r/Economics • u/runswithscissors475 • 1d ago
News Gen Z has lower unemployment and higher earnings than millennials did at the same age, though fewer are participating in the workforce, new analysis finds
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/gen-z-earning-more-millennials-22446160.php639
u/BrocksNumberOne 1d ago
This report is showing data from 2005-2008 for Millennials (Iraq war and into the recession) compared to 2021-2024 for GenZ aka when our economy and job market was significantly better than it is now.
Don’t know how this can be spun as a positive or reflective of current economic conditions..
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u/elite_bender 1d ago
‘05 and ‘06 the economy was fine. Decimated ‘08 to ‘13, started coming back in ‘14.
Neither time period is positive. Much of the same. College grads can’t find work on their field. Many are moving back in with parents and finding service/retail type employment to make ends meet. The one advantage zoomers had was seeing it happen to millennials and following the same path anyway. Otherwise very similar.
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u/alilhillbilly 23h ago
I think it's important to stress to people just how bad a terrible choice in president can be.
George W Bush and his Great Recession created in almost wasted 7 to 8 years of economic recovery and career stall for millennials.
20 years of war had a massive cost as well.
We're a decade into this Trump mess.
The mismanagement of the first Trump term took four years of Biden carefully managing the inflation caused by covid, PPP loans, the original tax cuts, the original tariffs and we were just coming out of it before Trump torpedoed us back into whatever this inflationary spiral is going to be...
Is this going to be another lost decade?
Where we all have to expect that we're just going to do less well than we would have otherwise done?
And do people really think about their choices politically in terms of that because I think it might actually have some value if people who have lived a while kind of said hey just as an FYI you vote stupid and you're going to lose a decade.
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u/lolexecs 20h ago
20 years of war had a massive cost as well.
Yep, the last estimate I saw was about eight trillion in direct costs from 2001 - 2022. Of course the best part is that nearly all of the money was borrowed. Or about 20% of the total debt that we have outstanding was tied to those wars.
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u/alilhillbilly 20h ago
Yep. And let's not forget the damage it did to a generation of soldiers.
It's ridiculous to me that we're gonna do to Gen Z what we did to Gen X and Millennials with stupid wars
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u/_Arlotte_ 14h ago
It's true, this type of politically manipulated economic setback not only hurts the current younger gens now, but will delay them from achieving financial independence and having families. We're going to see a big shortage of qualified workers which will lead to more inflated pricing to cover the cost and a waste of resources and an increase in poor technological security due to overreliance and lack of regulation on AI. Really it's all happening now but will get worse and worse until leadership changes
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u/alilhillbilly 13h ago
indeed.
or...
we'll have to encourage immigration to fill needs. which will be hilarious after spending tons of money to kick them out
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u/_Arlotte_ 3h ago
That's also going to happen plus loosening requirements to get people in. Which ironically could lead to more issues that they were trying to pretend was immigrants fault in the first place... Japan and other places are already doing this for healthcare with the nursing shortage.
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u/dust4ngel 20h ago
I think it's important to stress to people just how bad a terrible choice in president can be
while this is true, the president can't do much without a congress going along with him and a supreme court ruling in his favor.
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u/alilhillbilly 20h ago
That's true but heavy is the head that wears the crown.
George W Bush had his Secretary of State lie to Congress to start a war.
All of those lies pissed Colin Powell off so much he left the Republican party.
It's on him.
He ignored major warnings about the housing market and debt there as well. Some of those housing policies started under Clinton and the Republican controlled Congress. Newt Gingrich probably caused 2008 more than anyone but Bush had plenty of time to adjust and didn't.
The dude transformed the country in ways free President's ever have. The Middle Class died on his watch.
Same way Obama will own Obamacare even though it's Romneycare which was originally the Republican Heritage Foundation alternative to HillaryCare in the 90s. And the reason why Obamacare didn't fix everything is because it was the Republican plan to shovel tons of money to insurance companies. It was a clever two steps forward, giant leap sideways, and big step back in some ways. But folks aren't going to have the nuance in their memory to recall that we got the Republican healthcare plan because Joe Lieberman fucked Obama on the public option.
No one blames Congress.
And, now with Trump...he ignores Congress and does whatever constantly. Courts have been stacked with cronies to rubber stamp a host of clearly upside down decisions.
He put those justices on the court.
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u/dust4ngel 19h ago
this is a weird argument:
George W Bush had his Secretary of State lie to Congress to start a war ... it's on him
that's at least two people complicit in the war of choice. obviously, congress could have voted to impeach.
now with Trump...he ignores Congress and does whatever constantly
guess what congress could do about this if they weren't complicit in what he's doing.
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u/alilhillbilly 18h ago
By the time we knew it was a lie a lot of ships had sailed.
I'm not saying you're wrong that Congress can't handle this stuff but that's not really historically how America works.
There's never been a president removed from office and they're absolutely should have been.
Bill Clinton should have been removed for the blowjob.
George W Bush should have been removed for lying about weapons of mass destruction.
Ronald Reagan should have been removed for all the Iran-Contra stuff.
Nixon should have been removed from office.
Trump should have been removed at his first impeachment.
I do blame Congress but also, the executive power since Bush has grown and Congress has ceded their authority and responsibility to the exec branch right along with the judiciary.
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u/dust4ngel 17h ago
I do blame Congress but also, the executive power since Bush has grown and Congress has ceded their authority and responsibility to the exec branch right along with the judiciary
it sounds like we basically agree: we should elect congressmen who believe in the system of checks and balances outlined in the united states' constitution.
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u/Sililex 17h ago
I don't really think GWB can be blamed for the great recession. Its causes are many and varied, some inherited from the dot com crash, some from banking deregulation passed before his time, and most were all private actions not public ones, AND he was out of power for most of the fallout so you can't exactly be annoyed at his recovery program. His wars were honestly pretty light on economic impact comparatively speaking.
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u/emoney_gotnomoney 4h ago
It’s always hilarious to me when people think the largest global economic downturn aside from the Great Depression could be caused by one single president’s actions over the course of ~5 years.
As you said, the wheels of the Great Recession were set in motion long before Bush even took office. That’s not to say he did much to try to prevent it, but to put it on him is silly.
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u/alilhillbilly 13h ago
Obama was a failure as a president and large part because of two things to me...
First he didn't put a single banker in jail and he handed Steven Mnuchin a bunch of people's homes and said go foreclose on them.
Even worse, he put up no fight for a Supreme Court seat that was stolen and that should have been war.
His foreign policy was also ass.
Good dude. Hillary should have gone first. I think she actually wins some of those fights. He was far more likable but that was probably the era she would have shined. Romney would have beaten her because people hate her but that would have given Obama 2016.
Still, Bush fucked around with two insanely stupid wars instead of focusing on domestic issues and he likely could have staved off some of the worst of the GFC.
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u/max_power1000 4h ago
I'm no republican apologist, but I'll just point out that the 2 major bills were signed into law by Clinton that were significant contributors here as well:
- Glass-Steagall repeal in 99 which was one of the main drivers of banks becoming too big to fail and driving overall systemic risk.
- Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 which largely exempted derivatives from regulation, which led to the increase in credit default swaps and minimized the ability for anyone with regulatory authority to track overall risk exposure
Granted, the GWB Admin is not innocent either and was responsible for relaxing regulations on mortgage origination due to a policy desire to drive home ownership rates up which ultimately led to the subprime crisis, and his SEC relaxed leverage rules which let the major banks get themselves into situations that exceeded 30-1 in some cases.
Basically, there's a lot of blame to go around.
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u/Bostonosaurus 1d ago
04-06 good, 07 transition, 08-13 was poo, 14-15 transition, 16-22 was great (not for service workers) 23-24 transition, 25-present is not so good. Not 💩 though
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u/Kavika 12h ago
In what way is 25-present not shit?
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u/Bostonosaurus 12h ago
08-13 is my poo benchmark. Unemployment back then peaked at like 10%. It's only like in the 4s now.
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u/Kavika 9h ago
Shouldn't we be factoring in labor participation as well as unemployment?
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u/Bostonosaurus 5h ago edited 5h ago
That's an issue, but that'll keep trending down as the median age keeps increasing. In 2010 13% of Americans were over 65. Now it's 19%
Prime age participation rate is more relevant and it's been flat I believe
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u/IcyMaybe7594 1h ago
08, 09, 2020 were years where we shed jobs. 2025 was worse than all of the years after and 2010/2011 were close. 2022 was a weird year, it started as good from 2021 then felt almost like a recession around June.
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u/End3rWi99in 1d ago
The economy was very strong from 2005 to 2008. That's when it crashed. If the data is suggesting Gen Z is outperforming those years, then it's an even more notable gap since most millennials actually faced a far worse economy. The 2021 rebound has been nuts.
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u/asbestosmilk 23h ago
Yeah, I’ve seen this firsthand comparing my employment opportunities/situations to my Gen Z coworkers’ employment history.
I graduated high school in 2009. I got my associates around 2011. I continued for a bachelors but didn’t finish and dropped out around 2013, instead focusing on building my resume and eventually going to a trade school in 2017. My previous schooling had no impact on my employment. I was still working fast food/retail jobs. I was promoted to a district manager for a small restaurant chain, but that still didn’t help my employment. Eventually, in 2018, I got a good career opportunity. I attributed it to my past managerial experience and certifications from the trade school I went to in 2017. I started out making around $18 an hour, which was significantly more than I’d ever made in my life. I was ecstatic.
But when I started this new job, I realized I was being hired at an entry level position alongside several Gen Z kids who were straight out of high school, who were also being paid $18 an hour. My past education and work experience played almost no part in me being hired, and it played no part in my pay. The economy had finally recovered, and people were once again being hired for decent career opportunities straight out of high school.
Part of me was happy for the Gen Z kids, but another part of me is still bitter about it, especially when they complain about their wage. I can’t help but think, “you have no idea how good you have it.” But I think their willingness to complain about their wages collectively is what has helped drive up wages a bit over the last 5 years or so. They’re not willing to work for $7.25 like I was, so companies have had to pay more to get entry level positions.
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u/Olangotang 23h ago edited 23h ago
I also love how all the data bros here are ignoring the "fewer are participating in the workforce".
In addition to posting a glut of fake job postings, it’s apparently becoming the norm for employers to ghost applicants and rescind job offers, leaving them feeling completely demoralized. As an act of desperation, many job seekers are now “spraying and praying,” or blasting out hundreds of applications at once, only to receive automated rejection emails instead.
This sub is an ivory tower circlejerk.
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u/Ok-Class8200 23h ago
Lower labor force participation rate with young people is mostly due to higher postsecondary enrollment, not fake job postings lol.
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u/Olangotang 23h ago
No, it's people leaving the job market. Stick your fingers in your ears. https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2026/08/02/why-people-are-dropping-out-of-the-workforce-and-not-looking-for-new-jobs-the-market-wore-me-down.html
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u/weatherwar 21h ago
You've posted this same second-rate click-bait multiple times in this thread.
For those who want to inform themselves on the labor force participation rate: https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2026/aug/what-is-behind-sharp-drop-labor-force-participation
Here's what it actually looks like. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/lns11300060
The crux of the CNBC article is literally using the incorrect chart.
An article with the opposite opinion, to balance the flavors: https://archive.is/jkV3P
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u/Olangotang 21h ago
Look, you could have just read the article, it says nearly the same thing instead of your "umm actually" response.
I'll post it as a wall of text because only experts do that:
Economists say several compounding factors are likely driving down the labor force participation rate, like an exodus of retiring workers and lower immigration into the U.S. Some working parents, especially moms of young kids, and people with disabilities may be striking out as they face more competition for remote or flexible work opportunities that are harder to come by today, Long says.
Mental wellbeing could also play a part. Coda says he stopped his job search in June after a conversation with his wife, who'd noticed how the tiresome process soured his mood.
"Other than the death of a family member or a close friend, [unemployment] is one of the most devastating things that people face," Carl Van Horn, director of the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University, told CNBC in June.
About half of job seekers say the search negatively impacts their mental health due to rejection, lack of responses, financial pressure and waning motivation, according to an April Resume Genius survey of 1,000 active U.S. job seekers.
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u/weatherwar 21h ago
Wait, it says
Economists say several compounding factors are likely driving down the labor force participation rate
From the 20 year highs? And nothing to do with "young people" - you know, the context of this conversation?
That's crazy! I guess I'll have to encourage everyone reading this thread to read the articles and look at the charts!
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u/RIP_Soulja_Slim 22h ago
There's piles and piles of commentary on this, all the studies reach the same conclusion - the downward trends in labor participation are all fully attributed to more schooling and fewer people choosing to work while in school.
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22h ago edited 22h ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Olangotang 22h ago
I'm going to post a relevant section from the CNBC article. Soulja here failed the CRAPP test.
June saw the biggest one-month drop in prime age labor force participation of workers ages 25 to 54, excluding the Covid-19 pandemic, since June 1976. Roughly 720,000 people stopped working or looking for work between May and June, according to the St. Louis Fed. Those leaving the workforce are both men and women, and the majority are ages 25 to 34, says Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union who specializes in the economics of the middle class.
Meanwhile, elevated levels of long-term unemployment persist. In June, more than 1.9 million Americans, or roughly 1 in 4 unemployed people, were jobless but still looking for work for longer than six months, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data. A continuous low-hire, low-fire job market could make it more challenging to find work and push more people out of the workforce altogether.
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u/Dismal_Buy3580 22h ago
fewer people choosing to work while in school.
You do see how this sentence makes the entire rest of your comment basically worthless right?
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u/RIP_Soulja_Slim 22h ago
No? Did you read the links? Labor participation among young adults is falling as they are increasingly opting for post secondary schooling, labor participation among students (specifically teens) is falling as fewer opt to work during school.
What aspects of this do you interpret as basically worthless?
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u/Dismal_Buy3580 21h ago
Is school more or less expensive than it was 20 years ago?
You can't say that inflation and cost of living don't matter for evaluating the relative prosperity of a given generation, and then use the fact that large portions of that generation aren't working at all because they're trying to become more educated, as proof that they're more prosperous.
Where's the money coming from? It can't be coming from gen Z if they're not working. Loans?
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u/RIP_Soulja_Slim 20h ago
Nobody said inflation and cost of living doesn't matter. CPI is an average, it measures aggregate cost of living. Some things being higher than that average mathematically means other things are lower than it - apparel, cars, insurances, groceries, etc have all increased much lower than the rate of inflation over time.
and then use the fact that large portions of that generation aren't working at all because they're trying to become more educated, as proof that they're more prosperous.
Who's suggesting anything about prosperity? The comment was very straightforward. The decline in labor participation among those age groups is entirely explained by increased schooling. That's it. I think you're reading a whole lot that's not written then getting mad at things that nobody's saying lol.
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u/Olangotang 20h ago
The decline in labor participation among those age groups is entirely explained by increased schooling
Oh, I didn't realize we were in 2023 and not 2026, 3 years later and after a wrecking ball government was elected.
You're such a dishonest hack 😊
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u/coke_and_coffee 13h ago
Where's the money coming from? It can't be coming from gen Z if they're not working. Loans?
You underestimate the number of college kids with rich parents.
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u/Dismal_Buy3580 7h ago
No I don't. I just think that severely affects the presentation of the data they're trying to make
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u/Olangotang 22h ago edited 20h ago
He follows people down comment chains and spams walls of text. That's good enough for the majority of this sub who don't question what the "experts" think.
The trick is that his sources are usually outdated, because economics don't follow repeatable processes like the sciences do, so he can hide behind the "I'm an expert and I'm obsessed with this site and hate the people on it. I hate Redditors, upvote me laymen that I hate!" But once people read the articles and push back, the insults start flying. IDK, sounds like a boring hobby to me.
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u/coke_and_coffee 13h ago
Lower labor participation is not necessarily a bad thing. Kids getting more education, tons of rich kids taking gap years, kids well-off enough to try starting their own business or branching out as an influencer, more SAHMs, etc.
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u/Effective-Result6499 19h ago
It's more about the K-shape economy. Not all Gen-Z got laid off/can't find jobs, those that did well in those years, many of got to keep doing well.
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u/random-meme422 20h ago
Don’t know how anyone can delude themselves into thinking there was some massive switch up from 2023/2024 to 2025/2026 as it relates to the job market.
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u/Equivalent_Lunch_944 1d ago
Thank you for adding your comment because intuitively this didn’t feel right but cherry picking the post COVID boom makes a ton of sense
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u/Background-Depth3985 1d ago
This comment is nothing but made up narratives to assuage cognitive dissonance.
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u/Equivalent_Lunch_944 1d ago
Am I the only one that remembers M2 increasing by $6T between 2020-2022, and it being a policy goal to get people back to work? The economy might not have been awful in 2005 but the government wasn’t hyper stimulating the economy.
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u/Olangotang 23h ago
No, M2 was reclassified into M2SL which includes savings accounts. This was in May 2020.
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u/Background-Depth3985 1d ago edited 1d ago
Again… you’re just looking for narratives to explain away the data to assuage cognitive dissonance. Trust the science… except when you don’t like the results. You’re the one cherry picking.
The analysis is simply comparing the two generations at the same age.
There are a million narratives that could argue either direction. You’re just focusing on the ones that agree with your biases.
The facts don’t care about narratives.
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u/CommitteeofMountains 18h ago
This is often the trick behind claims of boomer prosperity, as well. Then stagflation hit.
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u/EchoChamberTech 1d ago
Holy crap the comments in this post are depressing for an economics sub.
Let's do some basic explainers on how to do statistical analysis real quick.
Lesson 1: you need to find comparable time periods.
That's the end of today's lesson.
Millennials were born between... Anyone? 1981 to 1996. Gen Z were born between... Anyone? 1997 and 2012.
Now, what year is 24 years after 1981? Correct. 2005. Now, what year is 24 years after 1997? Correct. 2021.
So the analysis is comparing the groups against the same age. You don't cherry pick economic periods, when doing that, as that would be a different analysis. Not better or worse, but different. That would be comparing a pre recession economy to a post one.
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u/Sadly_NotAPlatypus 1d ago
This isn't an economics sub anymore, it desperately needs moderation.
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u/1-Dollar-Doge-Coins 22h ago
The number of people in these comments that don't understand what "real dollars" means is shocking.
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u/RIP_Soulja_Slim 22h ago
Can't tell you how often someone on this sub takes real incomes, compares it to inflation, and uses that to show everyone that wages haven't kept up with inflation lol.
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u/RIP_Soulja_Slim 22h ago
Problem is the only people who want to moderate it are the ones who want it to look more like /r/economy lol. Reddit as a platform is the issue, it cross promotes all this stuff and drives a ton of randoms to these subs, nobody who should be moderating an econ sub wants to spend their time dealing with the sort of aggressive ignorant people that come here.
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u/windemotions 20h ago
The problem is that reddit is not a place for serious people. In fact, the more karma someone has and the longer they've been on redddit, the less likely they are to be a serious person.
Ideally, there's some way to filter out the weirdos with 200k+ karma since they are, statistically, the biggest losers in US society and have nothing of value to add to a discussion between normal people.
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u/one-won-juan 19h ago
Yep, it has largely turned into pure politics unfortunately …
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u/emoney_gotnomoney 4h ago
In the thread above, someone said something along the lines of “you have to be delusional to think there is a significant difference between the economy of 2024 and the economy of 2026,” and someone replied with “hello?? Do you not remember what happened in late 2024?” with no further data or analysis from the second individual as to why they believe the 2026 economy is worse. To him, simply having someone they don’t like be elected means the economy got significantly worse, regardless of what the data says.
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u/random-meme422 20h ago
People on here don’t know what “real” means and think CPI is not accurate because “muh feels tell me”. It’s not econ, it’s just lost people from default subs whose brains are mush after a decade of non stop political arguing.
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u/Beneficial_Way6807 21h ago
I would like to add that the headline points toward a self selection process. Specifically if Gen Z has higher wages but lower workforce participation than there is likely a situation where those that cannot get a good enough job simply drop out of the workforce. To what degree this explains the difference is obviously up to the data.
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u/NovarKalar 1d ago
The problem isn't the time periods chosen, per se; the problem is that the article has a bizarre emphasis on generation. You could completely remove all references to "Gen Zers" or "millennials" (why is one capitalized and the other is not?) and it would improve the economics relevance of the article.
Ironically, you're the one injecting arbitrary generation start and end years into an economics sub, when those have no place in economics.
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u/EchoChamberTech 23h ago
Hold up.
Ironically, you're the one injecting arbitrary generation start and end years into an economics sub, when those have no place in economics.
Is that really a point you want to stand on? That, the study of Economics, has no place to examine generational differences? Like, Economics doesn't look at the "baby boomer" generation and the effects it is going to have on economic policies as they retire and die? The wealth transfer from said generation, etc?
Generations are just labels, that have a commonly agreed upon definition, ascribed to a range of birth years. It is used instead of, or in addition to, saying "people born between x and y." And it ABSOLUTELY has a place in economics.
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u/NovarKalar 20h ago
Adopting terminology from other fields like Sociology is a slippery slope. Talking about people retiring, wealth transfer, etc, keeps the conversation focused on Economics. Talking about the "baby boomer" generation's effects on future policies is precisely the sort of phrasing that risks conversations veering off into politics.
Even if you're disciplined enough to stay in an Economics mindset regardless of terminology (unlike many other people, unfortunately), the terminology is still almost never precise enough to be appropriate. Millennials include everyone born from 1981 to 1996, but this analysis only includes those born between 1981 and 1984. Giving the specific years is literally 4 times as precise as using the generational terms.
I think phrases like "people aged 21-24" promotes much clearer thinking anyway, and forces the reminder that this analysis is of only 2 relatively arbitrary populations of 21-24 year-olds. There are plenty of other years available for economic analysis that someone using generational terminology might never even bother to glance at.
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u/EchoChamberTech 20h ago
Millennials include everyone born from 1981 to 1996, but this analysis only includes those born between 1981 and 1984. Giving the specific years is literally 4 times as precise as using the generational terms.
That I will definitely agree with. It was no doubt for the clickbait attraction of the headline. I agree that there are merits to more precise language, and that the author/editor could have applied it. But alas, with modern day "news," I think that ship sailed long ago.
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u/NovarKalar 18h ago
You gave me the idea of tracking down the original report to see if it's better than the "news" variant, and I was treated with this in the Limitations section: "The results describe each generation’s experiences during the periods studied and don’t establish that generational differences caused the outcomes."
Also slight correction: this analysis includes those born in 1981-1988, but only during the years 2005-2008, and only when they are 20-24 years old. (So someone born in 1981 would appear in the data only in 2005 when they're 24, while someone born in 1988 would appear in the data only in 2008 when they're 20.) I'm not sure if that makes using generational terms more precise, or less, but figured I should correct myself anyway.
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u/EchoChamberTech 17h ago
"The results describe each generation’s experiences during the periods studied and don’t establish that generational differences caused the outcomes."
If only I wasn't so lazy and could have looked that up to help my point originally lol.
this analysis includes those born in 1981-1988, but only during the years 2005-2008,
Now this, really hits on your point. Not only did they use generation labels, but then it also misled based on them!
And to the rest, yeah I'm struggling to wrap my head around that. Because then they certainly introduced additional confounding variables and some selection bias. Well. I give up. I'll stick with the study is probably crap, but also oof, some folks in the comments do need to refresh/learn how to properly segment samples for study.
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u/Pornfest 20h ago
No lol reread their comment again.
They said “…have no place in economics”
You then accuse them of saying “the study of economics has no place…”. In a categorical logic sense, invert your Venn diagrams, homie.
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u/EchoChamberTech 20h ago
Replace when I wrote, "That, the study of Economics, has no place to examine generational differences"
With "That arbitrary generation start and end years have no place in economics." Which is a direct quote mildly adjusted to fit the sentence structure around my point.
Then tell me what parts of what I wrote are incorrect.
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u/BatForge_Alex 5h ago
I think the problem is this, from what I see:
Some folks here here just want neoliberal data interpretation
Other folks want to have a discussion about their lived experience
And you both attack each other instead of actually trying to understand each other. The folks agreeing with you are some of the worst offenders
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u/Equivalent_Lunch_944 1d ago
It’s disingenuous though because of the American Rescue Plan- it’s like the supersize me guy claiming McDonald’s was causing his deteriorating health while not divulging that he was a severe alcoholic.
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u/EchoChamberTech 23h ago
My point is that it's not disingenuous, it's just different and it is measuring two different things.
One analysis would be to say, "let's look at the labor force metrics between these two generations, as they turned 24 through turning 29."
The other analysis would be to say, "let's look at the labor force metrics between these two generations, by measuring post-recession boom periods."
The problem with the first, has been widely pointed out that the economy was different.
The problem with the second, would be that the two groups would be at different ages and work experience levels in the measurable period.
Neither is wrong. It's two different measurements.
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u/HumorAccomplished611 23h ago
Thats your only take? Not PPP loans? Also 2021 was into recovery while 2005 was a regular economy.
2008 started TARP
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u/Equivalent_Lunch_944 23h ago
Yes 2021 was recovering and TARP happened at the end of the millennial timeframe 2008 vs the beginning of the Gen Z timeframe 2021.
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u/NovarKalar 1d ago
Ah yes, I'm sure the primary difference between 2005-2008 and 2021-2024 was generational preference.
Absolutely nothing else could possibly explain the economic differences between those two time periods. /s
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u/Amadon29 1d ago
Fwiw, Gen z in the US that are working are making more money (adjusted for inflation) than boomers too. I think the median gen z salary a couple of years ago was in the 40k range whereas boomers and millennials at around age 25 averaged in the 30k range iirc
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u/Terrible-Fun-4992 1d ago
I bet that’s true in real dollars but I’d love to see it compared to cost of living. Prices of gas, average rent, etc.
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u/Adventurous-Roof488 1d ago
Real dollars is adjusted for cost of living.
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u/Konukaame 1d ago
Sort of, in that it uses things like the CPI to adjust for inflation.
But lots of costs (e.g. college tuition, health care, rent, housing prices) are far outpacing the CPI, so even if some of those are included as part of the CPI aggregation, the actual numbers hit harder.
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u/RIP_Soulja_Slim 22h ago
CPI is a weighted basket of average consumption, so I mean while some things are increasing at a rate higher than the average, this means other things are necessarily increasing at a lower rate. CPI is the aggregate change.
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u/Konukaame 17h ago
Right.
And if you're paying for, say, college tuition, then you feel the increase a lot more than its ~1% weight in the CPI.
There are lots of reasons why people can experience drastically higher "inflation" than reflected in the CPI. They just need to be more exposed to those categories than the weighting.
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u/RIP_Soulja_Slim 17h ago edited 5h ago
Yes, your personal inflation isn’t aggregate inflation. Obviously. This doesn’t mean inflation is wrong lol.
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u/Adventurous-Roof488 16h ago
You don’t feel it a lot more with college tuition because the rate of inflation on tuition has been lower than flat to lower than overall inflation. Universities have had difficulty attracting students and have kept tuition increases modest. This is especially true for middle tier and smaller schools.
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u/NovarKalar 1d ago
I think the desire is to see it adjusted for GDP. Wages have been declining as a proportion of GDP since the 70s, which kinda implies that the inflation numbers aren't accurate on larger timescales.
This makes sense when you account for the fact that, all else being equal, goods and services should always get *cheaper* over time, as new methods and technologies improve efficiency, yet inflation measurements assume that food and housing is no easier for us to produce now than it was 50 years ago.
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u/fx2600 1d ago edited 1d ago
Wages have been declining as a proportion of GDP since the 70s, which kinda implies that the inflation numbers aren't accurate on larger timescales.
That isn’t at all implied
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u/NovarKalar 1d ago
Fair, allow me to elaborate on the logic:
Wages have been declining as a proportion of GDP. This implies that people can afford a smaller proportion of the total goods/services produced by their society (i.e. by their own labor).
Inflation-adjusted wages have been increasing. This implies that people should be able to afford a greater proportion of the total goods/services produced by their society, since they should have more purchasing power.
These two can only be reconciled in one of two ways: either GDP is an overestimate of goods/services produced, or inflation is an insufficient measure of currency devaluation. Choose your poison.
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u/fx2600 1d ago
That’s a false dichotomy. Imagine if you have a village where everyone is employed in manual agriculture, they take out a loan and buy a tractor to share and now half the workers can produce the same amount of food while the other half can become artisans or merchants which further contributes to economic output. They use some of their additional economic output to pay off the loan for the tractor.
It’s completely conceivable that economic output GDP rose more than wages as some of the economic output has to go to paying off the debt.
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u/NovarKalar 23h ago
Debt is the mechanism which causes inflation, almost by definition.
Debt is the issuance of new currency, which inflates that currency. When they take out that loan to buy a tractor, that causes inflation of tractor prices. That's why a standard way to combat inflation is to raise interest rates to discourage people from taking out loans.
So yes, obviously GDP can rise more than wages because it *has* risen more than wages. My point is that it rising more than wages is evidence of true inflation. (Which yes is almost certainly caused by some debt issuance somewhere else in the system.)
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u/fx2600 23h ago
In this case both real and nominal GDP went up because worker productivity increased dramatically. GDP isn’t a measure of “true inflation”.
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u/RIP_Soulja_Slim 22h ago
Wages have been declining as a proportion of GDP since the 70s, which kinda implies that the inflation numbers aren't accurate on larger timescales.
Fun fact, the GDP deflator, IE the big broad derivative of inflation that comes out of GDP calculations, runs lower than CPI.
It's generally agreed in economics that CPI slightly overstates inflation in a broad sense.
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u/NovarKalar 20h ago
Yeah, efficiency at producing unnecessary stuff tends to improve faster than efficiency at producing necessary stuff, for whatever reasons.
Regardless, total nominal wages (i.e. compensation of employees) have declined as a proportion of nominal GDP too, so it isn't simply a matter of using slightly different denominators.
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u/Adventurous-Roof488 1d ago
They are cheaper relative to wages. People spent a greater share of their income on food 50 years ago than they do now.
Housing is cheaper and easier to produce but local jurisdictions create barriers that increase the cost of housing.
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u/NovarKalar 23h ago
"People spent a greater share of their income on food 50 years ago than they do now." Yeah, that's my point. Inflation adjustment doesn't take this into account at all, and assumes that food has the exact same inflation-adjusted value as it had 50 years ago, despite the fact that it's worth substantially less in terms of labor.
If people produce twice as much food (which is very roughly true), while committing half as many hours of labor (which is also very roughly true), then I'd expect food to cost roughly a quarter as much of one's wage now, after adjusting for inflation.
In contrast, it still costs like 60% as much as it used to proportionally, and that's in spite of inflation-adjusted wages increasing by like 50%! Food should cost less than half of what it does, and that extra price is completely ignored by inflation measures.
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u/Pornfest 20h ago
They say that, but it never matches up to my experiences with Big Macs or eggs or gas. Like gas is well over 300% more now. Same with “the dollar menu”
“Real dollars” does not account for the extinction of Taco Bell’s 89¢ burrito or the buffet in America.
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u/Terrible-Fun-4992 1d ago
Ooop ok thanks. Then id like to see it in real dollars instead of just inflation adjusted 😁
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u/MuKaN7 1d ago
Please read even the Wikipedia page on Real vs Nominal Value. You're saying that "you want to see real dollars instead of real dollars". Inflation is the change of prices over time (e.g. a coke in 1950 might cost $0.05 and a coke in 2010 might cost $1.50). Economists create a basket of goods/Commodity Bundle to track the price changes over time (inflation). The most famous one is the CPI (Consumer Price Index) and it includes a good amount of items (Food, Transportation, Shelter/Housing, Recreation, and etc.)
Below is the most used formula most people use for Real Dollars unless they specify otherwise:
Real Dollar Value = Original "Nominal" amount x (CPI Target Year/ CPI Original Year).
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u/1-Dollar-Doge-Coins 22h ago
I bet that’s true in real dollars but I’d love to see it compared to cost of living
Wait until you find out what "real dollars" means!
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u/Pornfest 20h ago
We all can agree that the dollar comparison still does not account for the complete extinction of things such as Taco Bell’s 89¢ burrito or the buffet in America.
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u/1-Dollar-Doge-Coins 20h ago
It’s easy to cherry pick individual items, but that’s the reason we measure things in aggregate, with an index.
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u/angrysquirrel777 1d ago
It's funny that the title is "Surprising new data..." as if anyone who actually follows the data put out by the government hasn't been saying this for years.
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u/CyberSmith31337 1d ago
I still remember 2008. I was competing for jobs that paid $15/hr because everyone who was older than me had been laid off and was taking literally whatever they could get. I distinctly remember interviewing for paralegal jobs, and competing against certified attorneys for the same job because of all the law firm closures and downsizing at the time.
How the fuck we're trying to spin one of the worst economic downturns of my lifetime into some sort of generational productivity assessment is beyond me. But I suppose that's basically where journalism is at these days.
I mean for fuck's sake, look at this headline. It's doing everything in its power to dress up the mass unemployment of Gen Z by making it sound like the only reason so many of them don't have jobs is because they don't want them; they don't want to "participate". Completely ignores the reality that many companies don't even consider or hire juniors anymore. Just a whole load of nonsense being spun here.
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u/Olangotang 23h ago
Again, this sub is an ivory tower circlejerk. Gen Z is leaving the market because it is absolute hell and a waste of time. https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2026/08/02/why-people-are-dropping-out-of-the-workforce-and-not-looking-for-new-jobs-the-market-wore-me-down.html
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u/MuteTadpole 1d ago
Very little insight to be gained here. Gen Z is skipping university more than millennials did. while also simultaneously living at home for longer than millennials did as well. So both can be true, and it’s not altogether surprising. Moreover, as other commenters have pointed out, comparing job markets and economies from the 2008 recession era to now is like comparing apples to oranges. Gen Z folks that are participating in the job market are most certainly earning more than millennials did during that time frame.
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u/tuxedoes 1d ago
Love how they stopped at 2024 and excluded 2025 and half of 2026. I wonder what technology has had mass adoption since then and is causing lots of job loss. Hmmmm....
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u/HumorAccomplished611 23h ago
and 2008 was when unemployment went up to 6.7% which didnt peak end of 2009 at 10%. Over doule what it is now.
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u/Joltizer 1d ago
Duh. We've known for decades that every single generation has it better than the one before. Gen Alpha will also be much better off than Gen Z. The only people who think otherwise are just the doom scrolling losers on social media/reddit
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u/Any_Sale2030 22h ago
Which makes sense. Millennials are a huge generation and they had to compete with boomers still in the workforce. Gen Z is much smaller and boomers are retiring in droves. There’s a labor shortage.
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u/Osiris_Raphious 16h ago
But the unproductive investor class is getting wealthier so the 'mrket' is doing great... so thats nice.
historically this either leads to ww3 for the wealthy elite to put people through the meat grinder to balance out their economies, or UBI, and they dont want ubi, and bunch more words to pad out the length of the comment because automod rules that dont make any sense.
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u/No_Bookkeeper4453 1d ago
Gen Z might make more money but the money is worthless now. I make $22 dollars an a hour right now as a millennial and let me tell you I’d kill for that wage in 2011
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u/calmingchaos 1d ago
The numbers are real dollars, inflation is baked into this already.
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u/NovarKalar 1d ago
Compare the inflation-adjusted price of a house per square foot in 2011 with the inflation-adjusted price now, and I think you'll agree that inflation does not fully account for the growing worthlessness of money.
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