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Millennials earn significantly less than they expected, official data shows

Half of 16 to 17-year-olds expected to earn £35,000 by the age of 30 if they’d achieved a degree; but average salary just £23,700

Ben Chapman
Thursday 27 September 2018 15:14 BST
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Almost four in 10 people aged 22 to 29 last year earned less than £20,000
Almost four in 10 people aged 22 to 29 last year earned less than £20,000

Many millennials are earning significantly less than they predicted when they were younger and have not entered the career they hoped for, new analysis shows.

The Office for National Statistics found big differences between the salary and career aspirations of 16 to 21-year-olds in 2011/12 and the actual attainment of older age groups.

Half of 16 to 17-year-olds expected to earn £35,000 by the age of 30 if they’d achieved a degree and £25,000 if they did not have a degree but the average salary of a 30-year-old last year was £23,700.

Just 7 per cent of those with degrees and a quarter of those without degrees thought they would be earning less than £20,000 by the age of 30. But in reality, 37 per cent of 22 to 29-year-olds last year were in this earnings bracket.

At the top end, 5 per cent predicted they would be earning over £80,000 but just 2 per cent hit this target.

Career ambitions were found to also be out of step with reality. Artistic, literary and media jobs were the most popular choice in 2011/12, cited by more than 11 per cent of 16 to 21-year-olds, but just 1.4 per cent were actually in those careers last year.

Almost 9 per cent said they wanted to be teachers compared to 4.5 per cent who did so. In healthcare the discrepancy was wider at 8.2 per cent to 1.7 per cent.

The most common work for the older group turned out to be as sales assistants or cashiers, accounting for 6.2 per cent of employment for 22 to 29-year-olds last year.

The data will add to a feeling among some millennials (those born between the early 1980s and late 1990s) that they have been hard done by economically.

Coming of age in the post-financial crisis era has meant lower wages and fewer chances for career progression than the previous generation.

British millennials experienced a 13 per cent drop in real hourly earnings between 2007 and 2014.

Only Greece, where real earnings slumped by 25 per cent over the same period as the eurozone country plunged into depression, saw a worst performance for this age group among the dozen advanced economies, the Resolution Foundation found.

But the ONS’ analysis suggests that British millennials may at least have made peace with the idea of earning less.

Job satisfaction and security were much more important to young people than a high income, the ONS said.

In 2015 to 2016, 71 per cent of them thought that having an interesting job was very important, while 60 per cent felt that job security was very important.

This figure has only increased by three percentage points since 2010 to 2011, despite the increase in zero-hour contracts and the so-called gig economy.

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