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Failure to Launch: Structural Shift and the New Lost Generation

September 30, 2013September 9th, 20241 min read

Failure To Launch

Structural Shift and the New Lost Generation

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Failure to Launch includes an analysis of labor force participation, employment, and earnings for young adults in their 20s and older adults in their 50s, 60s, and 70s between 1980 and 2012.

Key Findings

1

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.
2

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.
3

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.
4

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.

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Our report analyzes the divergent labor market trends for young and older adults since 1980. The report is a joint effort by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce and The Generations Initiative.

Between 1980 and 2012, significant structural economic shifts produced a new postsecondary phase in the labor market entry of young adults, delaying their career launch. Older adults are working longer; however, they are not crowding young adults out of the labor market. In fact, today there are more job openings per young person resulting from retirements than there were in the 1990s.

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