Why Millennials Are The Most Screwed Generation Of All Time

With the national student loan debt at a gobsmacking $1.4 trillion, the millennial generation has the heaviest student loan debt burden to bear in the history of the United States. It is important to note, however, that the correlation between student loan debt isn’t necessarily linked to more education, per se, but rather more expensive education.

Since 1988, college tuition has risen 213%. It’s actually been estimated that if college tuition stayed at the same price is was in 2001, 360,000 more young people would have owned homes in 2015. Make sure to tell your Aunt Linda that next time she gets on you about buying a home.

When teachers, parents, and guidance counselors were telling high school students that a college education was the key to a successful life, they may not have considered how much the key to a successful life cost, as it was 213% less expensive for them.

Unfortunately, during and after the Great Recession, the idea that a college degree could secure one a decent job was but a dream. It’s the ol’ supply and demand issue. There was great demand for jobs, so employers could select the most qualified - and often overqualified - candidate. Now when a millennial looks at a job post for an "entry-level" job and it says ‘two to three years experience’ or something else that is definitely not “entry-level,” it’s because of this period in time during which companies were hiring overqualified candidates for their entry-level positions.

And who were all these overly qualified people stealing those entry-level jobs? Millennials' parents! The recession resulted in the older generations staying in the workforce longer and forced the younger generation to put their career aspirations on hold. Since 2008, the workforce has seen a 13.2% drop in people under 25 and a 7.6% rise in people over 55.

It's certainly bad for the millennial who bought into the idea that college education was the key to everything only to end up $30,000 in student loan debt and working as a bartender. However, it’s even worse for the millennial without a college degree. Of course, it’s all a trickle-down issue: the older, more qualified candidates take the entry-level jobs; the college-educated candidates take jobs that don’t require a college degree; and then what’s left for the candidates without a college degree?

How hard is it for the high school graduate in the workforce? It’s reported as many as 43% of college graduates work a job that doesn’t require a college degree, with over 16% of bartenders having a bachelor's degree or higher. Not to mention, the millennial generation has more college educated people than any other: 40% hold a bachelor's degree or higher. Unfortunately, this has resulted in the high school graduates being twice as likely to be unemployed than someone with a bachelors degree.

So yeah, a college education may be extraordinarily expensive, but in today’s economy it has become extraordinarily necessary.

The millennials who are at the biggest disadvantage in the workforce are those who graduated between 2008-2012. They are simply victims of timing. They graduated in the thick of the Great Recession, during which time overqualified candidates were snatching up all those entry-level positions.

How bad was it for these college graduates? In 2007, 50% of all college graduates had a job lined up. By 2009, less than 20% had a job lined up. The result was several years of graduates who couldn’t find degree-related jobs and were forced to take blue-collar job opportunities. Even more unfortunate is how disadvantaged they were when the job market rebounded, as a recent college graduate was more likely to secure a job than someone who graduated college eight years prior and had no relevant job experience.

This creates a long-term discrepancy in incomes, as a 2009 graduate will typically earn $58,600 less than the 2007 graduate in a 10-year period.

Since we’ve already established it really sucked to graduate college between 2008-2012, it’s pretty clear timing can actually play into one’s economic standing a great deal. For that reason alone, the younger generation suffered greatly during the Great Recession, while the older generation didn’t necessarily suffer in the same way. Between 2005-2010, the median net worth of people under 35 fell 37%, while the median net worth of people over 65 only took a hit of 13%.

This resulted in the largest wealth gap between younger and older generations in recorded history, as the older generation is now 47 times richer than the younger generation.

With the growing wealth gap and student loan debt, there is the growing prospect of downward mobility. Since 1989, the median wealth of families in which the head of the family is over 62 has increased by 40%, while families headed by someone under 40 has decreased 28%. Long story short, millennials will be poorer than their parents.

Of course, it isn’t because the millennial generation is lazy or entitled, as the common stereotypes would suggest. Instead, it’s a combination of student debt, inability to secure proper employment, and, as a result of the former, an inability to purchase property of their own.

The inevitable and unfortunate fact is that millennials will see the first era of downward mobility since WWII.