From Voice ~ Topics: career, freelancing issues, lifestyle
Generation Squeezed
It is the dawn of the age of the squeezed. I am squeezed by too little time and too much world, by cost inflation and wage depression, by the elephants of my expenses and the peanuts of my pay, by the supply of millions like me and the demand of companies who know it. I can do it all from home, but so can everyone else. Empowered individuals are squeezed into competition with every other empowered individual.
Generation Squeezed illustration by David Barringer. Click to see full-size graph.
As an American creative worker, I confront a global workforce that has, with the opening of markets, expanded by three billion people from the other side of the world, 300 million of whom are English-speaking middle-class Indians, every other one of whom is writing a novel or crafting new design-template software but will soon, like me, be wondering how it is that anyone actually earns gas money around here.
As a guy who works from home, I am just another guy who works from home, working the internet like any 10-year old, sending PDFs of books and magazines via YouSendIt, and waiting for measly checks to arrive months late, sufficient only to pay the late fee on my credit card. And for some reason, these checks are made of paper, tucked inside envelopes, and I have to walk to my mailbox to get them. I get in my car. I pay for the gas it takes to drive to the local ATM. I slip the check into the ATM, which scans the paper, renders it into a digital image (now I get something digital? seriously?) and asks me if the amount is correct. No. No, it isn’t. It can’t even get me home.
I think the future of work will be like this for all of us, everywhere, we the empowered powerless, the squeezable multipurpose individuals, vessels of intellectual capital squirting our value-add onto the frozen patties of a flattened world. Squeezed by competition, we’ll have to squeeze our dreams, scale them back to something less than we’d hoped.
Perhaps my generation will not continue the upwardly mobile American dream-making pursued by our forbears. America promises class mobility by the process of economic evolution, today’s generation standing on the shoulders of yesterday’s. My great-great-grandparents were farmers, my great-grandparents craftspeople and servants, my grandparents engineers and businesspeople and homemakers, and my parents professionals with advanced degrees. I’ve been privileged enough to get the advanced degree, ditch it with disdain, and live a creative life of the mind and mouse, dependent on my wife’s professional income and pulling my weight by running the castle as knight, groundskeeper, cook and court jester. Either our lifestyle is a template for how to scrape by in the suburbs, or else our cumulative debt from school, home and equity line is a cautionary tale about the perils of trying to live out the wrong generation’s economic destiny.
Members of Generation Squeezed will be forced to do more to feed, clothe, shelter and educate ourselves as we are paid less and less for our labor. I’ll be working virtually with someone on the other side of the world, but I’ll be doing it while wearing a Bluetooth headset and wrist-mounted iPhone so I can weed the herb garden, milk the goat and collect the eggs from the backyard henhouse. The squeezed life is going to be a lot of work. Family life itself will be for entrepreneurs. We’ll need to possess a variety of high-tech survival skills that will cover computers, telecommuting, agriculture, accounting, plumbing, home repair, animal husbandry, pest control, sewing and the maintenance of wind turbines and fuel cells.
I will not be the only one seriously considering the economic benefits of polygamy and extended bi- and tri-family units (design an eco-friendly, energy-efficient “green” house for that family, will you?). My wife and I can’t survive alone anymore. We could use a few more partners in the household. The relationships wouldn’t even be sexual or romantic. We just need some chores done and a few more checks in the mailbox. Our ad would read: “Dual-working couple seeks hard-working individual(s) to pool resources, share overhead, construct geodesic dome, install solar roof tiles, plant vegetable garden and provide home-school instruction for college-age children.”
It’s a paradox, the home expanding its functional independence as the world expands its functional interdependence. The more globalization enables temporary collaboration of individuals across the globe, the more individuals are forced to become permanently self-reliant. I work collaboratively, but I survive on my own. I am paid for the task and no more. No benefits, healthcare, insurance, overtime, investments. I’ll be repaying my own school loans as I’m taking out new loans for my kids, and I’ll be paying for my Boomer parents’ aging lifestyles even as I can’t afford to invest in my own retirement.
How far will globalization push the independence of the individual? The individual will be the new locus of a sustainable environment. Forget the home. We will all be encased in thin suits of iArmor, protected from the elements, connected to whatever supplants Google and YouTube, fed by organic nano-farms built into our bodies, exchanging creative uncopyrightable labor with doppelgangers in other time zones, expressing affection for others within our proxy neural networks of our species-wide global love-in. We’ll all be safe and sound, of course—and perfectly at home in our squeezable minds.
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Good article. I think a lot of the dilemmas cited here are quite particular to American society and culture where "rugged individualism" is the predominant mindset, whereas most of the rest of the world is more open to viewing government, and by extension society, as a caretaker for those falling between the gaps.
As a Canadian, I don't get my skivvies in a twist over the idea of public funding for health care, post-secondary education and family leave. We have safeguards in place to prevent the kind of financial disasters many Americans face because your culture is so "socialism" averse.
Plus add the fact that North Americans tend to favor small families unlike other cultures where several generations can inhabit one home, the upside of which is that many hands and streams of income make it easier to provide a support system for every member of the family.
No doubt, things ain't what they used to be. -
This is genius. Especially the part about cashing the check. I feel so squeezed, I barely have time to write this comment...
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My life EXACTLY!
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Very well-written piece! Being on the older end of Generation Y, I am just now striking out on my own to seek some of that independence that my stint in the corporate environment denied me, and I'm a bit concerned with how my self-empowerment will lead to just another brand of spreading myself too thin. So many interests, so little time, and a growing number of obligations that can turn the freedom of self-employment into the burden of even more bosses. Fortunately, I am currently free from debt and my living expenses are low, but with fierce competition in a stagnant economy, I might see those advantages diminish as well. It's certainly difficult to plan for retirement when we're already feeling the squeeze.
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Brilliant article. It completely and accurately describes the darkness many of us face each day. My husband often talks of the future and I laugh and say "What future? Today is all I can afford to discuss." It's sad because I love what I do and who I care for so much that somehow, stretching myself this thin is still worth it, even at the cost of tomorrow.
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Yes, you are experiencing what has more traditionally been diagnosed as middle age, and the attendant responsibilities, stresses, and realities that go with this. Gen-X, once the standard-bearers of the cool, the hip, and the trend-setting back in the 90's are now, inevitably, domesticized by the onslaught of time.
A single tear for Rrrrrome. -
Could you elaborate on the reasoning behind the time frame for each generational segment? The Generation X time frame is significantly smaller than the boomers and Generation Y. This would seem to skew the statistics.
Boomers: 18 years
Generation X: 11 years
Generation Y: 23 years -
Anthony makes an excellent point. The markers for generations tend to be soft, made with reference to cultural, historical, or even technological events within a certain society. Boomers are easy. They are post-WWII babies and are dated from the year U.S. servicemen began returning home until 18 years later, the age at which the first Boomers would have become adults and started having their own kids. Gen X and Y are both trickier and have a lot of overlap. People have cited the Y end date as 2000 or even 9/11/01, so you work backwards from that.
Gen X is admittedly the craziest. In my research, I came across about a dozen different dates for marking the beginning and ending of Gen X (hence the list of several sources for the graph). It's not about strict dates. It's about a relative proportion among the three generations. In other words, after the Baby Boom, births slowed significantly. These would be the Gen X years. Then the Boomers, members of a huge generation, themselves had kids. Hence, the large boom of Gen Yers, marked more or less in accordance with the years Boomers became procreative adults. The dates I used were just some of the most common dates and the ones that made sense with reference to the Boomers. In my case, with these years, my dad's a Boomer, I'm a Gen Xer, and my kids are Gen Yers. My single Xer friends may yet marry and have kids, and those kids could be members of Gen Z (or whatever).
Honestly, the more important transition to note is the one in which the organization of work itself is undergoing transformation for a whole host of reasons, and my only point was that some of us are going to suffer this transformation mid-stream, at the unraveling of the Boomer way and the emergence of whatever is to be the Gen Yer way. Boomers expected to retire, but they are no longer able to retire in the comfort they expected. Gen Xers took out school loans gambling on employer healthcare and retirement plans, which are now on the way out. Gen Yers are entering the workforce with totally new expectations. Their employers are making fewer if any promises. And the new generations will be working very differently. Maybe everyone will be a sole practitioner, a freelancer, a consultant, connected by technological means and forced to be a kind of high-tech independent worker. -
"Gen Yers are entering the workforce with totally new expectations. Their employers are making fewer if any promises."
If employers ever made "promises," it is because organized labor forced them to provide something more than bare necessity. It is almost as if Barringer believes we should simply accommodate ourselves to whatever world the bosses want to give us, and simply make the best of it.
More than ever, we need a genuine union. Most designers are still wage-earners, if salaried, and you can bet a great many who work as freelancers have been squeezed (and sold) into that role by companies looking to cut labor costs. Typographers, say, once had a strong union; there's no reason today's designers can't either. -
As a girl who just left the safety net of the employed world, I find this article incredibly disheartening. I can understand the feeling of being squeezed in this economy, especially if you're in debt at the same time... but I can't help thinking positive thoughts when it comes to freelancing vs. serving your one-and-holy employer.
Have you forgotten what it's like to work 55 hours a week only to be underpaid for 40? Not to mention the red tape, office politics and getting to hear "we need you to put in some long hours this weekend" while doing a workload that takes 3 people all by your lonesome.
I feel liberated by freelancing. Working at my own pace, accepting projects I want to work on, having the time to produce quality work, charging for every hour spent... being able to actually leave my chair for 20 minutes to enjoy a bowl of soup at noon in the peace and quiet of my sun-filled home.
I don't know... maybe I'm just a girl who recently left the safety net of the employed world and is looking through rose-colored glasses. -
Ah, David. You have summed up what I have been going through the past few days (well several years really)(but particularly bad lately). "Why don't your designs cost the same as what I can find at the store?" When I explain they are paying for custom design, custom illustrations, they understandingly nod, but they still ask for a mass-produced price. Behold the backlash of the bad economy..
To those who just left the safety net of the the office world, yes. Freelancing is VERY liberating, and I wouldn't trade it for the world.. But once you have been at it for awhile you find that you trade for that freedom in many ways:
~ First, make no mistake about it. To be successful you have to do at least the work of 3 people. Designer, Business Development and Accountant (well at least bookkeeping). Those last two take time away from our primary love, but without them, the money doesn't roll in.
~ Trading the security of a consistent paycheck for the stress of not knowing where your next project will come from.
~ Not being able to charge for every hour, or doing so at a reduced rate.
~ Scope changes you swallow the cost on for the sake of client retention.
~ Freebies you do for "marketing purposes" or for friends.
~ Or as David said, waiting for a check that was meager to begin with that is 90 days past due while your own bills go unpaid.
That all aside, I LOVE what I do. I do not do well "working for the man". I have great clients, and some really great projects to show for it. I am just finding it particularly hard in this economy to justify to people why custom design is worth it, and why I deserve to be paid more per hour than a teenager working at a mall. It didn't used to be that hard.. -
The best thing in this article for me was this sentence:
"Perhaps my generation will not continue the upwardly mobile American dream-making pursued by our forbears."
I think this is the key to finding peace with this new way or working. We are different from the generation before us, as boomers have certainly said about their own generation. We need to take up the torch and find ways to make our generation's situation something we can live with.
And hey, if you have a few minutes email me and let me know what the heck you're doing to make this new way of working work for you. I'm sincerely interested. -
Doomspeak for naysayers in the freelance economy. This is a good hyperbolic article for the self-employed to grab by the horns and reject on its false premise, remembering that the onus for overwork falls on each one of us alone, the squeeze always being a product of our own design. Designers, if you're feeling squeezed, time to redesign.
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I don't feel squeezed. I actualy feel like I have too much space information-wise. The wast ammount of information on every subject warrants that I'll never ever read or know everything - it's overwhelming.
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I still take the most value in the work I create rather than the amount it earns. I doubt I'll freelance right out of the gate but maybe once I am more established I can set up my own design house. Who knows...maybe I'll have enough to invest by that time. Cheers.
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This article is quite entertaining and informative of the life of an entrepreneur. I really enjoyed it.
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David thanks for the great essay and for following up in the comments as well. A really interesting read, and so well-written.
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An excellent book as follow-up: Generations (c. 1992). It describes 4 generational archetypes: 2 dominant, 2 "squeezed" though they use other language. The proactive/reactive cycle has been happening for hundreds of years. It just seems extreme when you happen to be in the "reactive" generation. Only answer I've found: if you can't beat 'em, join 'em! Either get with the next generation (more often called Millenials now, with a birth range starting more like the early 80s), or deal with the generational rut you're in. Imagine being one of the Millenials today. Graduating college in a Depression. Xers had it easy, in retrospect, but never garnered the respect nor cash they deserved--except for a few dot-commers--from self-indulgent Boomers. And now the clincher is.... drumroll please... the Boomers' 401Ks are now 201Ks so they probably won't retire until 70...!! No management position for you, my friend. Greedy Boomer $#@%&^s. Look for civic-minded and connected opportunities to emerge from the ashes of the boomer wreckage. Now more than ever you can find a need for creativity everywhere. But you might need to be more creative to make $$ at it. There's always opportunity in disparity.
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Thanks for the article, David. I always enjoy your writing. I love the independence of being self-employed but the stress of it can grind me down, some days.
Your picture of the future, where agriculture becomes integrated into home life again, is similar to how I'm living now. It's funny to be submerged in photoshop and indesign all day, then go home and collect the eggs, weed the garden, feed the pigs ... a good balance. -
Freelancing and/or starting your own firm is definitely hard. Most people idealize the concept of being your own boss, but what that entails is far more than just 40 hours of design. In fact, maybe half of your time is spent actually designing and developing. But working for someone isn't always a bad thing, and with so many already established firms and the atmosphere that most creative agencies have, it really isn't difficult to find something you really like. So I think for some, freelancing is the best way to go but it will be difficult; for others, working with an existing company is the best fit, and there's nothing wrong with that. But as Alex Bogusky recently said, "Right now, our country needs these scrappy small-agency entrepreneurs to keep doing their thing, because they will indeed dig us out of this mess faster than the holding companies and big agency networks."
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Welcome to the third world
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I read this post the day it came out and haven't stopped thinking about it since. My hubby and I are both creatives, work hard, and recently decided to add having a family to our lives (right after purchasing our first home). Man, it's tough. We love what we do and our son, but I often find myself wondering how we are going to make it beyond tomorrow, never mind what we will do for retirement!? Thanks for shedding light on the fact that there are others out there in the same boat.
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I think this new set of circumstances is a direct result of the developing world and the wealth they are creating in their rise to affluence.
The west is pretty spoiled. If you go to India or China or most of asia, you will see what it really looks like to struggle for a living. People live with their parents and share rent with them until marriage, and sometimes beyond. The favor is returned when the elderly stop work at 75. They will then live and die in the home of their offspring. They most often live in conditions a westerner would find very uncomfortable. No air conditioning, no dish washer, no clothes dryer, no car, a small concrete box for a home with a few sticks of furniture, noodles or rice as a primary source of nutrition, and for this they work well over 40 hours a week in most cases.
These people are not miserable in most cases, though. They have a strong work ethic connection to family. It is this poor, hard working, self sacrificial lot which is causing a drop in western wages, as they are now increasingly able to compete in the same market as a westerner.
As the west experiences a slight decline in living standards, the east is seeing a dramatic rise, and they have earned it. I doubt there will be a parity in living standards any time soon, as eastern population density probably prohibits this, but the degree of difference will surely decrease.
This is a type of justice provided by free markets, distribution of the wealth does not require a central planner to oversee the process. Like all natural systems, wealth seeks equilibrium over time. Differences in people's natural abilities, social structure, surrounding resources and determination will work against this equilibrium, though.
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