CURRENT EVENTS // AMITY SHLAES

Millennials need this (GOP) break.

“A golden recommendation” for their second job is what most college grads dream of as they enter the workforce. Their first job, they are certain, will be an 18-month compromise, a pass-through position they take on to build résumés. The second job, the one that matches their plans, is the job they actually seek. But to get to that second post, they need a strong recommendation from an authority in the real world, not a professor. In other words, that golden recommendation from the boss at the initial compromise position. That elusive golden recommendation became more reachable when, this winter, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit pushed a review of a new Labor Department overtime rule forward on the calendar. The regulation is known as the “Devil Wears Prada” rule, after the 2006 film in which a witchy editor-in-chief at a top fashion magazine terrorizes her new hire, a Northwestern alumna, day and night, wrecking dinners with dad, the celebration of the boyfriend’s birthday and, in general, postcollege sanity.

Rising to the defense of the figurative Miss Northwestern, the Labor Department of the Obama Administration sought to raise the ceiling below which time-and-a-half overtime pay is required by Washington. The new level was set at $47,476, from the old $23,660, an expansion affecting millions. Many of those millions are not recent college grads, but many are. The scheduling shift gives the final say to the Trump Labor Department, which has the authority—and likely the inclination—to let this Devil die.

Nearly every one of the older workers who falls in this bedeviled class wants or needs more pay. The question is whether additional training serves them better than a state- or federally-ordained raise. But it is the younger workers who will truly struggle. Back in the old days, first employers got to know their employees, and, yes, it is fair to say, love them. Older adults are hardwired to make outsize gifts to youth. Employers used to move heaven and earth for “their” 23-year-old staffers, even staffers whose politics grossed them out.

These days management still derives major benefit from young hires: fresh brains and faces, a low price and stunning (to oldsters) understanding of iphones, high tech, computer science and tech markets.

The trouble is that stock picking or coding often are not part of the description of that first job. And nowadays significant burdens offset youth’s advantages. College grads, especially—and perversely—humanities grads, haven’t logged the hours reading that even Miss Northwestern did. The antibusiness culture of college developed their appreciation of social-justice regulation to a counterproductive extent. The same culture failed to convey the seriousness of what happens at the office, whatever the product. Tech-vain and diplomaproud, these youths don’t always “get” workplace discipline or hierarchy.

Such tension actually pops up in The Devil Wears Prada. Her first day on the job, Miss Northwestern fails to conceal her contempt when Boss Devil leads a room in meticulously choosing between two seemingly identical aquamarine belts.

Boss Devil snaps, pointing out that decisions made by execs, even execs in high fashion, affect all. Each garment selected for showcasing “represents millions of dollars and countless jobs.” Comments the art director to Miss Northwestern, “This place where so many people would die to work, you only deign to work.”

Miss Northwestern learns quickly. But the tough part of the story is that Millennials don’t always. Even half a year into a job, e-communities are more real to many of these workers than a brick-andmortar workplace. Nine months in, Millennials are still disappointing bosses with their subpar output. The problem is not that recent college grads march to the beat of a different drummer. The problem is that they do not even hear the employer’s drum. That sustained obliviousness engenders no affection in the boss, nor does it put the boss in the mood to type up that coveted first-job recommendation.

devil’s lesson

The way up for anyone earning less than $47,476 is education. The only difference is that older workers benefit from going back to school, while younger workers need to unlearn school. Yet young workers regard overtime pay as their due.

The result is the same negative dynamic that occurs with the minimum wage. To avoid the extra cost, employers commit a worse social injustice by taking workers off salary—and perhaps health benefits—spreading the work among anonymous, unmentored part-timers. Another management response to marginal cost increases is to skip hiring young people altogether. Only trained workers may actually warrant the higher costs. This trend generates greater anxiety than anything seen in The Devil Wears Prada. After all, the worst cause of postcollege anxiety is not being able to get a job at all.

It’s therefore good news that the free-marketers joining the Administration give every sign of their willingness to abandon initiatives like the Devil rule. Young hires and bosses of all political backgrounds will benefit if they get to know one another with less resentment. The irony is that if left-leaning students do get that golden recommendation after the Devil rule is jettisoned, a few will have the Republican Party to thank.