Millennials are way more educated than their parents. They're also paid less.

For years now, politicians and pundits have touted education as the key to economic advancement. And Millennials are the best-educated generation in American history. But we're not even close to being the best-paid. New Census data shows that despite the march of technology and our college degrees, we earn less than our parents did at the same age. The Census Bureau today released new data from its American Communities Survey, showing that today's 18-to-34-year-olds are earning less today than the same age group in 1980, 1990, or 2000.

Source: US Census Bureau; median earnings are for full-time, year-round workers and are in 2013 dollars.

As of 2009-2013 (the span that the new data covers), millennials had median earnings of around $33,900, down from around $37,355 in 2000. That's a decline of around 9.3 percent in just over a decade. And while other Americans' earnings have also stopped growing since 2000, Census data suggests it wasn't so bad for them. From 2000 to 2011, median earnings for all full-time, year-round American workers held roughly steady, at around $43,600. This older group naturally has a higher income than the lower population on its own, but what's fascinating is that things haven't fallen off as much for them.

Those people's earnings don't seem to have fallen off like the young adults' earnings have. So what's going on? A couple of tables from think tank Demos help shed some light on it. This is what median earnings looked like for young bachelor's degree holders over the last 30 years.

Source: Demos

And here's what it looks like for high school graduates:

Source: Demos

This only looks at 25-to-34-year-olds, but it seems to indicate that one share of the population is taking this hit particularly hard: men who haven't gone to college. A few things could be going on here: one is the decline of middle-skill jobs, like many manufacturing jobs, that were once common high-school-educated men. Or maybe men are being held back by social and cultural forces, like David Leonhardt wrote earlier this year — single-parent families, harmful gender norms, and poor early school performance get boys off to a bad start. Of course, it's also important to keep in mind that high-school educated women, who haven't lost as much ground, still remain far behind, with median earnings of $24,000.

This illustrates the ugly choice that the last few decades of high school graduates have faced — everyone thinks of college as the ticket to prosperity, so America's young people have increasingly invested in college degrees. And it's true that those graduates are doing way better than those without degrees, both in terms of income and employability. But it's mostly paying off because the economic situation just keeps getting worse for people with only a high school diploma. For millennials, this means investing four or more years, plus tens of thousands of dollars, to get a degree whose value isn't really increasing much. The whole generation has been stuck on a sort of cruel economic treadmill: working harder and harder without really getting much further ahead.

Will you support Vox’s explanatory journalism?

Most news outlets make their money through advertising or subscriptions. But when it comes to what we’re trying to do at Vox, there are a couple reasons that we can't rely only on ads and subscriptions to keep the lights on.

First, advertising dollars go up and down with the economy. We often only know a few months out what our advertising revenue will be, which makes it hard to plan ahead.

Second, we’re not in the subscriptions business. Vox is here to help everyone understand the complex issues shaping the world — not just the people who can afford to pay for a subscription. We believe that’s an important part of building a more equal society. We can’t do that if we have a paywall.

That’s why we also turn to you, our readers, to help us keep Vox free. If you also believe that everyone deserves access to trusted high-quality information, will you make a gift to Vox today?

One-Time Monthly Annual

$5/month

$10/month

$25/month

$50/month

Other

$

Yes, I'll give $5/month

Yes, I'll give $5/month

We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. You can also contribute via