Are Baby Boomers Really Keeping Millennials From Finding Jobs?

The millennial generation is the largest in American history, and they’ve begun to enter the workforce. But more and more, these young workers are stuck in low-end, low-pay, and even part-time jobs for which they are overqualified—something that a recent NBER working paper has found could depress their future earnings for years. These days, there are simply not enough good jobs to go around.

One big reason for this is that many baby boomers, also hit hard by the economic crisis, are putting off retirement and staying in their jobs longer. The average retirement age is now 62—five years older than it was two decades ago. The end result is that the labor market overhang of boomers has essentially prevented millennials from finding the sort of good jobs that are so important at the start of their careers.