'AARP For Under-30 Set' Aims To Get Fair Share For Millennial Generation

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One in six are unemployed, more than any other adult age group. They carry an average of $24,000 in student debt. And one in 10 have been forced to move back in with their parents after school. 

No doubt about it, these are hard times for young adults. But it takes a leap of faith to start a membership and advocacy group called Our Time as the Millennial generation’s answer to AARP. 

Launched this week in a Pennsylvania Avenue office down the street from the White House, Our Time seeks to use online organizing to “change corporate practices, create exclusive deals and spark a national conversation.” It wants to “stand up for Americans under 30” while using its bargaining might to get discounts on health insurance and credit card programs. 

And with a homepage that Friday showed a scruffy dude screaming, “F#%K, I need a job! One in six of us is out of work,” and no annual dues for a generation used to getting everything free online, Our Time is unlikely to be mistaken for the group formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons. 

“Our generation has more of an economic reason to engage than anyone,” said Matthew Segal, the group’s 25-year-old president. “We can’t just complain about these things or sit on the sidelines. We need to use our generation’s unique strengths to fix them … This is the civil rights issue for our generation. If you can’t have economic freedom and mobility to become financially independent at an early age, than you are entering society on the wrong foot.” 

Our Time’s target audience can be summed up by the headline in a recent New York Times op-ed written by a 24-year-old: “Educated, Unemployed and Frustrated.” 

It is being formed at a time when a growing chorus of commentators -- from David Brooks to Fareed Zakaria to Robert Samuelson -- are connecting the yawning budget deficit to the nearly 40 percent of the federal budget that goes to Social Security and Medicare. Where, they ask, is the political will to take on those entitlements when, according to a 2009 Brookings Institution report, an elderly person receives $7 in federal aid for every $ 1 that goes to a child.