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Millennials Set To Earn Less Than Generation X (bbc.com)
Reader AmiMoJo writes: Millennials are set to become the first generation to earn less than their predecessors, new research suggests. The Resolution Foundation found that under-35s earned 8,000 pound ($10,600) less in their twenties than Generation X workers. If wages for millennials follow the same path as Generation X, average career earnings will be about 825,000 pound ($1.1m). That would make them the first generation to earn less than their predecessors over the course of their working lives. Research found that some of the pay squeeze was due to under-35s entering the job market as the recession hit, but it also concluded that generational pay progress had ground to a halt even before the financial crisis struck in 2007/8.
The generation after the long IT boom inaugurated in the early 1980s and finishing off in about 2001 is going to earn less than their predecessors. Color me unsurprised. We squandered the fruits of that on peak socialism. Now the long slide since 2008 will continue until some disruptive element creates economic opportunity. I'm not exactly holding my breath.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
But what really matters is standard of living. Sure, they might make less money, but in the 1980s a cell phone cost thousands and barely worked, compared to what you can get for a few hundred bucks and $30 a month.
Sure, we can buy electronics cheaply, but cost of housing, education, transportation are all significantly up at the same time as wages and unemployment are down.
IMHO, these are the big issues causing this"
1) The wealth gap today is close to what it was in the "Roaring Twenties". /rant
2) College is in a bubble due to government subsidies; raising the cost of college for everyone
3) Entire industries are no longer being created like they used to (Railroad, Oil, Automobiles, Planes, Computers, etc...)
4) Technical innovation is just "Uber-izing" everything. Jobs that can be automated, will be. Companies of the future will just be a CEO and a CTO. Everyone else not creating or automating things will earn less and less income.
5) Globalization is feeding the wealth gap more so than ever before. The wealthy ruling class are turning governments into corporate oligarchies.
6) The career ladder is more about where you were born that what you can do. Meritocracy, to a large extent, is becoming more and more of a myth. If you were born in a rich neighborhood and go to a private school.
In the 1970's a kid straight out of high school could get a job, get married, buy a 3 bed house + garage + car in the suburbs and raise 2.6 children on one paycheck.
Today's third level graduates look forward to a half decade of half-jobs, effective vagrancy, crippling rents, and the growing impossibility of being able to afford even an apartment + car on two salaries.
Cheap smartphones with social media apps do not health or wealth create.
Less wealth == less life.
Millennials could earn twice what they do now and they'd still be less wealthy than their parents because globalisation has left the vast majority of them behind.
The only numbers that really matter are the big ticket items. Phones are not those.
Cause and effect: they only sound entitled to assholes like you because they're actually getting screwed and complaining about it! Jeez, it's like Oliver fucking Twist around here!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I think I should point out how addicted to TV Generation X is/was. I think your backwards-vision is rose tinted.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
This is the exact reason Brexit happened and why Trump will probably win. Living-wage jobs have been methodically destroyed on both sides of the pond by the greed-pig class. The result has been both the Oxbridge toffs and the Koch Brothers have completely lost control of the rabble they so easily roused over the last decade, paving the way for unhinged pricks like Farage and Trump.
A better metric would be rent/mortgage and other unavoidable costs as a proportion of income. They have all being going up. The boomers burnt all the cheap energy and broke the climate, and then bought up all the housing to use as assets while simultaneously objecting to any new stock being built.
Millennials are actually paying for their retirements twice, once through taxes (pensions) and again through rent. And maybe an unpaid internship on the side, with a mountain of student debt on top.
Actually, debt levels are another good indicator of quality of life. People with a lot of debt tend not to live such good lives.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
All those jobs will be automated.
The real minimum wage is $0.
The economy has been growing quite steadily over this period, including since 2008. If that new wealth was divided up among American workers in the same way it was in the 1980s, then millennials would be better of than previous generations.
So the problem is not that we need a disruptive source of economic opportunity, it is that the existing disruptive sources of economic opportunity are generating wealth that is simply accumulating among current holders of wealth, to the exclusion of new workers.
Incidentally, such an in-equal wealth distribution could not - by definition - occur if the USA was the socialist country you seem to think it is.
But why are you getting less? Too many Grievance Studies majors? Companies seeking skilled labor, from developers to the skilled trades, are still see labor shortages, so why the disparity? Too few skilled workers? Too much immigration?
Another term for 'labor shortage' is 'salary increase', and nobody's seeing that happen.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Translation: "I got mine, so fuck you!"
Well, fuck you too!
You goddamned Boomers and Gen-Xers didn't "work;" the Boomers got paid fat union wages for doing jack shit and then the Gen-Xers got paid corporate-raider bonuses for dismantling the unions and outsourcing the jobs! The older generations have executed scorched-earth economic policy, then hypocritically blame the Millennials when they complain that there's nothing left.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I see a lot of "grumpy old man" posts (I'm 40 for context...) on this subject blaming entitlement and other reasons for this. I don't see it that way...I haven't run into any of the stereotypical Millennials with a capital M that the media describes -- remember, Generation X were supposed to be "slackers" in the 90s also. So, I don't think it's the people. I think it's the work environment. Work is very different from the golden age of the 50s through the 70s in the US...
- After WW II, a family could live comfortably on a single income, and there was a reasonably good chance someone could keep their job for life and/or be promoted from within and gain success that way. And this is any family -- from the janitor to the CEO (relatively speaking of course.)
- After the great corporate downsizing wave of the 90s, it was still possible to graduate from any college, with any degree in any field, and still find entry-level work. While it was less possible to do the single-income thing and required lots of sacrifice to do so, the opportunity existed.
- Now, entry level tech jobs don't exist or are done offshore or by H-1B labor. The economy has fully adjusted to two-earner families, so it's basically impossible to be a single-earner family unless you live in a really cheap part of the country (where, consequently, there are no jobs anymore.)
So, don't blame the Millennials. They're in a tough spot. I was very lucky in my early career to be able to work my way up from an entry-level support job to where I am now...that opportunity is much harder to come by now.
In the 1970's a kid straight out of high school could get a job, get married, buy a 3 bed house + garage + car in the suburbs and raise 2.6 children on one paycheck.
Today's third level graduates look forward to a half decade of half-jobs, effective vagrancy, crippling rents, and the growing impossibility of being able to afford even an apartment + car on two salaries.
Compare the lifestyles though. The kid in the 1970's generally didn't care where he lived as long as he got that house (which BTW, was likely MUCH smaller than the average house of today - SQFT per occupant has gone up dramatically in the last ~30 years). Now people just have to live where it's "happening". Nobody wants to live in Boise - it's gotta be the bay area, or Austin, or New York.
And how many of those "third level graduates" were for liberal arts degrees where you're really only equipped to teach what you studied in when you graduate, while 1970's kid in high school took up vocational classes in auto mechanics or HVAC - less glamorous or prestigious but ACTUAL USEFUL SKILLS. Those skills also translate well into being able to do a lot of your own home, auto, or other "around the house" type maintenance saving from having to call a repairman out every time you find a frayed cord. 30 years ago pretty much everyone was decently handy and knew how to fix basic stuff.
And as stated - 1970's kid is doing all this on one salary. His wife/partner/other half is likely at home cooking all of their meals, rather than going downtown for organic artisan tacos and PBR's every night. When you're cooking your food at home you can afford to feed 5-6 people easily for what it would cost for one person to eat out. Now I'm not suggesting that women shouldn't be in the workforce at all (on the contrary I think its better how it is now), but it is a foolish notion to compare two time periods and say that now you NEED two incomes. You don't need it - it's just that now one partner who was once doing very real work to reduce the overhead needed to raise a family is now trading their time for extra income instead.
Honestly, I don't get the mindset of comparing our supposedly rosy past to the present and then suggesting a huge turn towards Socialism as how we return to that. That certainly wasn't the system we had in place back then to get that result.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Just think: all those people with worthless degrees probably would have gone straight to work after high school or learned a trade
Unless you're going to be a plumber, there aren't many of those jobs left. The US has exported most of its low-skill manufacturing, and the low-skill construction and agricultural and custodial jobs tend to go to illegal immigrants because permanent residents want a higher salary. Go figure.
Nice try, but no. Living in the trendy areas is even more out of reach for that high school kid. So much so that places in Ca are having trouble hiring police, firefighters, and teachers because they simply can't afford to live there, even on 2 paychecks.
That small house in Boise is out of reach for a single income even if the kid went in to HVAC or auto mechanics and the wife stays home and cooks.
Sure, let's take a look at how "fine" salaries are today. Here's some numbers.
So, over the last 47 years, we've got a whopping 21% growth in the median salary. That's a roughly 0.4% annual growth rate, on average. That's all we've gotten from widespread automation, swapping out typists for software engineers, etc.
If these remarkable advancements in technology are only giving us 0.4% annual growth in salaries, is it even worth it? Society sure seems to get more than 0.4% more complicated every year. Work seems to get a lot more than 0.4% demanding every year.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Whilst it is true that WESTERN millennials are getting paid less than than parents generation, across the whole world, the opposite is the case. The raising of hundreds of millions from poverty in Asia and to a lesser extent Africa and Latin America means that the truth is far more complex. And this helps reveal the problem; given that increased competition from these areas exists, it is not a surprise if workers who are, in effect, in competition with these masses get to be paid less.
Which doesn't mean that our own people don't have a problem, but any explanation which focuses on it as an unalloyed BAD THING is defective. Yet that is the message that is being presented by Trump and echoed to a lesser extent by Hilary. The result could be nasty.