Lowered expectations? Young Albertans most financially stressed but no more worried about being 'left behind'

EDITOR'S NOTE: CBC News commissioned this public opinion research to be conducted immediately following the federal election and leading into the second anniversary of the United Conservative Party's provincial election win in May 2023.  As with all polls, this one provides a snapshot in time. This analysis is one in a series of articles from this research.

Mark Patzer is among a minority of Albertans his age; he's very confident he'll have enough money saved for retirement.

"I just started planning at a young age," said Patzer, 27, who works as an environmental scientist in Calgary. "I have an RRSP. I prioritized putting money toward that over other things for the hope of one day retiring."

He credits his financial situation to decisions he made in his early 20s: "Living at home for a while, living with roommates for a while, just doing the uncomfortable situations for as long as possible to get ahead financially, because it's harder to do nowadays."

He also counts himself lucky to have found a good job shortly after graduating.

"I started making a livable salary right out of school, which sometimes takes people a while," he said.

In the past, a livable salary for a post-secondary graduate may have been an expectation. But these days, it's less of a given for young folks like Patzer. His perspective might help explain a puzzling result from a recent poll conducted for CBC Calgary.

On the one hand, young people are more likely than older people to say they're having trouble meeting their monthly expenses. That's not too surprising. Young people also tend to be less confident when it comes to having enough money saved for retirement. Again, not surprising.

On the other hand, young people are just as likely as older Albertans to agree that, "If things keep going the way they are, people like me will get left behind."

That's the surprising bit.

"When we asked people about feeling left behind, we thought we'd see a generational difference in there — and we didn't see that," said pollster Janet Brown, who conducted the public-opinion research for CBC News.

"One of the first things we do is we look for those subgroup differences. But sometimes when you don't see subgroup differences, that can be interesting too."

So what is going on here?

A statistical analysis of the poll results suggests young people's thoughts on being "left behind" are tied less to their personal financial situation, compared to older folks. It's hard to say definitively why that is, but some of it may have to do with different expectations than previous generations when it comes to work and life, a sense of camaraderie with others going through the same struggles, and good old youthful optimism that there's plenty of time to turn things around.

The data differences

Brown said the survey questions were designed to track a wide range of Albertans' sentiments and examine the relationships between those sentiments.

The "left behind" question, in particular, was deliberately worded in a way that could leave respondents with some room for interpretation.

"It's about getting at that fundamental value of whether they feel there's something that's inherently unfair for people like them," said Brown.

That broader question was accompanied by much more specific questions about individual financial situations.

You can see the results from those questions in the charts below.

Quite clearly, the below results show younger people are more worried than older folks about both their short-term and long-term finances.

John Santos, a data scientist with the Janet Brown Opinion Research polling firm, says you can see a relationship in the poll results between Albertans' sense of financial security and their sentiments about being "left behind" — except among the youngest Albertans.

Among the oldest folks, those who worried more about their personal finances were also much more likely to worry about being "left behind."

However, Santos says that statistical relationship diminishes as respondents get younger, to the point of disappearing altogether.

When it comes to 18-to-24-year-olds, in particular, there was no statistically significant difference in their responses to the "left behind" question, whether they were comfortable about their retirement savings or not.

It's possible, Santos said, that retirement just seems so far off for many young people that other considerations may be top of mind when answering the "left behind" question.

Young folks may also feel "they have time to make up any kind of lost financial ground," he said, while the reality of what retirement looks like may be more apparent for older folks.

Brown also believes it has a lot to do with where people are compared to where they figured they would be at this point in their lives.

"We think it has to do with expectation," she said. "When people got their education or training, what kind of an income were they expecting and are they getting that?"

And this brings us back to Patzer and his "livable salary" at age 27.

Grading on a curve?

Young people these days have adjusted their expectations to fit with the reality they face, Patzer believes.

So while many might be struggling to find good jobs, buy houses and save for retirement, there's a sense of camaraderie in the struggle.

Patzer offered an analogy that would be familiar to university and college students: "If you fail a test, but your friend also fails, then you don't feel as bad, because you're both in the same position."

Especially for people in that 18-to-24 age range who are looking around at each other, he said, everyone might seem to be going through the same kinds of challenges, so no one seems "left behind."

"I think that was the case when we were all 23, 24, and no one really had that clear path yet," he said. "People were starting jobs, but the financial differences weren't that apparent."

But a few years later, he's already starting to see that change. 

"Now that I'm 27, turning 28, I think that separation of what people's salaries are, is becoming a lot more evident," he said.

"Some people might feel like they've kind of missed the bus on that or they are falling behind."