Andy Proctor looks through the window of his new home in Vineyard, Utah. As wages have stagnated, the costs of essentials like housing and education

Four Reasons Why Millennials Don’t Have Any Money

submited by

Style Pass

2021-06-15 19:00:04

Andy Proctor looks through the window of his new home in Vineyard, Utah. As wages have stagnated, the costs of essentials like housing and education have been going through the roof, and millennials own fewer homes than members of older generations.

The same forces that are driving massive inequality between the top 1 percent and the rest of us are creating a vast generational wealth gap between baby boomers—my generation—and millennials.

Millennials aren’t teenagers anymore. They’re working hard, starting families, and trying to build wealth. But as a generation, they’re way behind.

Number one: Stagnant wages. Median wages grew by an average of 0.3 percent per year between 2007 and 2017, including the Great Recession—just as millennials were beginning their careers. Before that, between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s, wages grew at three times that rate.

Second: As wages have stagnated, the costs of essentials like housing and education have been going through the roof. Millennials own fewer homes, the most common way Americans have built wealth in the past. Education costs have soared. Adjusted for inflation, the average college education in 2018 cost nearly three times what it did in 1978.