There’s a generational pressure you possibly can nearly really feel buzzing by means of group chats and household dinners. Millennials and Gen Z are sometimes instructed they complain an excessive amount of about housing, jobs, debt, and the economic system. However after they push again with information and comparisons, one phrase surfaces time and again: “Boomers had it simpler.”
At first look, it sounds just like the form of factor each youthful technology says. However whenever you dig deeper into wages, value of residing, and alternative gaps, it begins to look much less like a whine and extra like a actuality examine. So, had been issues actually simpler for child boomers? Or are youthful generations simply struggling to regulate to the fashionable world?
A Have a look at the Numbers
It’s straightforward to romanticize the previous, however the numbers don’t lie. Within the Nineteen Seventies and Eighties, shopping for a home on a single earnings wasn’t simply potential. It was regular. The common residence value in 1970 was round $17,000. Even when adjusted for inflation, it’s nowhere close to immediately’s sky-high actual property costs. In the meantime, wages had been rising steadily, and school tuition wasn’t a monetary dying sentence.
As we speak’s youthful generations, in distinction, face stagnant wages, crushing pupil debt, astronomical lease, and the rising value of fundamentals like groceries, fuel, and childcare. A university diploma, as soon as a ticket to the center class, now typically results in years, typically a long time, of mortgage reimbursement with no assured payoff. Briefly, youthful generations aren’t lazy. They’re taking part in a a lot more durable sport.
The Job Market Isn’t What It Used to Be
Boomers got here into maturity throughout a time when jobs had been extra steady, pensions had been frequent, and employer loyalty was typically rewarded. The thought of staying with one firm for 30 years wasn’t a fantasy. It was a plan.
Now? The job market is much extra precarious. Gig work, contract roles, and job hopping are the brand new norm, and it’s not as a result of younger persons are flaky. Somewhat, it’s as a result of conventional profession ladders have eroded. Advantages like healthcare and retirement plans are more and more uncommon outdoors of company or authorities roles. And even then, burnout is rampant.
Youthful employees are sometimes pressured to commerce safety for flexibility, and even these working a number of jobs nonetheless battle to make ends meet. In a system the place loyalty is not rewarded and upward mobility is elusive, it’s no marvel younger persons are skeptical of recommendation like “simply work more durable.”
The Value of Freedom Has Gone Up
Boomers typically discuss pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, however these boots got here with fewer obstacles. School was reasonably priced, minimal wage had extra shopping for energy, and social applications had been extra sturdy. Beginning a household, shopping for a home, or touring the world felt attainable, not aspirational.
Evaluate that to immediately’s value of independence. Transferring out at 18 is now a luxurious, not a milestone. Hire alone can eat up greater than half a paycheck, and inflation has hit on a regular basis bills more durable than headline numbers typically present. Younger adults aren’t making an attempt to skip steps; the steps simply acquired steeper.
A Cultural Divide in Expectations
There’s additionally a philosophical cut up between generations. Many boomers had been taught to hunt safety, like getting a very good job, shopping for a home, and retiring with a pension. That path was supported by the financial circumstances of the time.
Youthful generations have grown up throughout recessions, housing crashes, and a pandemic. They’re extra skeptical of establishments, extra more likely to query conventional milestones, and extra open to redefining success. However that doesn’t imply they’re not working arduous. It simply means the world they’re working in has modified. So when boomers scoff at avocado toast or facet hustles, it’s much less about frivolity and extra about misunderstanding how survival seems in 2025.
Resentment or Actuality?
It’s straightforward to dismiss generational critiques as bitterness, however there’s worth in acknowledging how completely different the terrain has turn into. Boomers didn’t construct the system alone, and never all of them reside massive. Many are struggling too. However when those that did profit from simpler circumstances deny that privilege ever existed, it solely deepens the divide. It fuels resentment as a substitute of fostering empathy.
What youthful generations are actually asking for isn’t revenge. It’s recognition. Acknowledgment that sure, issues are more durable now. That no, it’s not at all times a matter of effort. And that perhaps, simply perhaps, the recommendation they’re getting must evolve together with the economic system.
Do you assume youthful generations are proper to say boomers had it simpler, or are they lacking one thing necessary? How can we bridge the generational divide?
Learn Extra:
Why Boomers Are Downsizing—and What Youthful Patrons Can Be taught From It
14 Nice Habits Child Boomers Nonetheless Do And So Ought to You
Riley is an Arizona native with over 9 years of writing expertise. From private finance to journey to digital advertising to popular culture, she’s written about the whole lot beneath the solar. When she’s not writing, she’s spending her time outdoors, studying, or cuddling together with her two corgis.
