Editing Generation X (section)

=====Adjusting to a new societal environment=====
For early Gen Xer graduates entering the job market at the end of the 1980s, economic conditions were challenging and did not show signs of major improvements until the mid-1990s.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Ericksson|first=Tamara|title=What's Next, Gen X?: Keeping Up, Moving Ahead, and Getting the Career You Want|publisher=Harvard Business Review Press|year=2009|isbn=978-1-4221-2064-4}}</ref> In the U.S., restrictive monetary policy to curb rising inflation and the collapse of a large number of [[savings and loan association]]s (private banks that specialized in [[home mortgage]]s) impacted the welfare of many American households. This precipitated a large government bailout, which placed further strain on the budget.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Walsh|first=Carl E|date=1993|title=What caused the 1990-91 Recession?|journal=Economic Review: Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco|pages=33}}</ref> Furthermore, three decades of growth came to an end. The social contract between employers and employees, which had endured during the 1960s and 1970s and was scheduled to last until retirement, was no longer applicable. By the late 1980s, there were large-scale layoffs of Boomers, corporate downsizing, and accelerated [[offshoring]] of production.<ref>{{Cite book|last=. Erickson|first=Tamara|title=What's Next, Gen X?: Keeping Up, Moving Ahead, and Getting the Career You Want|publisher=Harvard Business Pres|year=2012|isbn=978-1-4221-5615-5}}</ref>

On the political front, in the U.S. the generation became ambivalent if not outright disaffected with politics. They had been reared in the shadow of the [[Vietnam War]] and the [[Watergate scandal]]. They came to maturity under the Reagan and [[George H. W. Bush]] presidencies, with first-hand experience of the impact of [[Neoliberalism|neoliberal]] policies. Few had experienced a Democratic administration and even then, only, at an atmospheric level. For those on the left of the political spectrum, the disappointments with the previous Boomer student mobilizations of the 1960s and the collapse of those movements towards a consumerist "[[greed is good]]" and "[[yuppie]]" culture during the 1980s felt, to a great extent, like hypocrisy if not outright betrayal. Hence, the preoccupation on "authenticity" and not "selling-out". The [[Revolutions of 1989]] and the collapse of the socialist utopia with the [[fall of the Berlin Wall]], moreover, added to the disillusionment that any alternative to the [[capitalist model]] was possible.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Erickson|first=Tamara|title=What's Next, Gen X?: Keeping Up, Moving Ahead, and Getting the Career You Want|publisher=Harvard Business Press|year=2010|isbn=978-1-4221-5615-5}}</ref>