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Millennials Earn 20 Percent Less Than Boomers Did At Same Stage of Life (usatoday.com)
According to a new analysis of Federal Reserve data by the advocacy group Young Invincibles, millennials earn 20 percent less than boomers did at the same stage of life, even though they are better educated. Their median household income is $40,581, and their home ownership rate is lower, while their student debt is drastically higher. USA Today reports: The analysis of the Fed data (PDF) shows the extent of the decline. It compared 25 to 34 year-olds in 2013, the most recent year available, to the same age group in 1989 after adjusting for inflation. Education does help boost incomes. But the median college-educated millennial with student debt is only earning slightly more than a baby boomer without a degree did in 1989. The home ownership rate for this age group dipped to 43 percent from 46 percent in 1989, although the rate has improved for millennials with a college degree relative to boomers. The median net worth of millennials is $10,090, 56 percent less than it was for boomers. Whites still earn dramatically more than Blacks and Latinos, reflecting the legacy of discrimination for jobs, education and housing. Yet compared to white baby boomers, some white millennials appear stuck in a pattern of downward mobility. This group has seen their median income tumble more than 21 percent to $47,688. Median income for black millennials has fallen just 1.4 percent to $27,892. Latino millennials earn nearly 29 percent more than their boomer predecessors to $30,436. The analysis fits into a broader pattern of diminished opportunity. Research last year by economists led by Stanford University's Raj Chetty found that people born in 1950 had a 79 percent chance of making more money than their parents. That figure steadily slipped over the past several decades, such that those born in 1980 had just a 50 percent chance of out-earning their parents. This decline has occurred even though younger Americans are increasingly college-educated. The proportion of 25 to 29 year-olds with a college degree has risen to 35.6 percent in 2015 from 23.2 percent in 1990, a report this month by the Brookings Institution noted.
So, more younger folks have college degrees. Does that actually mean that those folks are better educated? Are a bunch of for-profit institutions just churning out worthless degrees, while saddling young students with debt that they have no chance of paying off?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
But the median college-educated millennial with student debt... THAT my friends is the crux of the story! Millennials have been SUCKERED into thinking they HAVE to have a college degree. Most of them, in a field with a POOR track record of job advancement, or jobs at all! Suckers, that's what they are. And who profited from all of this? "Big college" that's who! Apparently economics isn't something they teach you in high school, or, perhaps they would figure out, that a four year teaching degree at a 4 year college, that puts you in 40,50,60 thousand dollars in debt, for a job that pays 30,40 thousand a year, ain't gonna cut it when you factor in your car(s), rent/mortgage, clothes, food and what not.
Meanwhile we have a "recovery" that's not actually a recovery but a bubble fueled by low interest rates and the Fed printing more and more money.
The "sharing" economy is crap. It's basically participated in by people who can't find an actual job, so the wages are very low. Apparently these gigs count as jobs anyway for some reason, so unemployment numbers don't look too bad.
Add to that job competition from poor immigrants at the low end of the wage scale, and job competition from severely underpaid H1B workers at the high end of the wage scale, and the average will drop.
The US managed to delay the fiscal crisis which was imminent in 2008 by bailing the banks out with debt, but we didn't actually fix the problems. There's still massive speculation. There is still too much debt. There's still a trade deficit. I think some of us are feeling a little bit euphoric stocks going up again, but it's artificial.
The article is saying the kids whine because they really are getting less income and they have more debt.
Of course they don't mention all the boomers who are now making less than they did when they were younger. Welcome to the precariate - never have so many worked and studied so many hours for so little.
The whining is justified. Two generations without a real increase in income while those at the top get richer will eventually result in more than whining.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Was thinking the same thing. A additional 15% took an extra 4 or 5 years of partying before starting work. Graduate dumber, but better indoctrinated, than when they started.
Not just 'for profits', all schools are offering lots of watered down degrees, not that * studies wasn't already worthless 30 years ago.
It could also be globalism.
Jobs leaving the country create an excess of workers, so the remaining jobs can be offered for lower salaries. It's simple supply and demand.
Is there another economic explanation that could account for the difference between then and now?
Ignoring government numbers because of various controversies in how they are measured, the Gallup Poll survey puts us at 9.2% real unemployment, and less than half of those are rated "good" jobs.
We're supposedly out of the depression, the economy is doing great, and yet people are making 20% less than average from 30 years ago.
What other major economic forces could account for this?
I doubt Trump will help.
I suspect it will get worse. Look at his cabinet nominations.
People voted anger, not intelligence.
Hey, don't blame Gen X. We've been on the receiving end of this kind of crap since before the Millennials were born...
Quality of life is better because you can get entertainment instantly? Wow, talk about pacifying the masses.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I am continually surprised by those who are not knowledgeable about (or misattribute) the bigger macroeconomic factors that have driven our prosperity. The American economic miracle, the American dream, is largely a by-product of a brand new territory, open for expansion, a growing population whose material needs and wants grew to match the space for it. And where demand for services and goods made by those people exceeded the supply of labor to produce it. Not to mention 2-4 major wars and post-war booms that produced a huge demand for labor and the attendant growth of wages that comes with.
So for 6-7 generations, we came to associate American success with hard work, determination, education -- where I would argue that yes, while these factors have something to do with it, we were just mainly beneficiaries of a great macro situation. Factories, heavy equipment, washing machines, cars, steel -- these were the things we needed as a society that we would pay for, and they were produced here by labor that couldn't be substituted.
Now, we find that our post-war boom is over, the demographic curve has to support an increasing number of people who are no longer in their prime productive years, and a global market for the best / traditional jobs that has sapped the domestic demand for labor physically based in the US.
And so parents look at their kids and ask, "hey, why aren't you out there getting a job and using your skills like we did, after all that college and education?" Well, Dad, I can't get a job the way you did, because people aren't hiring hand over fist just because they need bodies to fill an assembly line because people want to buy washing machines as they move into their newly constructed 3 bedroom house in Levittown.
The harsh truth many are waking up to is that not everything grows forever, and perhaps this is the aftereffect of what happens when a society stabilizes, and other peoples/countries around the world start to experience the growth that we once had (and of course helped by the internet, trade, and information).