In fact, Gen-Yers seem relentlessly optimistic about the future—more than any other generation, with 76 per cent in the Pew study believing their personal situation will improve by next year. And who can blame them? “If you grew up over the last 20 or 30 years, you’ve grown up in one of the biggest booms in modern economic history,” explains Catherine Douglas, a professor of economics at the University of British Columbia, “so if that’s your total frame of reference you’re going to feel pretty optimistic.”
“In general, unemployment is extremely detrimental for happiness,” says Elizabeth Dunn, an assistant professor at the department of psychology at the University of British Columbia, who has devoted her career to studying happiness. “However,” she says, “it’s not for the reason we might think.” In a joint study with Harvard University, Dunn’s research concluded that people overestimated the relationship between income and happiness.
The worst thing about unemployment isn’t less cash, says Dunn; rather it’s that unemployment can be socially isolating. “It’s bad for you if other people think you are a loser,” she says. “By labelling yourself as funemployed it says, look, I’m not just an unemployed loser— I’ve found a way to be part of this cool, new group.”
But while many young people don’t seem to be worried, that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to worry about. David Livingstone, a professor of sociology at the University of Toronto, says that today’s twentysomethings don’t realize just how bad things are. “These people are tremendously overqualified and doing all sorts of makeup work to make ends meet,” he says. And he believes that rather than being a temporary blip, underemployment is part of a larger trend in Canada, so some of these young workers may never entirely recover.
Mary Green, a 30-year-old graduate of St. Thomas University with a major in sociology and a minor in philosophy, wrote about funemployment between jobs on her blog, The Mary Report. She first heard the term from a friend. “Her contract had expired, so she was unemployed and collecting EI,” she explained. “She took advantage of the time to work on her art.”
Green was one of the lucky ones—she now works as a software engineer for the province of New Brunswick. But her period of unemployment may have had an effect on her outlook on work. “I don’t think people incorporate their day jobs into their identity the way they used to,” says Green. “I’m a software developer during the day,” she explains, “but I really try not to think about my job too much.” Instead, she focuses on her passions: playing in a band and writing blogs.
To anyone who has lived through a depression before, the attitude of the funemployed may be baffling. “It was tough for me to work through the ’80s and meet the recession midway through the ’90s,” says Cynthia Gentles, 44, a high school teacher at A.Y. Jackson Secondary School in Ottawa. “I worked minimum wage when I was 28 just to get a bag of groceries on the table.” Gentles has a B.A. honours in history, an M.A. in war studies, and a B.A. in education; she teaches technological design to teens.
Gentles is skeptical of young people who are elevating slacking to a viable career path. “Those kids that say ‘I’m just going to have a fun time,’ ” she pauses, “I would suspect it’s a little arrogant.” But that’s partly because Gentles sees how funemployment affects parents. “I know many colleagues around my age whose kids are graduating,” she says. “They are selling their houses and downsizing in order for their kids not to be able to move back home.”
And that’s the kicker for the funemployed: at the end of the day someone has to foot the bill. Gen-Yers may enjoy coasting through the recession, but if their parents have anything to do with it, that joyride might be over soon.
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