全球智库信息集成服务系统

For Karen, a 31-year-old living in Bozeman, Montana, financial stability simply feels out of reach. “After the birth of our first child,” Karen says, “we had to use student loans to supplement our income while we tried to finish school. We lived with my husband’s parents for a time, but even with both of us working full time, we couldn’t make it on our own. Having student loan collectors call and tell you that you should find some other way to feed your already-hungry children so that you can pay them instead is an experience I don’t think anyone should ever go through.”¹

As Millennials such as Karen access higher education, launch their careers, and raise their children, we all have a stake in ensuring that they have a fair shot at economic prosperity. But for many Millennials, the majority of whom came of age during the Great Recession, it is a struggle to get by, much less get ahead. Millennials are a huge—and hugely influential—generation spanning the birth years of roughly 1980–2000, or those who are 16 to 36 years old in 2016.² They account for more than a quarter of the national population, one-third of the labor force, and one-third of the eligible voting population.³ Millennials are more educated than previous generations at the same age, and more racially diverse—44 percent of Millennials are people of color.⁴ Because much of the generation came of age during the Great Recession and the subsequent recovery, many Millennials have searched for jobs in a tough labor market, sought higher education as student debt skyrocketed, and started their families in the face of economic uncertainty.⁵

Karen is not alone. Across the generation, Millennials have lower incomes and higher poverty rates compared to previous generations at the same age.⁶ Cleo’s struggles, documented in Fusion earlier this year, mirror Karen’s. “I’m resolved to be poor for the rest of my life,” Cleo says.⁷ She is a 26-year-old queer black woman living in Los Angeles who has been working since she was 14. Now, even with a college degree, she struggles to make rent.

It is no surprise, then, that economic stability is the top priority for Millennials, according to polling conducted by Hart Research Associates and Public Policy Polling on behalf of Generation Progress. Millennials have lived through the effects of a major recession, and they want an economy that works for everyone—not just the wealthy few. Sixty percent of Millennials believe “we need a strong government to handle today’s complex economic problems,” and more than half say they are extremely concerned with wage stagnation.⁸

As Millennials form households, start their own families, and take on caregiving responsibilities, they need policies that address the realities they face and give them a chance to succeed. Any discussion of working families today is incomplete without a generational analysis, and any discussion of Millennial economic stability is incomplete without a working family analysis—especially because the average age of first birth for women is 26, squarely in the center of the Millennial age range in 2016.⁹

This report examines the economic realities for Millennials in the context of being young adults during the Great Recession and subsequent recovery. It also explores the progressive policy solutions needed to provide Millennial families—especially Millennial families of color—with a fair shot at economic stability. Because in addition to being workers and students, millions of Millennials are also parents and caregivers—like the generations before them, the vast majority of babies are born every year to mothers younger than 36, or Millennials today.¹⁰ At the same time, 34 percent of Millennial adults between the ages of 18 to 34 lived with their parents in 2015.¹¹

Millennials face complicated economic circumstances and need comprehensive, inclusive policy solutions to help keep their families afloat. In order for Millennial workers to have the opportunity to succeed, they need fair pay laws and labor regulations that meet the needs of today’s workers. They need access to higher education that doesn’t come with insurmountable debt, and strong safety nets while they look for work. They need access to health care—including abortion care—to form families on their own terms, on their own timelines. When they take on caregiving roles, they need workplace standards such as paid family and medical leave, paid sick days, high-quality affordable child care, and flexible scheduling. Like the generations before them, parents today struggle to meet work and family obligations and provide both opportunity and stability for their families. But unlike the generations before them, Millennials have the added challenges and pressures of coming of age in the Great Recession.

As many Millennials can tell you, it is not enough to have a job—or two, or three—if you are not being paid fairly. And compared to previous generations at the same age, Millennials make less—even in a more productive economy with higher rates of educational attainment.¹² According to a 2013 analysis, Millennials working full time year-round earned $3,472 less in a year than the same age group earned in 2000 and $2,833 less than the same age group earned in 1990 after adjusting for inflation.¹³ This comparison demonstrates the troubling decline in wages for young workers today compared with young workers in previous decades. Since 2013, Millennials, especially those aged 25 to 34, have seen income growth in 2014 and 2015, signaling that smart policy choices have put the economy on the path to recovery.¹⁴ For Millennial adults who worked full time year-round in 2015, the median earnings were $38,036—up more than $2000 in real terms from 2014.¹⁵

Even as the median income for young workers recovers, many Millennials are also experiencing the brunt of a troubling decline in earnings for the lowest-wage workers. The minimum wage has fallen by one-third in real terms since 1968, which disproportionately effects younger workers—in 2015, 68 percent of minimum wage workers were 16 to 34 years old.¹⁶ Jewel, a 19-year-old in Georgia, is emblematic of the challenges faced by low-wage Millennial workers: She is one of millions of Americans who earn at or less than the federal minimum wage of $7.25. “I’m just running all the time and I never have any money left over for me. I’m still struggling from paycheck to paycheck,” Jewel says. Even working 52 hours every week between her two jobs, she cannot save enough to get a car or move out of her dad’s house.¹⁷ If the federal minimum wage was increased to $12 per hour by 2020, as proposed by Democrats in Congress, 57 percent of all workers who would receive a raise would be women, and a majority of the women affected by the rule would be Millennials.¹⁸ Thankfully, 29 states and the District of Columbia have a higher minimum wage than the federal level, and 29 additional localities have passed minimum wages above their state’s minimum wage. But without a federal increase, workers in some states are left further and further behind.¹⁹ New York and California are currently phasing in $15 dollar per hour minimum wage laws, along with several localities across the United States—more than double the federal minimum wage.²⁰

Unsurprisingly, this decline in wages, especially for the lowest-wage workers, has been accompanied by an increase in poverty rates. More than 1 in 5 Millennials—or 22 percent in 2015—are living below the federal poverty level, compared to 1 in 7 young adults in 1980.²¹ One-fifth of Millennial parents live in poverty, as do more than one-fourth of Millennial women. Notably, though, when the benefits of anti-poverty programs are taken into account, that poverty rate falls to 15 percent—highlighting the importance and potential of existing social safety net programs—but the Millennial rate is still above the national rate for all ages.²²

For Millennials, the gender pay gap is narrower but persistent, especially for women of color

Millennials have a smaller gender wage gap nationwide than the broader labor force: In 2015 women aged 15–35 who worked full time year-round made 87.6 cents for every dollar their male counterparts made, compared to 80 cents on the dollar for all full time year-round women workers.²³ This Millennial gender wage gap still amounts to around $5,000 less per year for the median earner,²⁴ and women can expect wage gaps to grow over time to tens of thousands of dollars per year over the course of their careers.²⁵ While the gender wage gap is narrower for Millennials, this comes in the context of a broader depression of wages across the generation. So instead of simply indicating that women are doing better, the Millennial wage gap also reflects the fact that Millennial men are doing worse than previous generations—the wage gaps may be smaller, but the paychecks are too.²⁶

The wage gap: Persistent disparities along lines of gender and race

The gender wage gap holds true for workers of all ages, and it’s exacerbated by racial and ethnic disparities in pay. So while women working full time year-round in the workforce overall make about 80 cents for every dollar men earn, the disparities grow when the wages of women of color are compared to the wages of white non-Hispanic men, as seen below. In order to have consistent and statistically significant data across racial and ethnic groups, in Figure 2, the gaps are shown for workers of all ages. The data for young women are harder to parse as minutely, because isolating sex and age and race produces a much smaller set of data points for comparison, but it is important to consider how the Millennial wage gap fits into this broader context. For breadwinners of all ages who represent working families—but especially for young people—persistent wage disparities along gender, racial, and ethnic lines are a serious threat to economic stability.

Both the workplace and families have changed in the past several decades, but today’s public policies often don’t reflect the reality modern families are facing. Millennials espouse more egalitarian values about parenting than previous generations: A study of 18-year-old to 32-year-old New Yorkers found that 80 percent of Millennial women and nearly 70 percent of men hope to share the load with their partners when it comes to caregiving and working. But without policies that support working women and caregiving dads, it is hard to live out those values.²⁷ Today, 62 percent of all mothers in the United States are either primary or co-breadwinners, with higher rates of being the sole or primary provider among black and Hispanic women.²⁸ Women are hard at work providing and caring for their families, but without fair pay, that is hard to do. Families need stronger equal pay protections that reflect the caregiving and breadwinning roles in the modern labor force, regardless of gender. Equal pay protections will strengthen all families by ensuring that women workers, and especially women of color, receive fair pay based on their work.

The Great Recession and the erosion of labor standards

Millennials also fit into broader trends. Workers of all ages are struggling with labor standards that have not kept pace with the modern workforce—including declines in union density and the erosion of existing wage laws. Compared to previous generations at the same age, Millennials are much less likely to be covered by a union, meaning that as they enter the weak labor market, they lack access to a key institution that would help them build up worker power and negotiate basic standards.²⁹ Only about 4 percent of workers age 16 to 24 and 9 percent of workers age 25 to 34 belong to a union, less than one-third the rate of their counterparts in 1980.³⁰ In addition to the broadly positive effects that unions have on worker pay and benefits, unions can be especially beneficial for women of color who face wage gaps. When black and Hispanic women are able to join unions, their wages are 11 percent and 16 percent higher, respectively—helping to chip away at the gender wage gap.³¹

Equal pay and workplace standards

The hardship of stagnant wages is wide-reaching, affecting the education, career, and family options for Millennials, especially for already marginalized groups. For Mallorie, a 27-year-old working in Michigan, the current situation feels bleak. She says, “I live paycheck to paycheck. I can’t buy a house [and] I live in fear that something will go wrong with my car.”³² Fortunately, there is already a range of state and federal legislative efforts in motion to protect workers, raise wages, address debt, and fight poverty—including equal pay protections. Each of the policies outlined below are likely to disproportionately benefit young workers, especially women and people of color.

Implement comprehensive equal pay protections

In order to ensure that all workers are paid fairly for their work, including Millennials, Congress must pass equal pay legislation that promotes transparency. Legislation must include requirements that employers disclose pay to enforcement officials, provisions for research on disparities, protections for workers who inquire about pay disparities, and stipulations that any pay disparities are business related.³³ Two strong proposals include The Fair Pay Act, introduced by Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), and the Paycheck Fairness Act, introduced by Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT). The Fair Pay Act would protect workers by broadening “equal work” to “equivalent work” to prevent misclassification. The Paycheck Fairness Act would require employers to provide a job-related reason for pay differences and to regularly report pay data. Both bills would augment protection for workers who discuss their pay and increase the penalties for pay discrimination.³⁴

Another example of promising legislation comes from Massachusetts, which recently passed a ban on employers asking potential hires for their salary history before making an offer with compensation. Reps. Norton and DeLauro joined Rep. Jerrold Radler (D-NY) to introduce a similar federal bill this fall, the Pay Equity for All Act.³⁵ Banning the use of salary history will help ensure that companies compensate new hires fairly, which is especially beneficial to women, people of color, and young workers who may have experienced depressed wages in previous employment due to pay disparities and the Great Recession.³⁶

Strengthen unions

In Congress and at the state level, conservative lawmakers have undermined unions. These attacks—which range from blocking updates to streamline union elections, blocking unions from collecting dues from the workers for whom they negotiate, and undermining public sector unions—have constrained unions’ ability to bargain on behalf of Millennials and all other workers. Anti-union elected officials have frequently pushed so-called right-to-work legislation, which effectively constrains unions from bargaining on behalf of workers. These laws have been passed in several states, and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has introduced a federal legislation, the National Right to Work Act.³⁷

In addition to blocking anti-labor legislation, Congress could pass national legislation that would strengthen unions and help restore bargaining rights, such as the Workplace Democracy Act, introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). This bill would set up timelines for settling disputes and amend the National Labor Relations Act to ensure that if a majority of a group of employees in a bargaining unit sign cards in favor of joining a union they would be recognized as a union—without employers being able to make them take the added step of holding an election.³⁸

Improve job quality and wages

Raising the minimum wage would improve economic stability for millions of workers and their families and disproportionately help young workers and women of color.³⁹ While 29 states and the District of Columbia have established minimum wages above the federal level, as have dozens of localities, access to fairer wages should not be limited by which side of a state or county border a worker lives on.⁴⁰ On the national level, the Raise the Wage Act, introduced by Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) and Rep. Robert “Bobby” Scott (D-VA), would raise the federal minimum wage to $12 per hour by 2020.⁴¹

The Obama administration and the Department of Labor worked together to finalize a new rule restoring overtime rights to cover a broader swath of salaried workers. If Congress does not interfere with the rule implementation, the rule will go into effect on December 1, 2016, and benefit 4.5 million Millennial workers.⁴² Millennials in particular stand to benefit from the new rule because they are more likely to have salaries below the new threshold.⁴³

Expand working family tax credits to address Millennial economic insecurity

The Child Tax Credit is a critical tool to fight poverty, but it currently has several limitations. To address these limitations, the Child Tax Credit must be indexed to inflation so that the value of the credit does not erode over time, and it must be made fully refundable in order to reach families with the lowest incomes. In addition, the minimum earnings requirement currently excludes families who experience job loss, and should be eliminated.⁴⁴

In order to boost caregivers’ income during their children’s early years of life—the most critical stage in a child’s development—Rep. DeLauro introduced the Young Child Tax Credit Act. It would expand the existing Child Tax Credit to include an additional benefit—delivered on a monthly basis—for families with children under the age of 3.⁴⁵

The Earned Income Tax Credit, or EITC, is one of the largest and most effective anti-poverty programs provided by the U.S. government. It fights poverty and increases labor force participation by boosting the earnings of low-income workers. However, many low-income Millennial workers are excluded from eligibility, either because they do not have a qualifying dependent or because they are younger than 25. Expanding the EITC to be available to all low-income workers 18 and older and increasing the credit available to workers without a qualifying dependent would greatly benefit Millennial workers and their families. Furthermore, according to a recent Center for American Progress analysis, higher wages for workers without a qualifying dependent under the EITC would also have the added benefit of reducing crime.⁴⁶ Expanding the EITC to workers 18 and older would also benefit lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer, or LGBTQ, Millennials in particular—more than 20 percent of same-sex couples under 25 are living in poverty and transgender people are nearly four times more likely to have a household income less than $10,000 per year than the population as a whole, despite having higher levels of education.⁴⁷

The Millennial generation faces unprecedented levels of student debt, which is more difficult for women to pay off due to pay disparities. Cassandra, 26, went to college because she wanted “a more secure financial future,” but now her student debt feels “insurmountable.”⁴⁸ Julianna tells a similar story about finishing graduate school, with $84,000 in student loan debt. She says, “I came back home and still couldn’t find a job in my field. I took a job that barely paid the bills, but still struggled.”⁴⁹ With debt hanging over them, many Millennials are putting off having children, delaying or forgoing larger investments such as houses, and saving less for their futures, which affects every area of their economic stability.

Millennial women access higher education at higher rates, but graduate to debt and a pay gap

Millennial women are more educated than Millennial men—36 percent of women aged 25–34 have a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared to 28 percent of men the same age.⁵⁰ Notably, women facing some of the steepest pay gaps—including black women, American Indian women, and Latinas—possess a bachelor’s degree or advanced degrees at greater rates than men of the same racial or ethnic group.⁵¹ Increased access to higher education for women is an important factor to consider in the context of a narrowing gender wage gap for younger workers; unlike previous generations, the educational attainment comes with a massive burden of student debt—an average of $37,000 for 2016 graduates.⁵² Students of color, especially black students, must borrow more and more often than white students in order to access higher education.⁵³ And data show that even much smaller debt burdens can lead to default, especially for black and Latino students who face pay gaps, lower graduation rates, less access to accumulated wealth, and less access to nonpredatory banking products.⁵⁴

Even as women access higher education at higher rates than men in their cohort, the wage gap persists, and when they graduate the pay gap makes student loan debt even more burdensome to pay off.⁵⁵ According to a Center for American Progress analysis, working women’s earnings 10 years after they first enrolled in public or private college are lower than working men’s just six years after they enrolled.⁵⁶ When the American Association of University Women analyzed the debt burden of 2008 graduates four years later who were working full time and did not pursue an additional degree, the results were striking. By 2012, male graduates had paid off 44 percent of their debt, whereas female graduates had only paid off 33 percent. Black women and Latinas of the same graduating class, who face steeper wage gaps than women overall, had paid off 9 percent and 3 percent of their debt, respectively.⁵⁷ Higher education boosts wages for workers across gender, race, and ethnicity and is a critical path to added economic stability for millions of Millennials—but stubborn gaps persist in pay despite educational attainment, which means that women, and especially women of color, carry a heavier, lengthier debt burden from a bachelor’s degree.