Why it’s OK if millennials aren’t engaged at work

Many members of Gen Y see work engagement as devotion to their own abilities, rather than to fulfilling the needs of their employers. Others are simply subsidizing their leisure pursuits.

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Some people are working at jobs they don’t like, but that may not be as big an issue as it once was.

By 2020, millennials will make up close to half (46 percent) of the workforce according to the Young Entrepreneur Council, and they’ve already shown that they won’t let their careers define who they are.

Quite the contrary: They are more likely to stay in a job that’s not ideal—if it enables their personal pursuits.

Big dreams

Millennials were told they could do anything, and they watched peers like Mark Zuckerberg drop out of Harvard to start billion-dollar businesses. They also watched their parents get downsized, right-sized, and all manner of other euphemisms. Gen Y also watched a financial crisis collapse the economy just as they were entering the job market en masse.

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