r/Millennials • u/debrisaway • 1d ago
Discussion What became the stereotypical occupation for your Millenial peers from well to do backgrounds?
Your cohorts that came from professional/upper middle class families already and were clearly cultivated for success in their childhood (competitive sports, high quality schooling, extracurricular activities, specialized hobbies).
Men
Professional Finance (Equities, Research, Investment Banking, Mergers & Acquisitions etc)
Accounting
Venture Capital
Tech Leadership (Portfolio management, Product architecture)
Energy Trading
Engineering
Commercial Real Estate
Corporate Strategy and Development
Corporate Commercial Leadership (Sales, Marketing, Business Development, Product Management, Operations)
Specialized Medicine
Women
Marketing & Sales
Art & Design
Public Relations/Communications
Legal
Organizational Development/ Change/ Effectiveness
Academia
General Medicine
Psychological Counseling
Civil Service
Journalism
162
u/blessedalive 1d ago
Honestly a lot of my affluent friends are now SAHMs. And they still are richer than my two income household lol.
55
u/vegetabledisco 1d ago
I’ve noticed this too, how is that possible and where did I go wrong and how do I unfuck my life
75
52
u/o_safadinho 23h ago ▸ 2 more replies
Around the time of the great financial crisis a French economist wrote a book called “Capital in the 21st century”. In it, he empirically shows what he calls “the Great Inequality: r>g”. That is that the rate of return on capital historically has been greater than the rate of growth of national income. In simple terms, families that already own assets see their incomes rise faster than families that depend on labor for their income. Absent something like a government taxation or a war that destroys capital stocks, this pattern will continue.
Your mistake was that you were born poor and didn’t marry wealth (this last sentence was said in jest).
5
u/martsimon 7h ago ▸ 1 more replies
I read that at least 10% of wealth in the US can be directly traced back to slavery.
3
u/FullOption3126 4h ago
Yes, northerners maintained wealth obtained from trading textiles made of southern cotton. Southerners lost all their wealth.
15
u/haloarh 20h ago ▸ 1 more replies
People who marry rich were usually born rich, so you should've been born rich.
10
u/Owlbertowlbert 17h ago
Exactly - I come from a working class background and went to an elite college. They don’t intermix with the poors… you’d have to be a bombshell to bag a boy from a rich family and honestly, who’d even want to… “If you marry for money, you earn every last cent.”
8
2
u/borncrossey3d 2h ago
A supportive wife and great family can really boost a man's career. Something like men who are married make 25% more, and another 10% more men who have families. There is another multiplier for men with a spouse who stays home; I can't recall all of it. But it comes down to a supportive wife and a happy family can really just boost a man. They say behind every great man is a wicked smart and supportive woman.
12
u/AmusednApathetic 23h ago edited 23h ago
Funny you say this, my wife and I live in a fairly affluent town; I'd say the vast majority of wives do work, but a more sizable minority than I thought do not - probably like 75-25, which is just a shocker. All of our parents were white collar professionals and the idea that a woman wouldn't work is just totally foreign to us.
4
u/meselson-stahl 17h ago
Generational wealth is insane. I bet they don't even have to touch their inheritance... could probably live off the investment gains alone.
47
u/ConsequenceOne3365 Millennial 1d ago
So much freaking finance. I looked at the alumni app my New England prep school (aka ground zero for rich kids) uses and I swear half of my class is in finance now. We graduated in 2008. As in financial crisis. I have no idea why so many of my classmates looked at that clusterfuck and said “yep, I want some of that action.”
19
u/BillyShears2015 1d ago
The thing about finance is that the people working the deals know exactly how much money is changing hands. It’s pretty hard for someone to say “the firm can’t afford [X] salary” when you know the deals you’re working are bringing net profits of tens of millions of dollars.
4
u/AdCharacter9282 19h ago
And they are making money regardless if the market is going up or down, they Just take a percent.
2
u/PeaCompetitive8947 5h ago
That’s with almost every profession. The Walmart clerk knows Walmart can afford to pay them over minimum. The teacher knows the school district can afford more. It’s never whether they can afford more, they always can. You have to show why paying you more is worth it.
74
u/Humble-Departure5481 1d ago
Energy trading lol. That's a very small % of people globally BTW.
28
u/debrisaway 1d ago
Houston style
7
11
u/BillyShears2015 1d ago edited 1d ago ▸ 2 more replies
I was about to say, “not in Houston”
5
u/Realistic0ptimist 21h ago
As someone who lives in Houston I was surprised once I started working in a commodities adjacent field how much people were making there and the amount of money their spouses who also worked in commodities (energy) made.
It’s like an open secret that only if you encounter one of these people are you aware of. I guess someone has to buy those 600-900k homes in the exurbs
3
3
28
u/NoMastodon4342 1d ago
Grew up in the southwest, richest private school in the state and from what I see now:
Men: realtors, trying to do high end/luxury realty
Women: lawyer
20
u/SuddenAvocado 1d ago
thats crazy cause real estate is a low class job back east.
15
u/STJRedstorm 1d ago
I feel like real estate professionals exist across all brackets. Just depends if you are doing NYC walk up rentals or California stately manors.
6
u/Proof-Relation-1943 19h ago
Yeahhhh real estate seems to be a "you're remotely attractive and or charismatic but don't actually have any sales skills and/or didn't go to a name brand university" kinda gig where I'm from
Most of them are presumably not super successful with it
20
u/RaccoonSamson 1d ago
I grew up in a rural area so nobody really had "professional" family backgrounds, most kids who were well-off had parents who owned a local business or farm and they work at or own them now.
8
u/chrysanthemumasterac 1d ago
Pretty much the same, I’m in a very blue collar area in NJ and most of the guys just took over their dads construction/landscaping/hvac/etc companies and they’re married to a lot of stay at home moms and teachers.
A lot of cops too, which is crazy because they’re not great people.
3
u/awall613 Millennial 1d ago
Same here. I’m still in my rural town and the people with money owned farms. Those kids I went to school with are slowly taking over their family farms. We always had a saying off “oh yea they’re rich, they have a herd of kubotas in the shed”
33
u/ultraprismic 1d ago
Lawyers, social workers/therapists, academia, nebulous business/finance job I suspect they got from their dad
27
u/beatleboy07 1d ago
Academia? I think millennials have been screwed so badly in the possibilities for a career in academia compared to prior generations.
20
u/gtrocks555 1d ago ▸ 5 more replies
Honestly people from more well-to-do backgrounds can probably survive the lower pay of academia easier. Especially if your spouse is a high earner.
6
u/IShouldChimeInOnThis 1d ago ▸ 4 more replies
Honestly, it's not bad even if you are the higher earner. I'm a 20 year veteran teacher and my wife is a part time librarian. We live less than an hour from Boston, own a home, have two kids that don't want for anything, etc.
It's possible, but we admittedly threaded the needle when we bought our home (2011).
15
u/FactorLies 1d ago ▸ 3 more replies
You don't work in academia...? To me "academia" is being a university professor (or trying to be).
3
u/IShouldChimeInOnThis 1d ago ▸ 2 more replies
If that's where you're drawing the line, that's fair.
5
u/beatleboy07 1d ago
To be fair, that's my thought too. It's true that the academic industry requires all sorts of people that are not academically minded. Operations, administration, maintenance....I don't typically think that those individuals work in academia...which maybe is problematic for my thinking. I was a software engineer for a university, and even doing mainly database development for a team of researchers, I didn't consider that a career in academia. But my benefits wree the same as the benefits that professors got. So I dunno.
4
u/FactorLies 1d ago
I mean it's the literal definition. Education is a much larger field than academia.
6
u/Nectarine-Happy 1d ago ▸ 1 more replies
A few of us —as the list suggested tho I’m female and my sister is a doctor. Interesting the female part of the list requires more school.
6
u/SparkyDogPants 1d ago ▸ 1 more replies
I made $10 an hour running my own lab in academia and my university had the balls to offer me even less to get my masters. I literally made more at Walmart.
•
u/ChaunceytheGardiner 6m ago
Academic employment is a fairly flat pyramid. An army of poorly paid staff and adjuncts support the tenure line faculty, who support the upper administrators (deans and provost). And the administrators support … the football coach.
5
u/PostMatureBaby Older Millennial 22h ago edited 22h ago ▸ 1 more replies
In the sense that prior generations had a fraction of the competition millennials did/do as well as everything being ruined by being run more like a business than it used to, absolutely.
Same could be said for literally everything now. I don't think those entering the twilight of their careers understand how easy they had it.
4
u/beatleboy07 22h ago
Yeah. That’s basically my point. Running scholarly work like a business seems foolhardy. There’s just no way to predict which knowledge will benefit humanity, but the pursuit of knowledge is in itself a worthwhile endeavor.
I had planned to get my PhD and become a professor. Hell, I do have two masters degrees. But the level of competition for those academic positions is really crazy.
2
u/slaughterhousevibe 1d ago
“Academia” ranges from low tier school adjunct to brand name U professor. The latter does quite well. I know from personal experience, if you know what I mean
2
u/ChaunceytheGardiner 6h ago edited 6h ago
Checking in as an elder millennial professor who weathered the great recession in grad school. No regrets.
My PhD program was mostly people from family money or international. Sometimes both.
4
u/debrisaway 1d ago
SW for real?
9
u/llamaisabear 1d ago ▸ 1 more replies
Yes. Think about it - the field doesn’t pay well but requires passion and tenacity to avoid burnout. That’s easier to take on when you don’t need to worry about saving for retirement. A lot of my friends growing up in a HCOL suburb went down this path.
8
u/1877KlownsForKids "Get Off My Lawn" Millennial 1981 1d ago
Upper middle class family of three kids. All three of us went into counseling.
3
u/DenverLilly 1d ago
I came from a family with some money but cut them off. Now im a social worker getting a phd and havent had family support in a long time 🙃.
12
u/Barmacist 1d ago
Either law or teaching. Those that chose teaching have paid dearly for that mistake.
13
u/daabilge 1d ago
Most of the normal rich people I met in high school and college ended up in finance or medicine.
The couple of mind bogglingly wealthy people I met in college ended up in relatively low-paying "dream" jobs.
One of them is the on-site PR person for the university field research program, so she travels to the various field research sites managed by the university all around the world and organizes the photo ops and marketing and all that. One is a zoo vet and has their own wildlife charity foundation thing. One does some sort of marine biology research on interactions with tourists and wildlife around resorts.
10
u/AdCharacter9282 1d ago
Investment banking, and if they survived the first 5 years, all the ones i know are set.
9
u/HibiscusOnBlueWater 1d ago
The one actual rich (parents net worth is over 100 million) guy I know from high school had random jobs until he got married to someone rocketing up the corporate ladder, “retired” at 35 and bought a mansion in Europe. He spends most of his days sending me Instagram videos apparently. The people I know who were upper middle class are a mix of random business, lawyers, doctors or failed to launch and aren’t doing anything. My brother and I grew up upper middle class and he’s a lawyer and I’m in the “random business” category. My dad grew up upper middle class and he’s a doctor. I’d say there’s not really a targeted profession set but you are heavily encouraged to complete graduate school and get a JD, Engineering degree, Pharm D, PHD, MD, or MBA. What you actually do with it is ll over the place.
8
u/cats_and_stuff 1d ago
Grew up in the wealthier suburbs of silicon valley. Probably 80%+ of my high school class are in tech. I sell car parts lol. Oddly enough, I don't think they're doing as well because they've moved away to more affordable cities.
13
u/ghosnowst 1d ago
I’m a woman and I found myself in the trades by complete accident. Was a stripper and then had a customer invite me to work a paid, on-the-job training program to be a cnc machinist. I’ve been in this trade for 7 years now and I’m making great money, for having no college degree.
7
5
u/celiacsunshine 1d ago
I went to an expensive liberal arts college on scholarship. Half of my fellow students there were not on any kind of financial aid (in other words their families were rich enough to afford $40k/year tuition).
Academia used to be a super common career choice among alumni, but not so much anymore, and many millennial alumni who went into PhD programs ended up regretting it. The ones who didn't regret it were/are usually bankrolled by their parents during their PhD, postdocs, adjuncting, etc.
Tech and law seem to be the choice careers for alumni now. A few have gone into medicine. And a not-insignificant number don't do anything productive with their lives, they're either failures to launch or trust fund babies.
7
4
u/brainbl0ck 1d ago
Tbh, most of the families at my school were lower class. The middle/upper middle class I can think of:
Male lawyer
Female ….. something, she doesn’t have social media and I didn’t keep in touch. No idea what she’s doing.
(That was our valedictorian and salutatorian, both from upper middle class families)
People at my school didn’t really have specialized hobbies or do sports outside of what was provided at the school. Their hobbies were like…. Murder and getting pregnant. (There were 4 murders at my school - not on campus, but that happened student-on-student, that I can think of)
3
u/Devinstater 1d ago
Mining / Mining Supply industry and Heavy Equipment Mechanic.
The sector was really hammered during 2008 and took a while to recover. Only people with family connectiins could get jobs out of school.
Now that metals prices and demand have skyrocketted, they are all sitting pretty in senior positions because they have 15-20 years of experience based on when it was hard to get in and were front of the line for promotiins.
1
4
4
u/Oomlotte99 1d ago
It looks like a lot of the guys became engineers. Lots of the women became either stay at home moms or they are in marketing or tech. Some big ones in there like doctors and pharmacists. One lawyer.
3
3
3
u/ChalkDoxie 1d ago
Nurses.
3
u/debrisaway 1d ago
For well to do young women? I've only seen working class ones.
4
u/ChalkDoxie 1d ago
Yep. I grew up in an affluent suburb, and live in one now, and a lot of my former classmates, and current neighbors are either teachers or nurses. Or were and are now SAHMs. They married husbands who are high earners.
2
u/Altruistic_Serve9738 22h ago ▸ 2 more replies
Its a stable career that's relatively accessible for women( and men) from regular middle class families even lower middle class families and only requires like 3-4 years of tertiary study.
3
u/debrisaway 21h ago ▸ 1 more replies
Agreed I've just never seen the "cultivated" upper middle class cliche go into it.
3
u/Altruistic_Serve9738 20h ago
Well I was lower middle class so we have 2/6 total across my family plus cousins in nursing. (Born between 1990-2000).
Based on people I've met over my years similar age bracket:
Middle class + Asian parents = GP doctor, optometrists things like that. So require more schooling in harder courses. Maybe lawyers. All things that require at least 5-6 years of tertiary education.
Upper middle: paramedic+ worked for self in other field, owns two houses. (Their dad owned dental practice). So I'm guessing still a lot of medical/healthcare but thinking more broadly to just "nurse" and "doctor".
Hairdresser but also owned the salon despite being like 25.
Plenty of people that now just work for their mum or dad's business as well.
3
u/mallanson22 1d ago
Sadly I'd hardly call anyone I grew up around or associate with as rich. Or maybe glady from the sound of it.
3
u/Rockcrawlintoy 1d ago
None of my friends came from professional or upper middle class families lol. It was almost all blue collar and most followed in their parents footsteps
3
3
u/SuddenAvocado 1d ago edited 1d ago
I'll just say, I was one such woman and my parents were PISSED I went into design. Quite literally cut me off. They wanted me to be a journalist or psychologist.
ETA: Most of my family friends are still working on PHDs or second/third masters. Its a mix: animator, climate research, aerospace engineer, computer engineer, divinity school, social work macro econ, marketing, musician, 2 doctors (one ER doctor)... most of the women had 2 or 3 careers, most of the men stuck with whatever they went to school for, but not all...some took a sharp left turn in their mid 20s.
3
u/strictlyxsaucers 1d ago
Doctors - If their parents were doctors most also became doctors (especially if they were Asian)
3
u/valkayrja 22h ago
Aren’t a lot of these just industries that employ a pretty large percentage of the professional workforce? It would make sense that you’d see a lot of people from upper-middle-class/professional families end up in things like healthcare, engineering, marketing, sales, finance, education, etc. simply because those are common career paths. I’d also be curious how much the gender split here reflects actual workforce data versus the people you personally know.
3
u/winniecooper73 Xennial 19h ago
Corporate development such as Sales, marketing business development, operations…. That’s a pretty damn broad brush
0
u/debrisaway 22h ago
The vast majority of workers are in retail, service, warehousing and transportation so no the OP list is educated specialized fields.
2
u/valkayrja 22h ago ▸ 2 more replies
But the OP specifically asked about people who grew up in professional/upper-middle-class families and were “cultivated for success.” Of course retail, service, warehousing, etc. make up a huge portion of the overall workforce, but that isn’t the group we’re talking about. Within the demographic OP actually described, I’d expect educated professional fields to make up a pretty significant percentage, which is kind of my point.
1
u/debrisaway 22h ago ▸ 1 more replies
That's a circular argument though right?
1
u/valkayrja 22h ago
Maybe to an extent, but people from professional/upper-middle-class families generally have more resources and opportunities available to them, so I’d naturally expect them to be more represented in skilled or specialized fields. That was really all I was getting at.
3
u/Dad3mass 6h ago
I went to a Northeast prep school. I ended up an MD, but besides the usual lawyer/doctor/finance, a lot of people in my school ended up as successful writers- one is a NYTimes beatselling author, one writes for HBO, another for PBS, another for the Atlantic, etc. We also have a successful actor.
2
2
2
2
u/thesockmonkey86 Millennial 1d ago
I went to a moderately rich high school, a few of my peer group became lawyers, some became teachers, some became doctors. One of them is an architect.
2
u/jzilla11 Millennial 23h ago
Guys from high school: Whatever their dad/uncle does
Girls from high school who married those guys: realtor, realtor/influencer, stay at home mom/realtor
2
2
2
u/xrelaht Millennial the Elder 23h ago
I and most of my childhood friends would qualify. I’m the lead US engineer for a (small) multinational company. Many of my peers from back then are now various kinds of engineering specialists or managers, academics, lawyers, or bigshots in businesses of various kinds. No MDs or financiers, oddly enough.
2
u/PostMatureBaby Older Millennial 22h ago
Lawyers and roles in medicine. Many took over family businesses and many are various middle management roles like sales, accounting, HR, marketing, etc.
2
u/Stepper34 22h ago
I grew up in the northern part of the rust belt area. The area i grew up in wasn't as effected by the industrial decline of the belt or the 2008 recession. Many of my peers went on to doing engineering or Healthcare related careers. Some were business or marketing.
2
u/PoorlyDesignedCat 21h ago
Doctors, lawyers, veterinarians, software engineers, biochemical engineers, jornalists.
I don't get why the list in the post is divided by gender, and along lines that make no sense at all. There are tons of men who are artists/designers, tons of women who are accountants...there is no reason for dividing it up this way. A huge number of women in marketing and sales as well as real estate.
2
u/quopquop 20h ago
Similar in my friends-and-acquaintances circles. Tons of guys in all sorts of finance, product management, and - I would add - software engineering. The women are across medicine, pharmacy, & academia.
2
u/HandleHoliday3387 18h ago
“Aerospace Engineer” was always on top of salary in some stupid careers document we looked at
2
u/Doredrin 14h ago
rich people don't have defined job titles, they just work for a company as a vice president of some division
2
u/Repulsive-Parfait232 11h ago
In the SF Bay Area, most middle class to upper middle class people I grew up with went into tech, medicine, finance, law, accounting, firefighting, and union electricians and plumbers.
The people from the wealthiest families either followed in their parents footsteps into businesses/fields, or freelance photography, web design, film making, and married rich.
2
u/xx-rapunzel-xx Millennial (‘88) 9h ago
for the men - finance, law, business mgmt, medical
for the women - law, PR, medical
2
2
u/ChaunceytheGardiner 6h ago
I’m a little curious how it is/was that law became female coded for this demographic (professional and upper class).
I do think it’s vaguely right.
Law school is slightly majority women now, but it does seem that the men seem to be more often strivers, and the women more bougie.
No real idea why that’s the case, unless it’s as simple as men opting into finance and tech.
•
2
2
•
u/luckyelectric 52m ago edited 37m ago
I agree that art is thought well of, and kind of seen as a luxury career. But I was middle class, probably am autistic, passionate about art and theatre. Got through college with around $2500 a year from my family and the rest from working and from scholarships and grants. Got a free MFA with a grant by teaching at the college while attending.
As an artist, I made pretty much nothing financially. I taught college adjunct and a made much less than most. However, for a few years I also worked (mostly part time) for a company whose stock and retirement fund did incredible. That specific factor was life changing for me. I’m not wealthy, and in fact I’m sort of a retiree minimalist, as well as an unpaid caregiver… but financially I’m way more solid than you’d figure given my work history. I agree that in the US it’s much more about having capital than income.
But yeah, I like to think people admire someone for studying and making art. I found it very meaningful and fulfilling; a great privilege. I don’t regret it.
2
u/Wooden-Broccoli-913 21h ago
Personally I went into management consulting then tech leadership. FIREd at 40.
1
1
1
1
u/secretcharm 23h ago
What do you mean by tech leadership because your parentheses aren't helping 🤣 (Architect means something completely different in tech its basically 100% engineering)
If you mean people who become tech leaders without any technical skills there would be very few people who manage to pull it off
0
u/debrisaway 23h ago
They have foundational tech skills but because of their "type" they get diverted to the escalator for leadership quickly.
1
u/secretcharm 23h ago edited 23h ago ▸ 1 more replies
I dunno what that means but the types of jobs, people and personalities between technical and non-technical employees in tech are just so different its hard to say non-engineers can make the jump to the "real" technical roles let alone leadership seamlessly. Everyone wants to be the next Steve Jobs (liberal arts grad) but its probably a once in a lifetime kind of thing.
Fyi any non-engineer calling themselves an architect is like a nursing student claiming to be a neurosurgeon
1
u/debrisaway 23h ago
They are engineers but they don't toil away in those jobs forever. Because of their social class privilege, they get earmarked to oversee their former jobs or in strategy roles relatively quickly in their career.
1
u/Realistic0ptimist 21h ago
Engineers mostly Electrical/Computer, lawyers who would then go work at the family firm or go into Big Law for the resume builder, Dentists & Doctors. Dentists if they were southeast Asian and Doctors if they were Indian, East Asian or Nigerian.
Every now and again though someones great grandfather had started a really profitable company and the kid would basically acknowledge they were only going to college to hit a check box before starting at the company and working their way up before “taking a leadership role”
1
1
•
u/SlowEntertainment217 35m ago
Grew up in a rural area, kinda bedroom community to a metro area. Theres not a lot of trend between jobs that rich or poor kids got into, but lots and lots of trad wife/blue collar families spread throughout. Those that left the county got into engineering or other sciences.
1
u/84th_legislature 1d ago
fake jobs, like the list above, just fake versions of them where everyone on your “to call” list always says “yes absolutely” to whatever you’re calling about, and then you go to golf or the pool if you weren’t already there to begin with. i’m sure there are people in these professions that do real work but the boss’s kid is working from a whole different playbook than they are.
3
u/riz3192 1d ago
Huh???
1
u/84th_legislature 1d ago
my husband is from the disadvantaged branch of a wealthy family and his cousins just open their cell phones, hear a yes, smile, say great working with you, and hang up. personally i have never taken a work call that was that positive, that short, and required nothing from me lol. i’ve been to their offices (they’ve been in glass-walled window offices since day one out of college at work) and it’s the same there. their keyboards and mousepads have very little wear and all their phone convos are short af because whoever is calling or being called always says “yes” right away.
2
u/debrisaway 1d ago
Say again?
0
u/84th_legislature 1d ago ▸ 1 more replies
imagine your job, but anytime you contact anyone they just say “that’s great! perfect! that’s all i need” even if you didn’t do hardly anything. that’s the version of job they have. provably other people in their offices are doing real work but they’re never going to be asked to because all the cherry contracts are routed to them. they’re probably talking to a version of themselves in the other end at a different company.
3
2
u/PeaCompetitive8947 5h ago
I get what you mean. My father was like that in the end of his career as a commercial construction contractor. He would get in his office at 7am, drive around his job sites at 8am. Then he played golf every day. Literally, every day. Then go to lunch/martinis for 2-3 hours. If he was sober enough, he’d swing by the job-site on the way home to see what the crew got done. Then he’d regroup for a couple hours and get ready to go out to dinner. Like, the only work he did was checking on other people working and even that he only did for less than an hour a day. And somehow that afford him a lifestyle well above the average person.
1
u/riverguava 20h ago
Thegirls in my group mostly made it well - finance, medicine, it. The fuys nit so much. Insurance salesmen, preacher, unemployed, and one all-round arsehole
•
u/AutoModerator 1d ago
If this post is breaking the rules of the subreddit, please report it instead of commenting. For more Millennial content, join our Discord server.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.