Young professionals are white-collar workers within a certain age range, but there is no clear definition. They are often associated with career advancement and a lack of social relationships, but some strive for balance in all aspects of life. The term’s start and end points are also unclear.
Young professionals are people working in careers that are considered white-collar in nature and who are within a specific age range. There is actually a lot of fluidity when it comes to identifying the specific characteristics of what constitutes young professionals, with some schools of thought considering anyone wearing business attire and under a certain age to fall into this category. Other concepts tend to narrow the scope a bit, limiting the use of the term to individuals involved in specific career types.
A common nickname for young professionals “yuppies”. In essence, this nickname combines elements of both juvenile and professional, although there is a popular myth that the term is actually more related to designating a young person engaged in a puppy career. There may be some basis for this myth, as it was not unusual for prospective employees in the early 20th century to be referred to as “young puppies” by more established owners and managers.
Defining what actually constitutes young professionals can be difficult, as the term is often used in a loose sense. For some, the term is only relevant to people who are younger than a certain age, such as age 30, and who are not engaged in jobs that focus on manual labor or clerical work. This means that a young person in their 20s working as a salesperson or manager or director in the company’s operations would be considered a young professional, while someone in the same position but had reached their 40s would be labeled a professional, but not necessarily classified as a young man.
Over the years, certain stereotypes have emerged as common for young professionals. One is dealing with an almost omnipresent concern with career advancement at all costs, often to the exclusion of developing healthy social relationships. This has also led to popular images of young professionals as loners, finding solace in their careers and eventually becoming so obsessed with success in the workplace that their entire sense of worth rests on how far their careers go.
A different concept of young professionals is a little more optimistic, with the term being used to describe young people who work hard in their careers but also seek to balance those careers with developing strong emotional bonds with others and also paying attention to the their needs in terms of spirituality, physical fitness and other aspects of life. This idea of young professionals focuses on young people who want to have it all, see hard work both on the job and in other settings important to the achievement of those goals, and strive not to define their worth based on one particular component.
Just as there is no real agreement on when young professionals are no longer young, there is no solid consensus on when an individual first takes on this role in society. One idea is that as soon as a young man graduates from a traditional college with a degree relevant to a profession, he automatically becomes a young professional, even if there are no job offers waiting. Others withhold this designation until suitable employment is obtained and the individual is established in the field of choice.
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