Millennials and Retirement — How Bad Is It?

Boston College Professor Alicia Munnell says her research adds credibility to concerns that millennials are lagging so far behind previous generations financially that their retirement may be imperiled, reports Politico . "A comparison of millennials with earlier cohorts when they were the same age shows that even though a higher percentage of both millennial men and women have college degrees, they are behind in almost every economic dimension," she notes. Reasons Munnell cites include millennials' entry into the labor pool during rough economic times. "Most ... were graduating from college during a period that included both the bursting of the dot.com bubble and the Great Recession," she says. "This experience appears to have been particularly hard on millennial men, who have labor-force participation rates below earlier cohorts." Finding good jobs also has been a difficult prospect for millennials, while meeting retirement goals is complicated by their limited access to retirement plans at work, their lower likelihood of being homeowners, and their greater probability of having to shoulder student loans. "However, the good news for millennials is that retirement is still a long way off," Munnell says. "A lot will depend on their future savings patterns, financial market returns and, particularly, how long they work."