Young people today are doing better than ever when it comes to employment and wages, so why don’t they feel like it? And why are they still relying on the Bank of Mom and Dad? That’s the question posed by a new study from Pew Research Center, with the puzzle of Gen Z being better off and still somehow struggling.
The data shows that Gen Z is doing much better than young people in the 1990s when it comes to wages, and as Gen X was largely responsible for parenting Gen Z, that means that many children are outperforming their parents. In 2023, the median pay of a person between the ages of 18 and 24, for instance, was about $20,000, compared to $15,462 in 1993, when adjusting for inflation. And those between the ages of 25 to 29 make nearly $10,000 more than the young adults of 30 years ago.
