The particular plight of Gen X is to have grown up in one world only to hit middle age in a strange new land. Photo / Getty Images
Just when they should be at their peak, experienced workers in creative fields find their skills are all but obsolete.
In Generation X, the 1991 novel that defined the generation born in the 1960s and 1970s, Douglas Coupland chronicled a group of young adults who learn to reconcile themselves to “diminishing expectations of material wealth”. Lessness, Coupland called this philosophy.
For many of the Gen Xers who embarked on creative careers in the years after the novel was published, lessness has come to define their professional lives.
If you entered media or image-making in the ′90s – magazine publishing, newspaper journalism, photography, graphic design, advertising, music, film, TV – there’s a good chance that you are now doing something else for work. That’s because those industries have shrunk or transformed themselves radically, shutting out those whose skills were once in high demand.
“I am having conversations every day with people whose careers are sort of over,” said Chris Wilcha, a 53-year-old film and TV director in Los Angeles.
Talk with people in their late 40s and 50s who once imagined they would be able to achieve great heights – or at least a solid career while flexing their creative muscles – and you are likely to hear about the photographer whose work dried up, the designer who can’t get hired or the magazine journalist who isn’t doing much of anything.
Gen Xers grew up as the younger siblings of the Baby Boomers, but the media landscape of their early adult years closely resembled that of the 1950s: a tactile analogue environment of landline telephones, tube TV sets, vinyl records, glossy magazines and newspapers that left ink on your hands.
When digital technology began seeping into their lives, with its AOL email accounts, Myspace pages and Napster downloads, it didn’t seem like a threat.
But by the time they entered the primes of their careers, much of their expertise had become all but obsolete.
More than a dozen members of Generation X interviewed for this article said they now find themselves shut out, economically and culturally, from their chosen fields.
“My peers, friends and I continue to navigate the unforeseen obsolescence of the career paths we chose in our early 20s,” Wilcha said. “The skills you cultivated, the craft you honed – it’s just gone. It’s startling.”
Every generation has its burdens. The particular plight of Gen X is to have grown up in one world only to hit middle age in a strange new land. It’s as if they were making candlesticks when electricity came in. The market value of their skills plummeted.
Karen McKinley, 55, an advertising executive in Minneapolis, has seen talented colleagues “thrown away”, she said, as agencies have merged, trimmed staff and focused on fast, cheap social media content over elaborate photo shoots.
“Twenty years ago, you would actually have a shoot,” McKinley said. “Now, you may use influencers who have no advertising background.”
In the wake of the influencers comes another threat, artificial intelligence (AI), which threatens to replace many of the remaining Gen X copywriters, photographers and designers. By 2030, ad agencies in the United States will lose 32,000 jobs, or 7.5% of the industry’s workforce, to the technology, according to the research firm Forrester.
In September, McKinley co-founded Geezer Creative, an ad agency intended to be a haven for Gen X talent. “We’ve been absolutely bombarded by creative folks over 50 – or even approaching 50 – because they’re terrified,” she said.
The shedding of jobs and upending of long-standing business models have come at a bad time for Gen Xers. The cost of living has skyrocketed, especially in coastal cities, and the burdens of mortgages, children’s university tuitions and elder care can be heaviest in middle age. Retirement isn’t that far off, theoretically – but Gen Xers are less secure financially than Baby Boomers and lack sufficient retirement savings, according to recent surveys.
The old economy still holds sway in a few places – legacy media companies that didn’t get devoured by the internet, film studios that remain flush with cash. But even at those businesses, the number of jobs has gone down and the workers are uneasy. What’s to prevent their little island from going under with the next wave of change?
Steve Kandell couldn’t believe his luck. Growing up as a fan of punk and alternative rock in suburban New Jersey in the 1980s, he had been an avid reader of music magazines – and now here he was, working for Spin, the Gen X successor to Rolling Stone.
In keeping with the generational stereotype, Kandell had been a slacker in his 20s. He landed his first big job in New York in 2002, when he was 30. It was the early days of the internet, but print publications were still thick with ads.
So he was happy to sign on as an assistant editor at Maxim, a magazine that was part of the short-lived “laddie” trend. At its height, it had a paid monthly circulation of more than 2.5 million, far surpassing the readerships of GQ and Esquire, which began to look staid by comparison.
“I was in my 30s, making $31,000 a year,” Kandell said. “I remember an editor said: ‘You don’t want to work here? There will be a line around the block.’ There was this sense that you get to do this.”
By the time he joined Spin in 2007, the industry was in trouble. As readers spent more time online, magazines reliant on print ads were flailing. In the early 2000s, Spin’s monthly circulation was 530,000; by 2011, it was 460,000 and falling fast.
Like many other publications, Spin tried to remake itself as an online brand. It started an iPad version and beefed up its website to compete with a digital rival, Pitchfork. In 2012, the print edition went bimonthly, and Spin started charging less for ads. Then it was sold to Buzzmedia, an owner of music and celebrity websites. The print edition folded.
“We were in the death throes,” Kandell said, “whether we knew it or not.”
The changes affected other fields, too. When photography went digital, photo lab technicians and manual retouchers were suddenly as inessential as medieval scribes. The ubiquity of smartphone cameras and easy-to-use editing software made those in possession of the old skills seem almost quaint.
Chris Gentile, who was the creative director of the in-house photo studio at the magazine company Condé Nast from 2004 to 2011, said that top photographers used to earn five figures for a shoot. “Now,” he said, “you can hire a 20-year-old kid who will do the job for $500.”
In advertising, brands ditched print and TV campaigns that required large crews for marketing plans that relied on social media posts, a trend that started with the debut of Instagram in 2010.
“That TV spot you spent six months on now becomes a TikTok execution you spend six days on,” said Greg Paull, principal of R3, a marketing consultancy.
It seems fitting that Gen Xers would reach middle age amid an upheaval. They always had cursed timing.
Their moment on the cultural centre stage was brief – roughly between the release of Nirvana’s Nevermind in 1991 and the rise of Britney Spears at decade’s end. Many Gen X icons died young and tragically, a list that includes Kurt Cobain, Notorious B.I.G., Aaliyah, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Anna Nicole Smith, Tupac Shakur, Brittany Murphy, David Foster Wallace, Shannen Doherty, Elliott Smith, Adam Yauch and Elizabeth Wurtzel.
“As a Gen-Xer, you more or less expected to get reamed,” the author Jeff Gordinier wrote in the cultural history X Saves the World.
Aside from lost income, there is the emotional toll – feelings of grief and loss – experienced by those whose careers are short-circuited.
Some may say that the Gen Xers in publishing, music, advertising and entertainment were lucky to have such jobs at all, that they stayed too long at the party. But it’s hard to leave a vocation that provided fulfillment and a sense of identity. And it isn’t easy to reinvent yourself in your 50s, especially in industries that put a premium on youth culture.
As opportunities and incomes dwindle, Gen Xers in creative fields are weighing their options. Move to a lower-cost place and remain committed to the work you love? Look for a bland corporate job that might provide health insurance and a steady pay cheque until retirement?
Gentile, the former photo studio manager at Condé Nast, watched his company cutting costs as the consultancy McKinsey & Co roamed the halls, and he came face to face with his own irrelevance. He was 40, with an artistic background.
“Who would hire me?” he thought. “Maybe this is where I jump off.”
As a sideline, Gentile, an avid surfer, had opened a surf shop, Pilgrim, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. He quit his day job and dedicated himself to the store. He and his wife, Erin Norfleet Gentile, have since expanded it into a clothing brand.
“One thing I’m grateful for, and it’s a strength of my generation, is we weren’t promised anything,” Gentile said. “I was prepared to struggle.”
This article originally appeared in the New York Times.
Written by: Steven Kurutz
© 2025 NEW YORK TIMES
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