The stereotypical millennial plight goes something like this: A guy or gal staring down 40 is trapped in a perpetual struggle to launch. They’ve finally moved out of their parents’ homes, but later than their care taking relatives expected.
They’re getting around to marriage and kids, but they’re forever screwed on housing, still trying to shake the ghosts of the post-Great Recession job market, and drowning in student debt.
They’ve developed a strange animosity toward their WW2 Baby boomer parents, who seemingly had it all and won’t let their hard worked savings go.
Much of this stereotype, however, is more feeling than fact, especially when it’s repeated by frustrated millennials themselves. Despite their gripes, the generation born between 1981 and 1996 is doing quite a bit better financially than their parents.
It’s just that they’re not outpacing them as much as they expected, especially millennials on the wealthier end of the scale, who are accustomed to everything being extra great.
That’s a marked shift, since it was wealthier baby boomers who were the biggest winners of their generation.
Poorer millennials are actually doing better than Americans at the lower end of the income scale in previous generations, but poor in America is still pretty bad, and for the rich, the narrowing of the income gap can be uncomfortable.
That’s one of the takeaways from a recent paper out of the Federal Reserve Board comparing how Gen X and millennials are faring on their economic journeys.
The findings: When Gen X’ers and millennials hit their late 30’s they had a median household real (aka inflation-adjusted) income 16% and 18% higher, respectively, compared to the generation before them at the same age, whereas the Silent Generation and baby boomers had increases of 34% and 27%, respectively.
It’s taking longer to launch, there is some more debt, but in the long run, millennials are actually doing better than Generation X and baby boomers, says Kevin Corinth, a senior fellow and deputy director of the Center for Opportunity and Social Mobility.
Chances are, if you’re a millennial woman or Gen X, your mom had a job, so any gains you make are going to come from fighting for a raise. There wasn’t more juice to squeeze to get additional income growth out of that, so now we’re really relying on increased wages.
Wage growth can be a slow process, and thanks to the recovery from the Great Recession and pandemic-related labor market pressures, people at the bottom of the income distribution have seen bigger gains than people at the top.
Many white-collar enslaved workers are having a hard time getting hired, and the headlines about mass layoffs at big companies are unnerving, as is the threat posed by AI.
Even if you are doing fairly well, you may not love that people at lower incomes are catching up, while at the same time, the peak of the income scale doesn’t feel any closer.
The Middle-Class New Deal Restoring Upward Mobility and the American Dream.” “For the lower rich, they’ve never been in a space where the number that they are earning doesn’t actually make them rich in their mind. It makes them poor.
The country is in the midst of an affordability crisis that hits everyone. The housing market is a complete drag — the typical age of a first-time home-buyer is 40, which doesn’t feel good as an age to have finally “made it.”
A college education still pays off, but many students are saddled with debt that makes it feel like it doesn’t. Younger millennials who are doing well may not internalize it because they’re still living off their parents’ money.
The confluence of these elements really creates the condition for dissatisfaction for folks who thought they could have it all, says Rakeen Mabud, an associate fellow at Common Wealth, an economic think tank.
People who have always had access to social mobility no longer having such easy access to social mobility does have implications for the general sort of malaise about the economy.
If you spend a bunch of money on a college education and run into your cousin who just graduated from high school and realize they’re making the same money as you, there’s an understandable sense of, “Wait, what was all that for?”
As workers at the bottom earn more, it can also push up prices for the better-off. Part of the reason people are annoyed by the high cost of their DoorDash orders is that delivery drivers may have a minimum amount they need to earn.
That tip you’re angry at at the coffee counter is supplementing the barista’s pay, whose wages have gone up anyway in recent years and are making your fancy coffee pricier.
Most people would agree it’s good for home health aides to be paid more — until they try to hire one to take care of their parents.
What’s more, that aide’s pay bump probably isn’t bumping them into the middle class, so they’re still struggling, even if it’s to a comparatively lesser degree.
Despite some of the vibes (a word I hate to employ given how overused it’s become), millennials are generally fine. Life’s just moving a little slower, and fine often doesn’t feel especially good.
Business Insider / Yahoo.com
Generation X people are the ones that lived or are living in different dimensions of social development, like the experience of the agricultural age in to the industrial into the automation age leading up the the cyber era, where the internet computers technology was warped in to the robotic aftermath.
Last chance to evacuate the planet B4 it gets recycled.