Star Tribune
Young adults’ demand for work-life balance offers lessons for us all
More than a decade ago, I was a twenty-something sports writer with the Star Tribune. During one road trip for a Gophers men’s basketball game. I had just checked into a hotel in Madison, Wis., when I received a phone call.
“Mr. Medcalf? We need you downstairs,” the person at the front desk said.
I was told then that my corporate card had not gone through, a puzzling revelation until I called headquarters in Minneapolis and learned that a bankruptcy proceeding had temporarily disrupted our financial operations. Mass layoffs followed.
At that moment, I realized this craft I love offered no guarantees in the future.
That reality is a theme among Gen Zers and young millennials who seem to approach work with the proper perspective. My parent’s generation had quality jobs that offered 30 or 40 years of employment and retirement benefits to support them as they aged. My generation learned from them and worked to capture the same stability that has proven to be elusive, shifting attitudes toward our professions and the sacrifices we’re willing to make.
Per a 2023 Georgetown study conducted in partnership with Bank of America, younger employees are seeking a corporate structure that offers their desired work-life balance.
“Young adults prioritize flexibility and work-life balance in all aspects of employment,” the study says. “A flexible work schedule is a particularly significant factor both in considering a move to another employer (49%) and in remaining with the current employer (38%). When considering benefits, young adults planning to change jobs in the next year cite paid time off (65%) and a flexible work schedule (58%) among the top four benefits influencing their choice of an employer.”
Kudos to the young folks who aim to make work the best supporting actor in their lives and not the main star. They also seem to recognize the fluidity of their professions in this climate.
The last decade in this business has been sobering, as jobs have evaporated, never to return in many cases. More recently, however, I’ve watched friends wake up one morning with a career and leave the office a few hours later without one.
I’ve sent more “Are you good?” texts in recent months to people in my orbit than I ever anticipated I would, as news of layoffs in journalism and other industries persists. But the reality of the real-time changes in my industry — and a multitude of others — has also encouraged my ongoing divorce proceeding with work. I am still passionate about the work, but I am no longer in love with it.
While earlier in my life, I assumed I might have the opportunity to be a reporter until I decide to move onto something else, at this rate, I am not convinced I will have that choice. I might one day have to find a different job or try something new outside my skill-set to pay my bills.
But I also refuse to stitch my life into the margins, space created by whatever is left after I’ve poured all of my energy into my profession. Working harder, I’ve learned, does not ensure promotion or happiness or security. I now demand room for my life, those I love and the things that matter most to me.
Age has taught me the work does not always love you back. And if that’s true, it’s imprudent to turn any profession into an identity. If, one day, I get the same difficult news so many friends and colleagues have received in recent months, I want to know — despite the real concerns attached to those scenarios and the disruptive nature of job loss and sudden career changes — that I had strived to separate myself from my profession.
I should be honest here, though. I am writing this from a hotel room in Detroit at 1 a.m. My grind has never ceased. I work often and sometimes, my office is a Doubletree Hotel 500 miles from home. I’m committed to my professional ambitions and opportunities. That won’t change. But my relationship to the work itself is evolving. I need it for the income and the direct impact it has on my life — and also the camaraderie and some of those feelings of validation and excitement attached to it.
But I remind myself often that I am not this.
Before I hit the road the other day, I played “Just Dance” with my daughters and I had a moment where I just nodded my head and felt grateful for the chance to connect with them over a Nintendo Switch game.
Then, an email arrived. A work assignment beckoned. But I didn’t immediately respond.
Instead, we danced to another song and kept living our lives.
“We’ve never once invoked that,” Lingo said. “There have been conversations [about] in order to compel ID you need to have identification, or you could be arrested for that, or if you’re not behaving, or you need to be trespassed. But that’s a different conversation than immigration, and deportation has never been brought to the conversation.”
Hundreds of U.S. cities, including Minneapolis, have declared themselves sanctuary cities, where police are discouraged from reporting people’s immigration status unless they are investigating a serious crime.
Marta has sold empanadas and Ecuadorian desserts on Lake Street, usually making $60 to $70 a day to pay her rent and support her children. The 38-year-old woman also sold food on the streets of Ecuador, where migrants have come in record numbers to Minnesota, fleeing poverty and violence. The Fort Snelling immigration court has a backlog of over 13,341 Ecuadorian cases pending, a huge increase since 2018, when there were 344 cases.
Cindy Weckwerth, environmental health director for the Minneapolis Health Department, said in recent months, the city has seen an increase in unlicensed vendors and complaints about them.
Lingo said so far this year, there have been 38 violations and citations for operating a sidewalk food cart without a license; repeat offenders can get cited, which brings a $200 fine.
Inspectors are sometimes accompanied by police officers, Lingo said, because often vendors resist giving their identity and sometimes are uncooperative or are amid a large group.
Star Tribune
Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan is slowly opening up about her childhood past amid domestic violence
She realized that violence in the home wasn’t normal when she finally left for college and sensed that other kids didn’t grow up that way. “Most people don’t call home to see if I should come home after school, or if I should go to my best friend Lauren’s house,” she said.
Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan observed artwork hanging at Cornerstone, an advocacy center for victims of domestic violence, human trafficking and sexual violence. The tour of the Minneapolis facility was led by Colleen Schmitt, director of emergency services. (Renée Jones Schneider)
Flanagan has often connected with Minnesotans by sharing tales about her personal life, such as when she recounts what it was like to grow up with a single mom in St. Louis Park who relied on public assistance. And yet for many years, she said, she didn’t feel comfortable talking openly about her family’s history with domestic abuse.
That changed when she got a nudge from an unlikely source. Flanagan, as she tells it, was in Washington, D.C., in 2009 as part of her work with the progressive training group Wellstone Action. Then-Vice President Joe Biden was receiving an award from the Sheila Wellstone Institute for his advocacy of domestic violence victims. Before the official ceremony, Flanagan felt compelled to share with Biden about the abuse she observed as a child.
“I just start weeping, and the vice president stood up and gave me a hug. I literally cried into his chest,” she recalled. “And he said, ‘If you can tell the vice president that story, I bet you can tell other people that story.’ ”
And so she has, gradually.
The advocates at Cornerstone, including executive director Artika Roller, who has spent more than two decades helping abuse victims, heard Flanagan speak about it at a rally for action among advocates and survivors.
Another closure of I-494 in the south metro will put thousands of motorists on detour this weekend.
The eastbound lanes of the freeway will be shut down between Hwy. 100 and Cedar Avenue/Hwy. 77 and westbound lanes between Cedar Avenue/Hwy. 77 and Interstate 35W from 10 p.m. Friday to 5 a.m. Monday, the Minnesota Department of Transportation said.
Some ramps leading to I-494 will start closing at 8 p.m. Friday. Motorists will be directed to use Crosstown Hwy. 62 to get around the closure, the agency said.
American Boulevard, which runs parallel to I-494, will be closed starting Monday through Nov. 11 between Hwy. 100 and France Avenue in Bloomington.
American Blvd. is closed to through traffic in both directions between Hwy 100 and France Ave
The closures are related to construction in which MnDOT is adding an EZ Pass lane on I-494 between I-35W and Hwy. 100, rebuilding the I-35W/I-494 interchange and replacing bridges over I-494 at Portland, Nicollet and 12th avenues.
In the west metro, westbound Hwy. 55 remains closed through Nov. 1 between Hwy. 169 and Interstate 494. Motorists can use I-394 as a detour MnDOT said.
