Coming Up Short

By Matt Reed. How do you know when you’re an adult?
According to Coming Up Short, by Jennifer Silva, today’s working-class twenty-somethings answer that question differently than previous generations, including my own, did.
Silva is a sociologist at Harvard, and her book is based on interviews with working-class millenials in Massachusetts and Virginia over the last few years.  Her thesis -- spoiler alert -- is that the classic working-class answer -- steady job, marriage, house, kids -- has lost its relevance, since it has become economically unfathomable. The kind of reliable, well-paying job that underlay the classic postwar American working class has mostly vanished now, replaced by short-term, insecure, poorly-paid jobs that don’t provide the material basis for a stable life. Read more...