Joe Pinsker, Paul Overberg and Drew An-Pham:
Millennials like to say their generation got the short end of the economic stick. Baby boomers like to push back, saying they didn’t have it so easy themselves.
Well, who’s right?
The question is next to impossible to answer, but we can still try. Older millennials graduated into the 2007-09 recession, and most of the generation was in their 20s and 30s during the Covid-19 pandemic. Boomers weathered an oil crisis, high inflation and high interest rates as they got their start in the 1970s and ’80s.
To see how the finances of two of the biggest generations in American history stack up, we looked at some key data points from when they were similar ages. (Yes, other generations, we know you exist, too.)
Let’s start with income. The oldest millennials are now 45, and these charts show the median individual income for them and for boomers in their early decades of adulthood, adjusted for inflation.