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Buzzfeed News: Here’s how millennial’s lives were changed by the recession 10 years ago

Buzzfeed News, September 25: Here’s how millennial’s lives were changed by the recession 10 years ago 

A decade has passed since the bottom fell out of the economy in 2008. The resulting crisis — a period of staggering unemployment that peaked at 10%, a distressed housing market, and woeful economic decline — is commonly referred to as the Great Recession. It was a defining moment for many millennials who were coming of age as uncertainty mushroomed and opportunity shrunk. Today, millennials are full-fledged adults, with the oldest approaching 40 years old. And although unemployment is at a 49-year low, many millennials find themselves on the edge of poverty in low-wage jobs as the cost of living keeps rising. While many have recovered from the immediate traumas of the recession, they also live with the consequences of a lost decade.

1. I can’t afford to have children and it breaks my heart.

The economic crisis aftermath has affected my ability to have children. With my salary and student loan debt I can’t afford to have children, and it breaks my heart. I may potentially never get the chance to be a mom — my ultimate desire.

—hmkriley

8. We graduated and went home and kept doing the same retail/restaurant jobs we’d been doing.

What’s interesting is that as a member of the class of 2007, I feel like we were the canaries in the mines when it came to the impending recession. The class of 2006 got the “college graduate” jobs we’d been raised to believe in when we went to school. But with my graduating class, quite a few more of us didn’t. We graduated and went home and kept doing the same retail/restaurant jobs we’d been doing. And a lot of my friends, including me, still are. I work a service job I hate that pays $15 an hour, and that still isn’t actually a living wage, despite falling in the middle income range for where I live. I owe $38,000 in student loan debt for a degree I’m not using, and which I will likely never pay off, because thanks to income based repayment and my low income, I don’t make enough to even pay all the interest my loans accrue each year. I do have a house and a car, but only because my parents supplement my income each month.

—paladin12

12. We had to work so hard to get back on our feet with two kids after going from six figures to food stamps.

My husband was at Merrill Lynch on Wall Street in 2008 when it crashed… we lost everything and filed for bankruptcy. He left finance and went into education, but landed back in finance recently. We had to work so hard to get back on our feet with two kids, after going from six figures to food stamps and WIC [a federally funded nutrition assistance program]. We finally left NYC because we felt the city didn’t love us back, and we settled in the Bay Area, not realizing it would turn into the most expensive housing market in the country.

—cristinar40dc0464f

18. I’m nowhere near where I thought I would be at 35.

I opened a store right before the recession: great first year then terrible. I managed to survive five years before being calling it quits. That same year, I almost died from a wisdom tooth extraction gone wrong (no health insurance), and my family lost our home of 30 years in a total BS move by [our bank]. It’s taken me five years to slowly rebuild my life. I’m nowhere near where I thought I would be at 35. But last year my boyfriend and I left Chicago because we wanted to own a home and not live paycheck to paycheck. We bought a house in Detroit (Detroit proper, not metro) and it was the best decision ever. The economy is not great, wages have not caught up with inflation, and again this is not where I thought I would be, but I hope it’s gonna get better.

—factorygirl82

23. I still get panic attacks and nightmares about losing it all over again.

I lost my job at the beginning of the recession. I had been at the company for five years. I ended up taking an entry level position within a company where there was plenty of opportunity to advance. On day one I told my boss what my qualifications were and what role I wanted and we mapped out a plan to get me there. During that time I worked on my certification, used the company’s relationship with a local university to get an advanced degree, and worked 80-hour weeks at three jobs to surpass where I had been at the other company.

It took two years to bounce back from the loss of my job, and three more to get my trajectory back. I still get panic attacks and nightmares about losing it all over again.

—stephe4fc077afc

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