For more than a decade now, the youngest Gen Xers, millennials, and now, Gen Z have had to listen to boomers bang on at length about how our supposed whiny laziness is why we can’t get ahead in this economy.
Never mind the wealth of data showing that the economy itself, and not our propensity to overspend on avocado toast, is to blame. Many boomers simply won’t be convinced — until they find themselves on the business end of today’s economy themselves, it seems.
A boomer admitted the job market is more difficult now in 4 key ways after having to face it himself:
If you’re of a certain age, you’ve likely gotten plenty of boomer job-search advice, and it was probably composed mostly of telling you to just walk into businesses and drop off your resume as if that wouldn’t immediately trigger a security call. And, of course, you’ll be accused of simply “not wanting to work” if you express any frustrations about the way things work.
But boomer Mike Kelley will not be among those scolding you, at least not anymore. In 2023, he went very viral with a Facebook post in which he detailed how shocked he was by the way job-hunting works nowadays.
Kelley, a former teacher, retired from his 35-year career “​​because of the excessive demands made on us and the open hostility from the legislature.” But financially, he needed to keep working, so he began looking for a different job. He was shocked by what he found and posted four key ways the job market is completely different now than when boomers were young.
1. ‘Dropping off resumes’ simply isn’t a thing
The utter absurdity of your boomer dad’s number one piece of advice is, unsurprisingly, the first thing Kelley noticed had changed since 35 years ago. Film buffs will remember the 1970s movie, “Kramer vs. Kramer,” in which a frantic and down-on-his-luck Dustin Hoffman simply waltzes into an advertising agency ON CHRISTMAS EVE and talks his way into the job he found in a newspaper, which he desperately needs in order to have any hope of getting custody of his son.
Sometimes I wonder if this is where these boomers got the notion that this is, like, a thing. Look at Ted Kramer! He got the job he needed to try to beat Meryl Streep in court for custody in just 24 hours through sheer moxie!
But that’s simply not a thing, even for a job at McDonald’s, and it hasn’t been for ages. As Kelley put it, “You can’t just trot around dropping off resumes. No one will talk to you.” Right. Like we told you.
2. The actual application process is a waking nightmare
Kelley’s next rude awakening was a familiar one — the sheer, unmitigated hell of applicant tracking systems and their insistence that, after uploading the resume and cover letter you painstakingly created, you must now spend an hour entering all of the details into a computer system because…. Well, nobody knows why this idiotic process was devised.
Kelley described it thusly: “Filling out applications online is far, far worse than filling them out in person. They want a resume and a cover letter, then you have to fill out (live, with a ten-minute timeout) the exact same information into their application.”
That timed element some places have now is diabolical and, in a functioning society, would be grounds for a human rights inquest in the International Criminal Court. Anyway, we told you so.
pic_studio | Canva Pro
3. Companies treat applicants like garbage
Gone are the days our parents and grandparents enjoyed when companies had some modicum of manners and professionalism. Now, of course, you are LUCKY to get ghosted. Mostly you just never hear a word from anyone ever for any reason!
Kelley was pretty shocked by this. “You will never, and I mean NEVER, hear from the employer again unless you’re hired,” he told his fellow boomers.
“When I was applying for work in the 1980s,” he went on to say, “I would get polite form letters rejecting me if they didn’t want me. Now, I just get ghosted.” Right. Exactly as we’ve explained to you fifty-eleven times.
4. Jobs are mostly just generally… terrible
The fourth and final thing that shocked Kelley is probably the most galling: Everything he applied for had terrible pay, garbage hours, benefits that might as well be non-existent, and nothing you could depend on.
“Pay is awful. Hours are awful. Benefits are awful,” he wrote. “As a pro-union person, I blame it on a dearth of unions. Regardless, it’s awful.”
Yep, a good 40-50 years of corporate deregulation and legislative attacks on workers’ rights by politicians that the boomers have gleefully voted for since the 1970s while twirling their villainous mustaches at the rest of us sure does take a bite, doesn’t it? In the immortal words of the poetess JoJo Siwa, “karma’s a b*tch.” Anyway, say it with me: We tried to tell you.
‘To my friends of a similar age: Your millennial kids and acquaintances are not making it up.’ Â
Kelley was left with a few ringing conclusions that every boomer desperately needed to hear. “Businesses are awful because they can be,” he wrote. “I’m not sure of the solution, but it appears it’s going to get worse before it gets better.” That’s especially true given the new administration we just elected into office.
He finished by giving his fellow boomers some much-needed marching orders: “The more everyone buys into the ‘people just don’t want to work these days’ narrative, the more power you give these naughty corporations.”Â
Hear, hear. And here’s hoping that now that it’s one of their own telling the truth about the job market, they’ll actually listen for once.
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.
