There’s a generational stress you may virtually really feel buzzing by means of group chats and household dinners. Millennials and Gen Z are sometimes informed 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 sort of factor each youthful era says. However whenever you dig deeper into wages, value of dwelling, and alternative gaps, it begins to appear much less like a whine and extra like a actuality verify. So, have been issues actually simpler for child boomers? Or are youthful generations simply struggling to regulate to the fashionable world?
A Take a look at the Numbers
It’s straightforward to romanticize the previous, however the numbers don’t lie. Within the Seventies and Nineteen Eighties, shopping for a home on a single revenue 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 right this moment’s sky-high actual property costs. In the meantime, wages have been rising steadily, and faculty tuition wasn’t a monetary loss of life sentence.
Right now’s youthful generations, in distinction, face stagnant wages, crushing scholar debt, astronomical lease, and the rising value of fundamentals like groceries, gasoline, and childcare. A school diploma, as soon as a ticket to the center class, now usually results in years, typically many years, of mortgage reimbursement with no assured payoff. Briefly, youthful generations aren’t lazy. They’re taking part in a a lot tougher sport.
The Job Market Isn’t What It Used to Be
Boomers got here into maturity throughout a time when jobs have been extra steady, pensions have been widespread, and employer loyalty was usually rewarded. The concept of staying with one firm for 30 years wasn’t a fantasy. It was a plan.
Now? The job market is way extra precarious. Gig work, contract roles, and job hopping are the brand new norm, and it’s not as a result of younger individuals are flaky. Quite, it’s as a result of conventional profession ladders have eroded. Advantages like healthcare and retirement plans are more and more uncommon exterior of company or authorities roles. And even then, burnout is rampant.
Youthful staff 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 surprise younger individuals are skeptical of recommendation like “simply work tougher.”
The Value of Freedom Has Gone Up
Boomers usually speak about pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, however these boots got here with fewer limitations. School was reasonably priced, minimal wage had extra shopping for energy, and social applications have been extra strong. Beginning a household, shopping for a home, or touring the world felt attainable, not aspirational.
Evaluate that to right this moment’s value of independence. Shifting out at 18 is now a luxurious, not a milestone. Lease alone can eat up greater than half a paycheck, and inflation has hit on a regular basis bills tougher than headline numbers usually 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 break up between generations. Many boomers have been taught to hunt safety, like getting an excellent job, shopping for a home, and retiring with a pension. That path was supported by the financial situations 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 exhausting. 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 appears in 2025.
Resentment or Actuality?
It’s straightforward to dismiss generational critiques as bitterness, however there’s worth in acknowledging how totally different the terrain has change 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 situations 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 tougher now. That no, it’s not at all times a matter of effort. And that possibly, simply possibly, the recommendation they’re getting must evolve together with the economic system.
Do you suppose 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 Consumers 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 all the things below the solar. When she’s not writing, she’s spending her time exterior, studying, or cuddling along with her two corgis.