Millennials And Gen Z Say Its Harder To Buy A House And Get Promoted Than It Was For Their Parents

This is a bad time to grow up.

Many adults ages 18 to 34 believe life is simply harder for them than for parents their age, according to a Youth & Money US survey conducted by CNBC and Generation Lab. More than half (55%) of the 1,039 people surveyed say it is now “much more difficult” to buy a home, and the situation in the office is no less bleak. 44% said it was more difficult to find a job, and 55% said it was. harder to find a job. get a promotion. .

“Baby boomers went to work for one company and in many cases stayed in the same job throughout their entire careers and retired with a pension that no longer existed,” says Blair DuQuesnay, a licensed financial planner and director companies. Riholtz Wealth Management consultant told CNBC .

The picture has long been bleak for young applicants whose college careers or early adulthood coincided with the recession; - Third general. In a recent Harris poll for USA Today , Z respondents said they were "further behind financially" than their predecessors.

Indeed, young people feel that "they can't achieve the American dream as their parents and grandparents envisioned it because it's unattainable," John Gerzema, executive director of the Harris Poll, told USA Today. "An entire generation that feels like it's growing up... in a world that's broken and conflicted."

This is hardly a surprise. In their short lives, young people have faced unrelenting inflation, a student debt crisis, intergenerational wealth inequality, and the erosion of the middle class. No wonder they are convinced that the American Dream is a relic of an earlier era. Even with a six-figure income, "it's really hard to achieve the American dream," SoFi CEO Anthony Noto said recently. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon supported him, calling the dream "stuck." A secure, well-paying job and a house with a white picket fence are symbols of the American dream, but both often elude younger generations.

Millennials make up the majority of home buyers, but many still can't afford a home.

Millennials, who are in the homebuying boom, “make up the biggest piece of the pie,” buying about 60% of homes with a mortgage in recent years, according to Redfin. But with mortgage rates hovering around 8% and home prices rising, housing affordability is at its lowest level since the Great Financial Crisis of 2008.

According to the NSA S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller National Home Price Index, the median price of a home in the United States exceeds $311,000; A buyer making a standard 20% down payment would have to pay more than $62,000 to buy the home. For sale. . That's made it expensive for many millennials, who have long struggled to save for a down payment while pursuing wealth creation outside the housing market.

“Millennials have never been able to fully participate in the real estate market like previous generations, but older millennials were and still are ready to start their own families,” Julia Wasserman, CEO of investment platform Home Construction. Team. - said Fortune . “However, millennials came of age during difficult economic times.”

Data released Wednesday by Fannie Mae also shows that 85% of consumers think now is a bad time to buy a home. While they don't break down this data by generation, other reports this year have shown that millennials and Gen Z are bearing the brunt of the housing market crisis. A separate study from Redfin shows that two in five Gen Z and millennials are working hard to save for a down payment.

Some millennials have turned to more creative ways to get the money they need to buy a home, such as declaring it directly on their wedding registry or living with their parents to save enough money.

It's more difficult than before

The job market is no less bleak than the housing market. The looming recession and its consequences have hampered millennials' early job prospects. During the Great Recession, the unemployment rate reached 10%, according to the Federal Reserve. Millennials are impacted by "different economic conditions and realities" than their parents, economist Ernie Tedeshki told Business Insider, adding that they have a harder time having a solid career foundation.

And just as workers who had lost their jobs (or never got one) finally began to get back on their feet, an epidemic struck, laying off many workers and pushing the unemployment rate to more than 14%.

While the coronavirus recession was short-lived, it also hit when Grand Zers graduated. Their prospects have improved significantly given their active participation in the Great Recession, but the job market has changed since then. There have been hundreds of thousands of layoffs, job freezes across all industries, and those lucky enough to remain profitable don't have to wait for wage increases to keep up with inflation. These are just problems. For younger workers, remote work hasn't helped and, depending on who you ask, may even prevent them from becoming CEOs in the future.

These years of economic crisis have left millennials and Gen Z deeply disillusioned with the cards they've been dealt, forcing them to make costly sacrifices to stay afloat. They are much more likely to return home than adults in previous generations. In a recent Experian survey, a majority of Gen Z and Millennials said the current state of the economy is "undermining their ability to be financially independent adults."

But "despite the pessimism about the nation and the world," there are "rays of optimism" among young workers, Generation Lab founder Cyrus Beschloss told CNBC. Specifically, 40% of Gen Z and Millennials said they are finding it easier to find economic opportunities outside of traditional jobs.

After all, we live in a hectic age, and with the advent of remote work, it's becoming easier to juggle multiple income streams. But it's still not as easy as it was for baby boomers.

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