Gen Y, The Slacker Generation

I may have great disdain and disrespect for the Baby Boomer generation, but I will grant them one thing;

They worked their asses off as kids.

Their labor force participation rates were through the roof back in the day when they were young achieving the highest levels on record. And (a smug point I might add) that despite our loserness, we Gen-X'ers (at least the older ones) managed to achieve a similiarily high participation rate.

But good lord, what the hell happened to Gen Y????

Labor force participation rates for teenagers has tanked since 2000 to the lowest level on record, and precipitously so.

Now I'd like to go on and speculate about how children are spoiled rotten today. I'd like to go on about how parents find it easier to pay off their children than to bring them up right and teach them a work ethic, and I'd like to go on and point out it's my generation that taught their children this lack of work ethic, but frankly I find it pointless. Parenting has deteriorated to the point it is unsalvagable. Whatever I say will fall on dead ears or ears that have already plotted and set a course for the destination of arrested development for children and ultimately to the detriment of our economy...not to mention the likelihood I will never never see a social security check with that work ethic. And so I will write it here, just for the rights to say in the future "I told you so." For this lack of work ethic will be one of the key reasons for the inevitable collapse of our economy and our continuing decline as a world super power.

And to all the Australians that are e-mailing in, THIS IS AMERICAN DATA! This has nothing to do with Australian Gen-Y'ers. I have no clue what the Australian data looks like.