Sluggish Growth in Wealth for Millennials

It is obvious to most Millennials that we simply do not have as much wealth as our parent and grandparent generations did. We hear stories straight from their mouths about purchasing a house and a car on a single income. We know the baby-boomer mothers stayed at home to watch us while the father went to work in a lot of cases. And yet they could afford what we could only dream to afford these days, while working on two jobs. 

Wealth levels are simply not the same. And as displayed so cleanly by Visual Capitalist, we can see the difference cleanly.

 

In 1989, when Baby Boomers were around the same age as today's Millennials, they held 21.3% of U.S. wealth, compared with Millennials holding a mere 4.8% by the end of 2020, a four-fold difference! It is no wonder we feel like we're drowning just to make ends meet. 

Our generation simply does not have the built up wealth that was already available to our parents' or grandparents' generation by their 20s and 30s. We have student debt, skyrocketing health and housing prices, and stagnating wages hitting us during the very years we are supposed to be building families and wealth of our own. It takes money to make money, and we simply have very little to start from. 

The Great Recession hit just as some of us were just starting to get into the labor market, making our early prospects rotten to begin with and pushing back the start of any real gains. We were further hampered by severe wage stagnation in the following years as recovery was sluggish for most Americans. We had no chance to start building wealth in our early labor-force years. 

Something is not working in our system, and its about time we figure out how to fix it.