page_title: Millennials
section_title: Employment and finances
hierarchical_section_title: Millennials / Economic prospects and trends / In the United States / Employment and finances
caption_attribution_description: Afrikaans: Kredietkaarte Čeština: Kreditní karty Deutsch: Kreditkarten English: Credit cards Français&#160;: Cartes de crédit Italiano: Carte di credito Русский: Банковские карты Tiếng Việt: Thẻ tín dụng 中文: 信用卡
context_page_description: Millennials, also known as Generation Y, are the demographic cohort following Generation X and preceding Generation Z. Researchers and popular media use the early 1980s as starting birth years and the mid-1990s to early 2000s as ending birth years, with 1981 to 1996 a widely accepted defining range for the generation. Most millennials are the children of baby boomers and early Gen Xers; millennials are often the parents of Generation Alpha.
  This generation is generally marked by elevated usage of and familiarity with the Internet, mobile devices, and social media, which is why they are sometimes termed digital natives. The Great Recession and Coronavirus recession have had a major impact on this generation because they have caused historically high levels of unemployment among young people. In general, economic growth and youth unemployment are negatively correlated, meaning young workers have it worse than their elders during a recession.
context_section_description: The youth unemployment rate in the U.S. reached a record 19% in July 2010 since the statistic started being gathered in 1948. Underemployment is also a major factor. In the U.S. the economic difficulties have led to dramatic increases in youth poverty, unemployment, and the numbers of young people living with their parents. In April 2012, it was reported that half of all new college graduates in the US were still either unemployed or underemployed.
  In fact, millennials have benefited the least from the economic recovery following the Great Recession, as average incomes for this generation have fallen at twice the general adult population's total drop and are likely to be on a path toward lower incomes for at least another decade. According to a Bloomberg L.P., "Three and a half years after the worst recession since the Great Depression, the earnings and employment gap between those in the under-35 population and their parents and grandparents threatens to unravel the American dream of each generation doing better than the last. The nation's younger workers have benefited least from an economic recovery that has been the most uneven in recent history." Despite higher college attendance rates than Generation X, many were stuck in low-paid jobs, with the percentage of degree-educated young adults working in low-wage industries rising from 23% to 33% between 2000 and 2014. Not only did they receive lower wages, they also had to work longer hours for fewer benefits. By the mid-2010s, it had already become clear that the U.S. economy was evolving into a highly dynamic and increasingly service-oriented system, with careers getting replaced by short-term full-time jobs, full-time jobs by part-time positions, and part-time positions by income-generating hobbies. In one important way are the economic prospects of millennials similar to those of their parents the baby boomers: their huge number means that the competition for jobs was always going to be intense.
  A 2013 joint study by sociologists at the University of Virginia and Harvard University found that the decline and disappearance of stable full-time jobs with health insurance and pensions for people who lack a college degree has had profound effects on working-class Americans, who now are less likely to marry and have children within marriage than those with college degrees. Data from a 2014 study of U.S. millennials revealed over 56% of this cohort considers themselves as part of the working class, with only approximately 35% considering themselves as part of the middle class; this class identity is the lowest polling of any generation. A 2020 paper by economists William G. Gale, Hilary Gelfond, Jason J. Fichtner, and Benjamin H. Harris examines the wealth accumulated by different demographic cohorts using data from the Survey of Consumer Finances. They find that while the Great Recession has diminished the wealth of all age groups in the short run, a longitudinal analysis reveals that older generations have been able to acquire more wealth whereas millennials have gotten poorer overall. In particular, the wealth of millennials in 2016 was less than that of older generations when they were their age in 1989 and 2007. Millennials enjoy a number of important advantages compared to their elders, such as higher levels of education, and longer working lives, but they suffer some disadvantages including limited prospects of economic growth, leading to delayed home ownership and marriage.
  According to a 2019 TD Ameritrade survey of 1,015 U.S. adults aged 23 and older with at least US$10,000 in investable assets, two thirds of people aged 23 to 38 (Millennials) felt they were not saving enough for retirement, and the top reason why was expensive housing (37%). This was especially true for Millennials with families. 21% said student debt prevented them from saving for the future. For comparison, this number was 12% for Generation X and 5% for the Baby Boomers. While millennials are well known for taking out large amounts of student loans, these are actually not their main source of
caption: Millennials' debts are not mainly due to student loans but rather credit-card debts.
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