The Gen X Career Meltdown
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/28/style/gen-x-creative-work.htmlhttps://archive.ph/cPvDJ
The Gen X Career Meltdown
Just when they should be at their peak, experienced workers in creative fields find that their skills are all but obsolete.
By Steven Kurutz | March 28, 2025
In “Generation X,” the 1991 novel that defined the generation born in the 1960s and 1970s, Douglas Coupland chronicled a group of young adults who learn to reconcile themselves to “diminishing expectations of material wealth.” Lessness, Mr. Coupland called this philosophy.
For many of the Gen X-ers who embarked on creative careers in the years after the novel was published, lessness has come to define their professional lives.
If you entered media or image-making in the ’90s — magazine publishing, newspaper journalism, photography, graphic design, advertising, music, film, TV — there’s a good chance that you are now doing something else for work. That’s because those industries have shrunk or transformed themselves radically, shutting out those whose skills were once in high demand.
“I am having conversations every day with people whose careers are sort of over,” said Chris Wilcha, a 53-year-old film and TV director in Los Angeles.
Talk with people in their late 40s and 50s who once imagined they would be able to achieve great heights — or at least a solid career while flexing their creative muscles — and you are likely to hear about the photographer whose work dried up, the designer who can’t get hired or the magazine journalist who isn’t doing much of anything.
Gen X-ers grew up as the younger siblings of the baby boomers, but the media landscape of their early adult years closely resembled that of the 1950s: a tactile analog environment of landline telephones, tube TV sets, vinyl records, glossy magazines and newspapers that left ink on your hands.
When digital technology began seeping into their lives, with its AOL email accounts, Myspace pages and Napster downloads, it didn’t seem like a threat. But by the time they entered the primes of their careers, much of their expertise had become all but obsolete.
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Sorry to hear jobs gone from LA. Poor kids.
I can personally vouch for that.
Mr Sedona is a 30 year IATSE pro who has never been out of work more than a few weeks at a time (aside from Covid and the two strikes in 2023 and one in 2008) On the verge of retirement he's now considered disposable.
He hasn't worked since just before Christmas.
Covid, two strikes, and the new streaming business model has changed motion picture production forever. Its all gone overseas.
We're selling our home in Atlanta and moving to Orlando where we hope he can pick up a few more years of work rigging at the theme parks.
I left Florida in 1993 after Hurricane Andrew and SWORE I'd never return.
At least we can bring two more blue votes to CD6.
I remember when I was not hired at Sony because I was too old. Early 30s!
Also meant I'd ask for too much $
Turns out I got lucky because I was going to work on Anaconda..
