Employment Trends: Young Adults and Older Workers

The Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce and The Generations Initiative have published a report analyzing the "divergent labor market trends for young and older adults since 1980." The major findings of the report entitled Failure to Launch: Structural Shift and the New Lost Generation are:

• In 1980, young adults reached the middle of the wage distribution at age 26; today, they do not reach the same point until age 30. For young African Americans, it has increased from age 25 to 33.
• Young adults’ labor force participation rate has returned to its 1972 level, a decline that started in the late 1980s and has accelerated since 2000.
• Older workers aren't crowding young adults out of the labor market: there are more job openings created from retirements per young person today than there were in the 1990s.
• The 2000s were a lost decade for young adults. Between 2000 and 2012, the employment rate for young fell from 84 percent to 72 percent.
• Opportunities have especially dwindled for young men, high school graduates, and young African Americans.

Read the full report and/or the executive summary.