The Pew report states that a majority of Millennials “say that the older generation is superior to the younger generation when it comes to moral values and work ethic.” The phone survey conducted for the report found that Millennials are the only generation to not list work ethic as a Top 5 claim to generational distinctiveness in an open-ended question.
Believing that work ethic isn’t amongst the Top 5 unique characteristics for one’s generation is very different from actually admitting to having poor work ethic, a point lost on many commentators. This and the Millennials’ response that other generations have a greater work ethic are in fact self-assessments rather than a qualitative behavioral analysis using some objective tool or metric.
The Millennials’ educational accomplishments alone, as noted in the same report, would belie any assumption that we don’t work hard or value the process and outcome of said work.
Harvard Business Review: Debunking The Millennials’ Work Ethic “Problem”
(Thanks Paleofuture)
(Photo by dotbenjamin / CC)
I have some related thoughts in my essay Generational Differences.
Previously: Interesting polling data on the “millennial” generation