The youngest millennials are now adults, but how do they stack up against older generations?
The answer depends on whether they went to college, according to a Pew Research Center report. The good news: millennials, those born between 1981 and 1996, are more educated than any generation before them. The bad news: The economic divide between those who did earn a college degree and those who didn’t is wide.
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Pew looked at seven categories: education, employment, income and wealth, housing, family, voting and the future of the population. Here are some of the ways millennials compare:
• Education: Almost four in 10 millennials have a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared to 29% of Generation X, 25% of late baby boomers, 24% of early boomers and 15% of the silent generation. Comparatively, 30% of the silent generation had less than a high school degree and 43% were high school graduates, versus the 8% of millennials with less than a high school degree and 25% who stopped after high school. Millennial women are more likely to earn a bachelor’s degree than their male counterparts, a trend similar to Gen Xers.
• Employment: Millennials have a reputation for never staying too long at a job, but they actually remain with an employer just as much as their Gen X-counterparts did at the same age. Almost eight in 10 millennials (79%) and 77% of Gen Xers at the same point in their lives reported working for their current employer for at least one year and a month. Half of those groups said they were working for their employers for at least five years.
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Most young women are participating in the workforce, a trend that began with baby boomers. Women are sometimes at risk of having less saved for retirement, because they may earn less than men in similar positions, or have to leave the workforce to care for a child or ill loved one. Politicians, including President Trump and Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic Senator from Massachusetts running for president in 2020, have expressed interest in paid leave proposals that would offset child care costs and potentially help families, but especially women, save more for retirement.
• Income and wealth: Millennials’ household income was $71,400, similar to Generation X’s median household income of $70,700 in 2001 (adjusted to 2017 dollars and for household size), according to Pew. Household income is for anyone who lives in the household, which, for millennials, can include non-spouse or family members. (Many millennials simply can’t afford to live on their own, so they opt for roommates if they don’t marry or continue living with their parents).
Although young adults’ wages have remained relatively flat the last 50 years, millennials with a college degree do better than those who did not earn a bachelor’s degree. College graduates had a median annual salary of $56,000 in 2018 if they had a bachelor’s degree, compared to $38,900 for those who had just some college education. For millennial-led households, the median adjusted household income was $105,300 for those with at least a bachelor’s degree, compared to about $49,000 for high school graduates. The $56,000 difference is starkly different to prior generations, which was $41,200 for late boomers and $19,700 for the silent generation.
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• Housing, family and future: The number of millennials is expected to exceed that of baby boomers in 2019, with 73 million members, partly because of immigrants coming to the U.S. Millennials may be more racially and ethnically diverse, but so-called Generation Z, their younger counterparts (those born between 1997 and 2012), are expected to be the “most diverse and best-educated generation yet,” Pew expects.
Just like their stereotype of postponing adult milestones and responsibilities, millennials are holding off on getting married and starting families. Less than half of millennials (46%) are married, compared to the 83% of the silent generation that was married at the same point in their lives. Millennials are also waiting to have children. Less than half of millennial women (48%) were moms in 2016, when they were between 20 and 35 years old, compared to 57% of Gen X women at the same age in 2000 and 58% of baby boomer women in 1984.