MILLENNIALS: FIRST GENERATION TO PROVE A COL-LEGE DEGREE MAY NOT BE WORTH IT

In the 2010s, millennials became the new slasher villain as older generations blamed them for everything.

But the one thing that millennials couldn’t seem to put an end to was a lack of economic opportunity as they entered the job market. Despite being the most educated generation to date, graduating college didn’t put them in better financial shape. So finds a new working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research that compares the financial prospects of the millennial college class of 2013 to that of the Gen X college class of 1996 by examining the unemployment rate and the number of those living with their parents at graduation time.

The unemployment rate for 2013 grads was 12%, compared to 9% for 1996 grads. Of those millennials who were employed, 52% worked jobs that didn’t require a college degree (what NBER calls a mismatch rate)—7% more than those who graduated in 1996 did.

These mismatched jobs typically pay less than “matched” jobs, where total earnings are 12% higher for the 1996 grads and 34% higher for the 2013 grads. What’s more—earnings for mismatched jobs fell by 8% for the class of 2013. That is all to say: Millennials working mismatched jobs were earning less than both the Gen Xers in the same position at their age and their own peers working jobs that required a degree.

Building wealth was even harder for the many millennials shouldering student debt. They were more likely to have student loans than their Gen X counterparts (41% versus 18%), per the NBER research, and to have higher balances—$5,000 more for an average debt total of $25,091. Millennials, along with Gen Z, were most likely to say in a BankRate survey that student loans have held them back from making important financial choices like buying a house or saving for retirement, despite having a degree they felt unlocked new opportunities for them.

Such financial straits might explain why more 2013 grads (31%) were also living at home with their parents than 1996 grads (25%), something that in the short term showed economic difficulties and in the long term helped those down on their luck save up.

Chloe Berger