Why Millennials obsess about meaningful work

Today the 7.6 million Millennials in Australia are the largest demographic force.

As a generation, they outnumber  Gen Z and Gen X by about a million people.

They outnumber the large Baby-Boomer generation by about two million people now.

There's no other generation that will have such a huge impact on the 2020s as the Millennials.

This means you cannot afford to misunderstand the Millennials.

So let's quickly understand what they obsess about.

Millennials obsess about the purpose.

And the problem with purpose, with the meaning of life, if you will, for Millennials is that it doesn't come from religion.

They're the most atheistic, most agnostic generation that ever was.

So, the meaning of life doesn't come from there.

The meaning of life also for many Millennials doesn't come from the family just yet, because they're only now, as a group, starting their own families.

So that really only leaves work as a source for the meaning of life.

Therefore, millennials obsess about work.

Work needs to be meaningful.

There are millions of Millennials that sit in cushiony well-paid jobs and they're miserable.

Work simply isn't fulfilling enough for them.

You can think about this what you want, but this is the reality for millennials.

It feels very, very real to them, and whether you are a millennial, whether you manage millennials, or whether you market to millennials... understand this obsession.

Millennials also fear that they can't provide the same level of physical comfort to their kids that their baby boomer parents were able to provide to them.

Millennials grew up in large homes providing all physical comforts to their kids, so that is hard for millennials to recreate now.

But at the moment Millennials live in the inner suburbs of the capital cities in one or two-bedroom apartments, and once you add a family member, or once you add a Zoom room for working from home to the millennial household, all of a sudden this generation really needs larger homes.

So they need to move into a three- or four-bedroom house.

And now millennials have FOMO — 'fear of missing out' on the property sector which is really shaping their thinking an awful lot.

So I do think if you get these basic obsessions and fears of millennials right, you understand an awful lot about how they tick as a group.

About Simon Kuestenmacher Simon Kuestenmacher is one of Australia’s leading demographers, co-founder of The Demographics Group, a regular media commentator, a columnist for the Australian and one of the world’s Top 50 Influencers in Data Science.
www.SimonKuestenmacher.com