Here’s How Much More the Typical Baby Boomer Makes than the Typical Millennial in Every US State
- Older workers in the US tend to make more money than younger workers, but the extent of the income gap between generations varies among states.
- Using Census Bureau data, Business Insider found out how much more baby boomers earned than millennials in each state.
- The gap between baby coomer and milennial income is biggest in Alaska and smallest in Iowa, Nebraska, and North Dakota.
Older workers tend to make more money than younger workers.
Business Insider recently analyzed individual-level data from the US Census Bureau’s 2017 “American Community Survey” available from the Minnesota Population Center’s Integrated Public Use Microdata Series and found the median total income among full-time, year-round employed workers in each state for three generational age groups: millennials (age 21 to 36 in 2017), Gen Xers (age 37 to 52), and baby boomers (age 53 to 71).
In all 50 states and Washington, DC, the median millennial made less money than the median Gen Xer or baby boomer, and in most states, boomers earned more than their Gen X counterparts.
Read more: Here’s what the typical American worker earns at every age
While boomers made more money than millennials in every state, the extent of that age-based pay gap varied among the states, ranging from the median baby boomer making just 25% more than the median millennial in Iowa, Nebraska, and North Dakota, to a much larger 65% gap between the median boomer and the median millennial in Alaska.
Here’s the percent difference between the median total income for full-time, year-round employed baby boomers and millennials in every state:
