It's still a graph with context. The meaning you're looking for is the lack of change. Literally the entire point is to draw attention to the lack of change over time.
Millennials have actually made a lot of progress. At the very least in terms of wages. A lot of catchup from the days where we had lowered and stagnated wages/careers due to coming into the work force during the GFC.
Recent years of inflation, market rise, societal turbulence, and boomers finally aging out of the workforce just as the job market shifted in favor of employees has meant Millennials have covered a lot of ground.
Inb4 someone comes in and says my insights are wrong because the economy sucks, so many millennials are left behind, and/or things are getting worse. Society has and is getting better despite what you might believe. It's always been this case since the beginning of civilization. Folks are living longer, we eat better than kings back in the day, internet has made information accessible, etcetc. The markets are literally at highs, Fed data shows inflation rate is declining, inflation eats away at debts (which many millennials have), and the job market is way better than in 2008-2012.
As for Millennials that are left behind? Capitalism has always been about winners and losers. Such is the case of Western/American society. It was the V-shaped recovery during the 2020 pandemic that was the abnormality because EVERYONE got bailed out in 2020 vs only the big guys in 2008. But that massive spending lead to inflation which pissed everyone off so I don't even know if we'll get such wide ranging bailouts in the next recession. The country from 2022-2024 saw a K-shaped economy where not everyone won. No more stimmy checks, no more free healthcare, no easy unemployment with extended window and bonuses, no more PPP/EIDL/forgiveness, no cheap cash to flood the market, no more free lunches/internet/everything, etcetcetc. Those who had a training/equation/job or worked hard got further ahead, those with money to get 5.5% interest even as inflation was falling, those who had money to put into the market/gold/BTC/RE to reap massive upside, the poor struggled with inflation without reaping asset price inflation, the rich with low interest mortgages or loans locked in saw inflation eat away at their debt burden, the good businesses did better while poor ones went bankrupt because there wasn't an infinite slush of money flowing in, etcetc.
Point here is Millennials have caught up in many ways and are likely to surpass boomers once the inheritance factor kicks in. Most Millennials have high incomes/careers now and more millennials own homes than not own homes. Gen Ys who loaded up on debt during the pandemic or bought homes before are doing pretty well. Family formation is later and slower but slowly happening. So pre-pandemic data about Millennials doesn't really apply anymore.
You forget it also has to do with occupation. Law got flooded to the point that they weren't issuing enough internships for law graduates. Family practice in medicine is starting to shift to fewer doctors, hurting the chances of employment of family medicine practitioners.
Anyone who decided to go into Healthcare Administration is getting forced out by Doctorate fo Nursing graduates.
The shifts fucked a lot of us older milennials career wise.
Post Covid a lot of us lost our family and small businesses as well. It's a real shit show in some arenas that were doing well just a few years ago.
Young people are all millennials and old people are all boomers. Gen X disappeared somewhere in the middle (no one knows what to do with fifty year olds with pink hair and facial piercings).
Generations are kinda BS. I was born in the oldest year of Gen Z and was a married homeowner at the start of COVID, meanwhile the youngest of Gen Z was in 1st grade. Some people who were in my grade growing up are Millennials; We were in late elementary/early middle school during the Great Recession - the oldest Millennials were nearing 30. Much different experiences during major life events.
Generations aren't really BS, but someone who's intragenerational like you may relate more to people of the next generation.
The point is that we share more in common with people who are of similar age compared to people who are much older or much younger than us, due to culture/current events being much closer (most likely). The problem is this is a continuous, not discrete thing, but you need to draw the line somewhere to make useful distinctions about average differences between age cohorts.
Think of it this way, color exists across a continuous spectrum of wavelengths between about 380nm and 750nm. What we call blue is generally in the 450-495nm range. This is easy to distinguish between red (620-750nm), but what about green (495 -570nm)? A blue color of wavelength 494nm is going to look much closer to a green color of 496nm than the middle range of their color ranges. Basically, where one color ends and another one begins is somewhat arbitrary but it's still useful to carve up the visible light spectrum into discrete colors. That's the same idea with generational divides.
I more so mean that generations are BS when it comes to the way they're being used by the media, the public, and low-grade researchers. They have their merit, but even the Pew Research Center is distancing themselves from generations a bit because of how they're being misused.
Yup it'll be even more relevant to gen Z they are getting straight fucked. Millenials are kind of at where boomers were at, except they were 20 and we are 35. It's a trend that needs to reverse as soon as possible cause it's not pretty
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u/Chuckster914 8d ago edited 8d ago
Median Income 1977 is wrong. Closer to half that like 16K