News

Young people are more educated and paid less than baby boomers

Picture:
Picture:
Dragana Gordic / Shutterrock

Are you struggling to get on the property ladder? Throwing half your salary away on rent? Still living like a student despite the fact you graduated a few years back?

Welcome to being a millennial.

It's made even worse by the fact that at your age, your parents had a house and were settled down, and living like proper adults.

You’re not the only one feeling a sense of injustice.

Analysis released this week by advocacy group Young Invincibles shows that millennials in the US are earning 20 per cent less than baby boomers did at the same stage of their lives.

This is despite being better educated than the previous generation.

The research looked at data for 25 to 34 year-olds in 2013 (which is the most recent year available), and compared it to the same demographic in 1989, adjusted for inflation.

It found that the median net worth of that age bracket is $10,090, down 56 per cent on the late 1980s.

Home ownership for the same age range has also decreased from 46 per cent to 43 per cent.

One thing that hasn’t changed in three decades however is the fact that white millennials still earn considerably more than black and latino people of the same age.

With generational conflict on social media seemingly growing every day, and millions of young people stuck in so-called ‘Generation Rent’, this is yet more worrying news.

HT USA Today

More: How young people are screwed compared to the older generation - in 9 charts

More: Piers Morgan called millennials 'soft' and the internet shut him down

The Conversation (0)