Research has found that certain behavioural patterns long attributed to millennials hold up under scrutiny. Avocado purchases by that cohort — now ranging through their early thirties up to their mid-forties — reached $US1.5 billion across the United States during the previous year. Survey data indicates that craft beer purchases tend to skew toward millennial consumers at higher rates than those recorded among other age groups.
Among higher-income countries, a belief about millennials that once went largely unquestioned has been running up against a body of evidence pointing in a different direction. The hardship that once defined their situation has since given way to more stable ground. Pay for a slice of the workforce has moved beyond what the previous generation typically took home, and more people are taking on influential roles across business, politics, and culture. Rates of home ownership have been climbing in recent periods, according to available figures.
That pattern contrasts with the 2010s, when millennials were moving through their twenties. When Greece's debt burden reached its peak, unemployment among young workers climbed above the halfway mark of that age group's labour force. Pay for workers in that age group held largely flat during the period in question. Figures from Germany showed roughly four in ten of those young people were still residing in their family home.
Protest movements across Britain, Spain, and the United States — among them UK Uncut, the indignados, and Occupy Wall Street — drew heavily on young adult participation and pointed toward widespread frustration with prevailing political and economic arrangements. Broad backing for veteran left-leaning politicians — among them Jeremy Corbyn, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, and Bernie Sanders — also proved a notable feature of that period.
Income figures for millennials spanning 32 wealthy nations have been gathered into a single comparative dataset. Among the countries surveyed, only three — Italy, Greece, and Japan — show millennials earning less in real terms than earlier generations did at a comparable point in their lives. By the time Italian workers of the millennial generation reached 30, their pay trailed what Gen-X counterparts — those born roughly between 1965 and 1979 — had been drawing at the equivalent point in their careers by around ten per cent.
Measured against the living standards that young adults in Greece enjoyed before the financial crisis took hold in 2009, today's millennial generation in that country has not yet recovered to those earlier levels. Wage data from 2019 showed that a 35-year-old worker in Japan was bringing home less money than someone of the same age had earned in 1994, the year after an asset bubble collapse had tipped the economy into a prolonged downturn.
Of the three instances in question, each stands apart from the broader pattern rather than representing it. Among the other 29 nations covered by the data, people born in the millennial generation tend to take home more money in real terms than those who came before them. Among a handful of nations — Australia, Britain, and France among them — the pace at which younger generations improve upon the circumstances of those before them has lost momentum. Where millennials in some places have advanced only modestly beyond the gains Gen X made over baby boomers — those born between 1946 and 1964 — a number of other countries, the United States and Poland among them, have seen the pace of intergenerational progress pick up.
Data on the millennial generation points to above-average outcomes across the board, with a portion of that cohort also securing positions at the upper levels of their fields. Data on management rates across generations show that millennials in the United States reach supervisory roles at roughly the same pace their Gen-X counterparts did when those counterparts were at a comparable stage of life. The tech sector's expansion in the United States has opened pathways to leadership roles for many people in the millennial generation.
Among the ranks of America's wealthiest, roughly one in ten positions now belong to people born in the millennial generation — a share that was less than half as large when Generation X occupied a comparable stage, measured against 2011 data. Leadership of Anthropic, OpenAI, and Meta — three companies at the forefront of artificial intelligence development — rests with executives drawn from the millennial generation.
Millennial politicians have carved out notable ground even within political systems where older generations have long held sway. Across Hungary, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, and New York City, heads of government hold authority over each of those four distinct administrations. At 14 per cent of congressional seats, their share of the legislature matches the proportion Gen X held during the 2011–13 period. Prediction markets currently place the odds at roughly even that the United States will elect a president from the millennial generation, with a handful of well-known political figures aged between 31 and 45 drawing attention as potential contenders.
Two factors — shifts in the broader economy and changes in generational demographics — appear to account for the improved financial standing observed among millennials. The downturn spanning 2007 through 2009 landed with particular weight on their circumstances. Newer entrants to the workforce tend to hold the least job security, making them disproportionately vulnerable when economic downturns reduce hiring and accelerate layoffs.
Labour markets across wealthier nations have, by most available measures, reached a point of unusual tightness in the current period. Among Greeks aged 35 to 44, roughly four in five held jobs — a share that may never have been higher for that age bracket.
Population composition plays a role in shaping the picture as well. Following the financial crisis, a portion of baby boomers extended their working years to shore up retirement savings, which reduced the pool of senior-level vacancies available to younger workers entering the workforce. Research conducted in the United States pointed to roughly three million people who left the workforce ahead of schedule in the period leading up to late 2022, a pattern that one study attributed to the conditions brought on by the COVID pandemic. Among the 38 nations that make up the OECD, ten have seen their working-age populations shrink. A tight labour market has left workers in the millennial generation positioned to draw advantage from the relative scarcity of available employees.
Among millennials who had reached age 30, roughly four in ten held title to a home — a rate that trailed the share recorded for Generation X at the equivalent point in life. Among millennials at the older end of the cohort — those now passing through their forties — rates of property ownership land at the same level recorded for Gen X. IFS figures reveal that while British millennials trailed earlier generations' homeownership rates by 20 percentage points at the age of 30, that deficit had narrowed by half once they reached 40.
Lending criteria tied to home ownership have been eased by governments over the past several years, lowering the bar for younger buyers looking to get a foothold in the housing market. Among men in the United States, the typical age at which a first marriage takes place has climbed to 31, a notable rise from the 27-year figure recorded through the 1990s. For those in this situation, the moment when purchasing a family home becomes necessary arrives later than it otherwise would.
Data on wealth accumulation across age groups indicates that millennials have outpaced the asset-building rates recorded by earlier generations at comparable life stages, though researchers note variation within the cohort. Projections from the IFS put the typical inheritance for people born in England during the 1980s at roughly £136,000 in constant-currency terms, a figure that stands nearly double the £66,000 anticipated for those whose birth decade was the 1960s. Inheritances flowing through wealthy nations each year now account for a share of output that hovers around one tenth of their combined gross domestic product.
Researchers and economists have noted that younger workers tend to absorb a disproportionate share of employment disruptions when automation and artificial intelligence reshape the labour market. Those born between 1997 and 2012 — the generation now entering and moving through the workforce — may find their employment prospects shaped in part by the adoption of automation technologies among the managers above them, leaving their financial futures harder to predict.
