In the US, the cost of the aftermath of the crisis has fallen heavily on young people, mainly due to bad policy responses to the crisis that we’ve described at length as it was happening: the failure to restructure bad loans (particularly mortgages) and impose costs on banks and investors, not just homeowners; the refusal to engage in enough fiscal spending, not just during the crisis but in deficit fights during the Obama Administration. That isn’t to say that other groups haven’t suffered too. Remember that older, less educated whites have suffered a decline in lifespans, which is unheard in anything other than post-USSR economic collapse. And even though some people in their 50s and 60s are sitting pretty, virtually all the ones I know outside McKinsey and top Wall Street circles are looking at working till they drop.
But young people have suffered in a very large way and don’t have any reason to expect much improvement. And the impact on them of diminished earnings early in their career is more serious than taking a hit for a similarly long period later in one’s working life. Various studies have found that lower earnings at the start of one’s career lead to diminished lifetime earnings.
Reader UserFriendly flagged two disheartening sightings on how young adults are suffering. As we’ll see, the report from Fortune is directionally correct in showing how much lower typical incomes are for young people now versus in the 1980s. However, they over-egged the pudding by taking a period of time that ended with pre-recession peak incomes that it took the better part of a decade to reach again.