Millennials, Mental Health, and Work: What’s Important?

Quick Answer: Research shows Millennials want opportunities to advance, a 4-day work week, flexible scheduling, and for bosses to actually be okay with them taking vacation time or paid time off. However, in terms of mental health, what they want most is a healthy work-life balance.

Key Points:

• In general, Millennials are concerned about the amount of stress in their work lives
• We need to remember Millennials have experienced a lion’s share of harm from the opioid crisis
• Finding good, reliable work has been difficult for many Millennials
• In the workplace, Millennials want employers to normalize mental health awareness
• Millennials point out that meetings about mental health in the workplace don’t help much: what will help are changes around workplace culture

The Millennial Generation: Basic Facts

The Millennial generation – known also as Millennials or Gen Y – refers to people born between 1981 and 1996. Population experts indicate there are currently around 80 million millennials in the United States.

Millennials occupy a unique place in recent generations. Between Gen X, the latchkey kids, and Gen Z, the internet kids, most Millennials spent their formative years without the internet as we know it. They were young when services like AOL appeared. In school, computers were common, but they weren’t everywhere. Getting online meant dial up, loud modems, and long waits for sites to load. When the iPhone appeared in 2007, the youngest Millennials were still in grade school, and the oldest were young adults in their mid-to-late-20s.

The unique thing about Millennials is that they’re the living connection between the pre-internet age and the internet age. The oldest probably had to learn cursive, while the youngest have no practical use for it. The oldest remember telephones attached to the wall and answering machines, while the youngest may remember those things around the house, but by the time they were at independent phone age, smartphones were already common.

Millennials also have a set of challenging issues to contend with specific to their generation, such as college debt, an inconsistent job market, economic instability – they lived through the 2008 crash and COVID – and the ever-growing dissonance between the dual phenomena of instant connectivity and social isolation.

To understand that subject, and a range of other issues Millennials face, please read the Surgeon General’s Advisory (SGA) on loneliness:

Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation

Also, consider our article on this topic on our blog:

The Loneliness Epidemic

While Millennials face those challenges, they’ve been at the forefront of a significant number of social changes and milestones on our long march toward equity in our society. For the most part, they’re open to talking about mental health, they’re open to talking about alcohol and substance misuse, and they’re open to forward progress on social issues like marriage equality, LGBTQIA+ rights, and issues related to race and ethnicity.

Millennials and Mental Health in the Workplace

In the publication “Mental Health Today: A Deep Dive Based on The 2023 Gen Z and Millennial Survey,” the reputable financial consulting agency Deloitte published information gathered from over twenty thousand people from more than forty countries, all born between 1980 and 2012, which places them in the demographic groups commonly called Gen Z and Millennials.

Results from the Deloitte study show the main concern Millennials have related to mental health and work is stress.

Factors that create stress for Millennials include:

• Finding consistent work that pays more than a subsistence wage
• Learning and applying adult life skills
• Constant connectivity leading to FOMO, or Fear of Missing Out
• Mental Health, including increasing rates of anxiety and depression
• Debt: credit card debt, student loan debt
• The misinformation age: having a front-row seat for the explosion of social media and youtube news
• Generational disconnect: feeling stuck in a gray area between Gen X and Gen Z
• Substance misuse: the opioid epidemic and the arrival of fentanyl in the illicit drug supply has had a significant impact on Millennials

Throughout the rest of this article, we’ll present and discuss the results of the Deloitte survey. We’ll report on how Millennials think about the challenges they face in 2024: stress, mental health, and work.

Millennials and Stress: 2020-2023

We’ll start with the basics: rates of stress among Millennials between 2020 and 2023.

Millennials: How Stressed Are They?

Percentage of Millennials who feel stressed all the time:

• 2020:
  • Females: 47%
  • Males: 40%
• 2021
  • Females: 45%
  • Males: 37%
• 2022:
  • Females: 41%
  • Males: 36%
• 2023:
  • Females: 43%
  • Males: 35%

Millennials are stressed, but not quite as stressed as their little sibling generation, Gen Z, who report stress levels about five percentage points lower than those we see above.

The data show almost half of Millennial females feel stressed all the time, while well over a third of males feel stressed all the time. That’s a consistent, significant, year over year gender gap of around seven percentage points. This gender difference roughly mirrors the gender gap between females and males reported for anxiety disorders, but is far smaller than the gender gap between females and males reported for depressive disorders.

Among Millennials, the following three demographic groups show the most elevated levels of stress:

• People with disability/disabilities: 63%
• Minority groups: 51%
• LBGTQIA+: 49%

Those figures are consistent with the elevated levels of depression and anxiety reported among LGBTQIA+ adults and people with disabilities. However, they’re inconsistent with levels of anxiety among ethnic minority groups, who consistently report lower levels of anxiety than non-minority people. We should mention a notable exception: rates of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), an anxiety disorder, are higher among Black people and American Indian/Alaska Native people in the U.S. than all other demographic groups.

What Stresses Millennials Out?

According to the Deloitte Deep Dive Survey, the following six things stress Millennials out the most:

1. Job/work: 76%
2. Mental health issues: 73%
3. Work/life balance: 73%
4. Work culture: 66%
5. Fear of getting fired/losing job/laid off: 62%
6. Can’t be authentic self at work: 59%

Since Millennials range in age from around age 30 to around age 45, we immediately grasp why job/work issues top this list. In full adulthood and early middle age, consistent work is essential to survival, since for most people, financial support from family decreases, and overall financial responsibilities increase. Millennials are also stuck in another in-between: student debt increases while income remains stagnant for most socioeconomic groups.

This creates problems on more than one level.

First, the practical. It means many Millennials – despite following all the rules laid out for them by society and meeting expectations like go to college, get a degree and you’ll be rewarded, or get a job and work hard, you’ll be rewarded– experience difficulty getting ahead or getting by, whether they go to college or enter the workforce through a different pathway. Second, this set of circumstances is frustrating. It’s easy to see how it can lead to stress, anxiety, and increase risk of depressive moods or symptoms that lead to or exacerbate mental health problems.

With those factors in mind, let’s look at how Millennials who reported feeling stressed all the time in general, in life, feel about work:

• Tired/lack of energy all the time: 30%
• Cynical, negative, distanced: 28%
• Unable to/unsatisfied with/problems with with meeting personal expectations for work performance: 40%

Synthesizing the information we’ve shared so far, we can see that the primary drivers of workplace stress for Millennials – aside from feeling tired or low energy, which most of us can relate to – are associated with a mismatch between honest expectations about what work and adult life would be like, and the reality of work and adult life in the 21^st century.

Do Millennials Utilize Mental Health Resources at Work?

As we transition toward fully connected, computer-centric work and economies, the complexion of the U.S. workplace is changing. In addition to the universal presence of computers and rapid uptake of AI technology, we see a movement toward policies that promote positive mental health in some, but not all companies, large organizations, and corporations.

Employers now offer various programs and institute policies like those we list below – but do Millennials use them?

In the list we share next, available refers to options offered to employees, while declined means those options were available to employees, but not used.

To understand what the percentages mean, apply the explanation in parentheses in item #1 to the remaining 6 items.

• Vacation time/ paid time off:
  • Available: 73% (Just over 7 out of 10 Millennials work where this is offered)
  • Declined: 23% (Among Millennials working where this is offered, more than 2 out of 10 utilized this policy)
• Mental health check-ins/meetings with management:
  • Available: 57%
  • Declined: 27%
• Engaged/empathetic senior leadership:
  • Available: 52%
  • Declined: 26%
• Stress management resources:
  • Available: 53%
  • Declined: 27%
• Sponsored access to wellness/mental health support apps:
  • Available: 47%
  • Declined: 25%
• Days with no meetings:
  • Available: 48%
  • Declined: 23%
• Employer sponsored professional support:
  • Available: 45%
  • Declined: 26%

Those figures show us a mixed bag. Most employers offer vacation/paid time off – that’s a good thing and promotes positive mental health. However, we also see that only a shade over half of employers appear concerned about stress, stress management, and mental health, and less than half back that concern up with concrete, tangible support for mental health treatment.

The data show the policies above are insufficient in decreasing workplace stress and increasing positive mental health for Millennials. Let’s take a look at a list policies Millennials say can make a difference.

Millennials: How Can Employers Improve Mental Health at Work?

• Increase opportunities for part-time employees to advance: 30%
• Institute 4-day work week: 31%
• Increase part-time jobs: 24%
• Increase job-sharing: 20%
• Allow more scheduling flexibility: 30%
• Normalize using all paid time/vacation time: 20%
• Increase/institute remote options: 28%
• Provide training in positive mental health practices: 17%
• Expand opportunities for sabbaticals: 14%
• Create and adhere to no off-hours email policies: 10%
• Eliminate/decrease frequency of meetings: 13%

Those asks are realistic. What sets them apart from the preceding list is their immediate practicality. Whereas mental health check-ins with management and empathetic leadership may improve morale in the moment, establishing policies such as remote work, scheduling flexibility, opportunity for advancement for part-time employees, and a four-day work week are more likely to reduce stress and improve overall, long-term mental health

Millennials and Mental Health: How to Address Old Problems in the New Workplace

Seven years ago, the #metoo movement swept across the nation, with bombshell reporting revealing the extensive sexual harassment in Hollywood, with prominent, powerful figures not only experiencing accountability for harassment, but one of the most powerful producers in the movie business convicted to 23 years in prison for rape.

Unfortunately, the specter of accountability has not eliminated workplace harassment.

Millennials: Prevalence of Harassment/Stressful Colleague Behavior

• Harassment: 49%
  • Suggestive email/text: 14%
  • Unwanted physical approaches by colleagues: 12%
  • Unwanted physical contact by colleagues at official events: 11%
• Microaggression: 34%
  • Exclusive social behavior: 10%
  • Gender-based undermining/patronizing: 7%
  • Unwanted jokes: 7%
• Reported harassment: 81%
  • Managed appropriately: 54%
  • Managed poorly: 27%
• Experienced harassment but didn’t report: 19%

Given that harassment in the workplace still exists, it’s wrong, and it can lead to stress and degrade workplace morale and employee mental health, we can extract something positive from this data: the number 81, or the general idea the eight out of ten people who experienced harassment reported that harassment to management. That implies we’re moving the right direction: most Millennials harassed at work no longer feel powerless, and now have a voice to speak out about inappropriate and/or illegal behavior in their workplace.

That’s a step in the right direction: empowerment and voice. We’ll close this article with list of the top five things Millennials think employers can do to improve workplace mental health.

Millennials: Top Five Ways to Support Mental Health at Work

1. Create a work culture where talking about mental health is accepted and/or encouraged
2. Create work culture that normalizes and encourages employees to find professional mental health support when they need it
3. Promote work/life balance
4. Create policies that reduce burnout
5. Create and adhere to policies that eliminate harassment in all forms, including social microaggressions and non-inclusive behavior