Robert Sherman, a 2009 graduate of Syracuse University, told the New York Times in July 2009. “But my generation isn’t getting as depressed and uptight.” Sherman had recently turned down a $50,000-a-year job at a consulting firm, after careful deliberation with his parents, because he hadn’t connected well with his potential bosses. Instead, he was doing odd jobs and trying to get a couple of tech companies off the ground. “The economy will rebound,” he said. Over the past two generations, particularly among many college grads, the twenties have become a sort of netherworld between adolescence and adulthood. Job-switching is common, and with it, periods of voluntary, transitional unemployment. And as marriage and parenthood have receded farther into the future, the first years after college have become, arguably, more carefree. Early in this recession, the term funemployment gained some currency among single twentysomethings, prompting a small raft of youth-culture stories in the Los Angeles Times and San Francisco Weekly, on Gawker, and in other venues.
