Millennials' most common career goals include earning enough to have a balanced life, wanting to reach senior/executive level management and running their own business. (Photo: Shutterstock)
Yeah, we all know millennials have a reputation for attitude, and you might think that a salary goal of $80,000–$30,000 higher than it was just in 2016—is just one more example of their entitlement attitude.
But a new study from TD Ameritrade has some surprising things to say about their generation and their financial attitudes. Not only does that lofty salary ambition amount to $55.2 trillion per year, but most of the “greed for gold” comes from the guys: men want double the income women want in order to feel happy ($118,000 vs. $58,500).
But while millennials are often reviled for not working (enough) or for job-hopping, 54 percent of them have followed a traditional career path or progression in a single field. (Of course, a third of them—33 percent—have been “guilty” of following a career path that has involved working in several different fields, or that has included career exits that lasted more than six months, so they're not all determinedly keeping their noses to the same grindstone.)
In addition, 46 percent of them work a side hustle, with money the chief lure: 43 percent are in it for the cash, while 31 percent do it to work in an area that interests them and 22 percent keep a side job to practice for future potential jobs.
They're focused, too, with their most common career goals earning enough to have a balanced life (16 percent, although, unsurprisingly, more than twice as many women than men have this goal), wanting to reach senior/executive level management (also 16 percent, with the guys outnumbering the gals by nearly double) or running their own business (13 percent).
Women's ambitions are different, with them being more likely than men to want a career that allows them to earn enough to afford to work part time or have a balanced life (22 percent, compared with 9 percent). Men are more focused on that corner office level in the long term (20 percent, compared with 12 percent).
And when do they think they might make the most money during their careers? Well, 39 percent think their peak years will be their forties, while 27 percent think it'll be their thirties. Even so, 47 percent of millennials expect to achieve the American Dream by the time they hit 40 (but again, that depends on whom you ask: among men, it was actually 58 percent, while among women, it was just 39 percent).
Overall, 51 percent of millennials say they're family-focused rather than career-focused, but that doesn't necessarily translate into a family's positive effects on a career—despite the fact that, predictably enough, the guys are more likely, at 73 percent, to believe that having kids has had a positive effect on their career advancement. Sadly, only 33 percent of women think so. In fact, 22 percent of women say having kids actually harmed their rise to the top, while just 5 percent of men say so.
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Marlene Satter
Marlene Y. Satter has worked in and written about the financial industry for decades.
