In case you hadn’t noticed, Millennials now make up the largest share of the U.S. workforce. They overtook Generation X two years ago.
Millennials, people ages 20-36 (18-34 in 2015), now make up more than one in three members of the workforce. The number of Millennials in the workforce has been rising steadily and sharply since 1997.
The Pew Research Center reported on the shift after analyzing U.S. Census Bureau data. It occurred in the first quarter of 2015, when the Millennial workforce reached 53.5 million to pass Generation X, which was 52.7 million that quarter.
The Millennial portion of the workforce is expected to grow further because the generation has a disproportionately large share of immigrants and because a big chunk of the Millennial generation is school or college age.
Immigration will continue to disproportionately grow the ranks of the Millennial workforce because those immigrants are disproportionately in their younger working years. Relatively few immigrants come to the U.S. during childhood or older adulthood. In the past five years, according to the Pew Research Center report in 2015, over half of new immigrant workers were Millennials.
A significant chunk of the Millennial population was 18- to 24-year-olds in 2015. These are the years when many young adults go to school or college, so labor force participation is suppressed. As the youngest Millennials become older and leave school or college, more of them will be joining the workforce.
Generation X is comprised of people ages 37-52. Their domination of the labor force was short-lived — as the accompanying chart shows, only three years. Their participation in the labor force peaked at 84% in 2008.
It is possible that the Generation X labor force might grow although its growth trajectory has flattened out in recent years. Immigration will add some workers to the Generation X labor force. Also, labor force participation has declined due to the Great Recession and modest economic recovery. If the job market continues to improve in the post-recession period, some people in Generation X likely will return to the labor market in stronger numbers. However, another factor is that Generation X is aging. The oldest people in that generation now are 52, so they are beginning to age out of the prime working years, which are 25-54. That may offset any potential growth in the Generation X workforce.
The Baby Boom generation share of the workforce has been in slow, gradual decline since peaking in 1997, but the drop began to accelerate around 2008-09 as the generation ages more and more of them retire. Workers in the Baby Boom generation were eclipsed by Generation X in 2011-12. Their numbers were 44.6 million in the first quarter of 2015.
A month after the Pew Research Center report, Millennials surpassed Baby Boomers as the nation’s largest living generation. The Millennial population was put at 75.4 million, Baby Boomers, 74.9 million.
