Working class millennials have extra challenges in tough economy

In talking about millenials, researcher Jennifer Silva says the media focus on upper-middle-class young people, while forgetting about those who are working class.

"These are people bouncing from one temporary job to the next; dropping out of college because they can't figure out financial aid forms or fulfill their major requirements; relying on credit cards for medical emergencies; and avoiding romantic commitments because they can take care of only themselves," wrote Silva in The New York Times. "Increasingly disconnected from institutions of work, family and community, they grow up by learning that counting on others will only hurt them in the end. Adulthood is not simply being delayed but dramatically reimagined along lines of trust, dignity and connection and obligation to others."

In her reporting, journalist Nona Willis Aronowitz has seen that working-class millennials are fed up and working for bigger changes. "For poor Millennials joining fast-food and retail strikes across the country, or becoming more active at the community level...it's less that they're finally getting a taste of poverty and more that they can't take it anymore," wrote Aronowitz.

Silva and Aronowitz join The Daily Circuit to discuss the lives of millennials who don't have a safety net to catch them when they fall.

LEARN MORE ABOUT MILLENNIALS:

• Young and Isolated
Silva writes about the working-class millennials she's met in the course of her research.

• The Recession That Always Was
Aronowitz writes in The American Prospect: "There's a major disconnect, in the media and in life, between recession-addled twenty-somethings whose bright futures have been bruised, and the ones who always assumed their futures would be that way. The latter Millennials didn't need Occupy or an economic downturn to inject them with class consciousness."

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