, what's the point? You finally emerge out of this, and you're working so hard, and then you get the next thing. I don't want that feeling to be there, and it shouldn't be there, because I think we have some of the hardest workers and greatest workforce in the (country).
“The worst thing the state of Utah could ever do is have our young people become the export out of the state. We need to make sure they know that there's a bright future ahead.”
Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.
“I think that's a really valid point because I'm raising a bunch of millennials and I watch their patterns — whether it's living patterns, job patterns, buy vs. rent patterns — they've all been changed and they've had to adapt to a rapidly changing and unpredictable world.
“So the greatest thing we can do, really there are two things: One, bring greater predictability to the marketplace. As I mentioned in the debate, you can control the surfboard, but you can't control the wave, and we need to control that surfboard to the best of our ability. If we do, I think we'll benefit from that.
“The second part is ongoing training opportunities that allow our young people to become lifelong learners and to go from one industry to another. It's not like when I was younger, somebody'd go to work for one industry, Ford Motor Company, and there they would stay until retirement. You've got industry and opportunities stemming from new technologies that are being created, that avail themselves at such lightning speed that people have all kinds of opportunities to jump from one to another.
“So what are those lifelong skills that must be acquired in order to remain resilient in the marketplace? I think young folks want the confidence to know that they'll have access to those kinds of training opportunities should they want them. And if the storm blows through, they'll really want those training opportunities because they'll be absolutely critical for them.
“So, that's the kind of resilient marketplace that I think will be really important for us to have as we go forward.”
Utah Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox
“I think one of the ways is just by first acknowledging that very fact that you mentioned. Sometimes we just look at the workforce as kind of a ubiquitous whole, without understanding the distinct differences between somebody who's toward the end of their career, versus someone who's just starting out. And we know from the statistics, again going back to the Great Recession, that millennials were hit particularly hard and haven't been able to kind of make up that gap.
“One of the issues that happens whenever there is a big downturn in the economy is that people that were maybe set to retire end up not retiring, because maybe their 401(k)s have lost value, so they stay on the job longer. And that doesn't open up jobs that would have naturally opened up in the, kind of the life cycle of a job. And so I think we really have to be cognizant of those young people.
“But at the same time, I think there's a malleability and adaptability that comes with younger generations, to adapt to the changes in the workforce that are going to come out of this. Anytime we have a downgrade in the economy, there's a realignment that happens between jobs that stay available and allow people to be successful, and those that can move into those jobs.
“So, we're going to work very closely with our Department of Workforce Services to understand which sectors of the economy are doing well and which are struggling, and then help prepare young people to move from one sector to another so that they can have those careers that they deserve.”
University of Utah law professor Chris Peterson
“First off, my heart goes out to the tens of thousands of Utahns right now that are struggling financially with yet another financial crisis. I was troubled, having watched the Republican debate yesterday, that none of the candidates ever mentioned how many Utahns are struggling right now to pay their rent and their home mortgage loans, and my very real concern is that we could see a spike in homelessness in the coming months. That's something that we saw during the financial crisis back in 2008.
“There are a lot of problems in our economy right now, and we need a fresh approach that's going to work effectively across party lines to create practical solutions for people. We need to do everything we can to make sure that all of our workers have a chance to get living-wage jobs and affordable health care.”
