The Youngest Generation of Workers Are Well Below The Median… And Are They Falling Behind Faster?

The last recession officially ended in the beginning of 2009 because incomes recovered for wealthy elites and their incomes have continued to grow rapidly ever since.  But the bottom half of Americans has hardly seen any recovery at all and are still near the depths of the recession, so the “economic recovery” has only been a robust recovery for a minority of Americans, but they are rich enough that their rapidly rising incomes pulls up the mean American income. 

A recent NYT editorial highlighted this and notes that the economic recovery is only particularly weak for the millennial generation.  This is the smartest, best educated generation in American history, and they are saddled with high debts, high unemployment, and lower real incomes than the previous generation (“generation X”) or their parents’ generation when the previous generations were their age. 

Is this the wave of the future?  Is this a sign that the newest generation of workers will see even higher inequality than the generations before them?  That is what the trend looks like so far. 

The median income only captures a little bit more of this sort of generational inequality than the statistics that US economy currently obsesses about–mean income.  But medianism at least promotes examining these kinds of income distribution issues. 

P.S.: The editorial also notes that the Fed does not care and the politicians have not cared about economic stimulus ever since profits returned for the elites on Wall Street back in the beginning of 2009.