Are Gen Y’s demands too much for this economy?

At 18, Chad Perkins bought his first house. Today, at 24, he manages a staff of real estate agents and has annual sales volume approaching $40 million.

At 35, he plans to retire—for a while, anyway. Maybe he’ll get a teaching degree. Maybe he’ll volunteer at area charities. Maybe he’ll travel the world.

“All the baby boomers, they went out and worked for 25 years, got their retirement and now they live on their fixed income. How can that excite people?” asked Perkins, an associate broker at Re/Max Champions in Saratoga Springs. “I have no interest in that.”

Perkins’ approach to work—enthusiastic, but not considering it the most important element of his life—mirrors the mind-set of many in his age range: Generation Y.

They are the youngest employees in the workplace today, and they often have high expectations about work-life balance, benefits packages and work habits that don’t match corporate policies or attitudes. There’s been plenty of talk about how to manage this generation, and whether bosses should bend to their wills.

But the question now is whether those attitudes and expectations about the workplace will hurt them in a recession—the first of their adult lives. After all, this is an economy that has shed more than 1 million jobs since January, and an upswing is nowhere in sight.

Tempering expectations

Alison Rosenblum, who co-owns a career placement company and a human resources consulting firm in Albany, said she’s already seen a change in Generation Y workers.

“Some of the job seekers who used to submit resumes to me and have pretty aggressive salary expectations and pretty stringent expectations overall, they’re starting to ease up,” said Rosenblum, of Hudson River Career Resources LLC and Strategic Resources Inc.

The reason is simple.

“It’s the economy. Jobs aren’t as plentiful as they once were. Positions are being canceled,” said Rosenblum. “[Generation Y] is showing a little more flexibility.”

Generation Y workers—also known as millennials—cited a number of trends that they believe have contributed to their view of the workplace:

• Technology. Generation Y is in tune with the latest advances, communicating via e-mail, text messages and online chats. And technology is portable, promoting the notion that workers can unchain themselves from their desks and be productive from any location.

• Society. This generation experienced the evolution of traditional gender roles: Their mothers were working, and their fathers played a larger role in family life, helping stuff schedules with extracurricular activities. That “overbooked” experience has carried over into adulthood, leading Generation Y to desire work schedules that conform to outside activities.

• World events. National and global tragedies, ranging from the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to tsunamis in Asia, are considered key historical events that helped shape Gen Y’s world view. As a result, many in this generation place importance on community involvement and charitable work.

All of those dynamics and pressures can crowd the work schedule of a typical adult millennial.