When I graduated from college, I returned back home for a few months until I had saved enough money for a deposit for an apartment in Queens. My Italian mother fought me. She thought I was insane for wasting money on rent, when there was a perfectly good bed upstairs and a proper meal on a plate every night. But I went. That’s what we all did in the 1980s.
The Atlantic and Vox have written many articles in the past year about the changing spending habits and preferences of millenials. They say that millenials want to move to urban areas and not spend money on cars, like I did, back in the Stone Ages. Highly ambitious, creative people have always flocked to cities. Until now.
I actually think those writers are dead wrong. Young people have been priced out of the major cities, like New York, D.C., and Boston. There are staying in older cities, like Cleveland, where the rent is dirt cheap, and they get a hand-me-down car from Uncle George. Or they are sticking around here in the suburbs. I went to a Brooklyn-ish wine bar on Saturday in a working class suburb on Saturday. The tattooed waiters and the bartender were in their 20s.
And they were making good money. The restaurant was packed. I Facebooked my meal, and the bartender rewarded me with an extra huge glass of wine.
Millenials are growing up in a crappy economy. They are cheap, like my son, Jonah. Unless they are writers for Vox or the Atlantic, they are going to steer clear of the larger cities. I think we’re going to see increased decentralization in the next twenty years.
Apt. 11d 
Young people have so, so many tattoos. I don’t get it. Why not wait until your skin gets old and pasty before covering it with writing and pictures?
I think what you see as people moving into cheap places is, at the other end of the line, seen as young adults moving into non-New York cities. Rents are up around here, partially because nothing new was built in the city between 1985 and last March but people say it is also because of young adults moving in. Right now they are building new 1 and 2 bedroom apartments and filling them with people paying about what I pay on a house.
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We did a Seattle trip over Thanksgiving. I don’t know what the normal demographics are of Seattle taxi drivers, but I was astonished that our driver turned out to be a native English speaking white Hispanic 20-something hipster guy. Everywhere else I’ve ever been, your normal taxi driver is either 1) an immigrant or 2) a middle aged native born. I’ve never seen a youngish native English taxi driver before, and certainly not a hipster taxi driver.
So, add that to the pile of Laura’s demographic oddities.
(Come to think of it, Uber may be pulling a younger, hipper demographic into traditional taxi driving.)
I can’t believe I just used “hipster” twice and “hipper” once in a single thread posting. I promise it will not happen again.
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Hey, same time zone and a couple of hours apart – coffee sometime?
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I see similarities and differences here in Vancouver.
Similarities abound in how they are living their lives with different values – not buying a house/condo as soon as possible, forgoing car ownership for transit/car-to-go instead, focusing more on friends and family rather than possessions, more entrepreneurial/creative in how they earn a living (cobbling together 2-3 or more streams of income rather than one “job job”).
A difference is the cost of living here. Young people are flocking to the area despite it having the most expensive real estate in North America. And a relatively lower average income as well. They are choosing to live in much smaller places (think basement suite in your 30’s and 40’s) and do more communal living.
I still scratch my head about that aspect – I mean of course it’s gorgeous in terms of scenery. It’s close to skiing, hiking, etc. (except for the fact that few locals can afford Whistler on a regular basis). It has the mildest weather in Canada (snow maybe twice a winter). But there aren’t many real career-ish jobs outside of professions. See cost of living above for how ridiculously expensive it is (it makes Manhattan look affordable).
I’m happy they are staying – any city benefits from younger people staying and adding energy and new life and new ideas. A city is gutted when a swath of its demographic leaves behind only old people and the wealthy. And in our case, when it’s used as a land bank for wealthy Europeans and Asians who visit a few times a year leaving their homes empty the rest of the time.
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“That’s what we all did in the 1980s.” No shit, at least all of us who are female and had Italian mothers. It was the only way we could break out of the micromanagement, heightened scrutiny, and complete lack of boundaries (and from what I hear, it was worse for young women that had brothers. The contrast between having the screw down on them while their brothers were completely free to get into whatever dipshit late-teenage goodtimes they could weasel their way into got old really fast).
Ahem. Anyway, what I see from the rustbelt perspective is that the costs of moving into a really large metropolis from a low-wage, high-un employment medium-size city are too much; so the default is to find some city a little bigger, a little better, and make it work. It’s not like they wouldn’t rather go to a real city, it’s just that they can’t afford to. At the same time, they can’t afford to stay put either.
All the cool restaurants and bars from twenty years ago here are closing up shop—there aren’t enough people with disposable income to keep them open. The only people with enough disposable income are the handful of upper middle class, and they either trick-out their own houses and “cocoon”, and/or do vacation weekends in the cities they’d rather live in. They don’t spend money going out here. That was done by the “upper working class” and lower-middle, and they’re (we’re) squeezing pennies ’till Lincoln screams. Hence, a lot fewer jobs for younger people—including the ones who have to work their way through college.
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I’m still seeing young people moving into the Bay Area, though more of them are living in Oakland rather than San Francisco. Also among non tech workers, (those making less than 40,000) there is bedroom sharing in addition to apartment sharing, especially among new grads. This was not the case when I moved here in 1989 in general. It would be interesting to get some stats on this.
I just don’t remember young people bringing such big incomes in tech until the expansion of the Internet in the late 90s. Granted I and my friends were more liberal arts types, but even our friends in tech seemed to live more modest lives in the early 90s.
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Marianne it sounds similar to Vancouver – young people continue to move/stay in expensive cities. I don’t know if we can make any/many broad brush conclusions about this age group. At least in terms of moving in or away from large, expensive cities.
I do believe that the lifestyle has commonalities – living below/within their means (which you allude to in shared rooms/apartments), multiple sources of income, more into experiences rather than possessions (transit rather than cars), etc. Living more in the moment rather than planning for an assumed, attainable future (house, cars, etc).
Some of these are driven by cost and just as much by a shift in values compared to their parents.
I also see the opposite with my nieces/nephews/cousins who live in a small, rural town in the prairies. Education isn’t much of a priority – it isn’t seen as a ticket out or a step up to a better lifestyle. And even if it is, it means leaving the small town for a city lifestyle that they don’t want. It’s almost like an education is for those other people, not “us”. (affordability is not an issue – they have done well financially).
The lack of consistent cable internet access til recently (in a small town of about 6.000) has meant a spotty online life or social media presence. The result? Limited access to the greater community that we enjoy.
They are not living the shift in lifestyle at all and rather live much like their parents.
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