Young Americans are perfectly willing to do a half-assed job when conditions suck and pay is low. They are harder to exploit than foreign workers and previous generations because the "hard work" mentality really doesn't last when the rewards get less with every generation. They will either leave a job whenever they feel like they've had enough or just phone it in for a good long while giving shitty performance for shitty pay.
It is entirely possible to get good work out of younger generations, but you really have to start paying them competitively with how much you pay management and how much you pay capital.
It turns out there is a whole lot of rent seeking by people who don't do much (own capital, work as a middle manager, own real estate) and to compete, people are just checking out instead of trying to climb to an ever smaller top.
If it seems impossible to have a home, a family, and resources to actually do things with your life, living in a van and traveling around actually enjoying the world, even in rather extreme poverty, is quite a better life than being a wage slave.