Note that this article has been updated to also include some of the private discussions with thought leaders in the past. You can read my final overview of my research into the Millennial generation along with what I predicted and what happened as they matured at this link. While I still speak about Echo Boomers and iGenZ privately, I seldom add new articles to this specific blogspot site. If you're reaching out about a speaking engagement, you can contact me at the research firm SqlinSix.
If you read the article Echo Boomers, you might have been confused on two separate items: Millennial median household income is $58,620 while Millennial median individual income is $22,000. Obviously the word household is what distinguishes the two - in one case you may have two people, in the other case you only have one.
1. Timing is everything. The second study observed that Millennial median income had fallen from $30,000 a year to $22,000 a year from 2009 to 2010. The first study only observed 2008. Post recession, almost a third of Echo Boomers don't have jobs, which will play into low income figures.
2. Marriage matters. Household income should be higher than individual income because a household can have more wage earners than one. If two married people each make $44,000 a year, the household income would be $88,000 a year while the individual income would be $44,000 a year.
2. Marriage matters - men. Men significantly see increases in income when married. This is one reason why the median household income is much higher than if you took two median individuals and combined them. In fact, many of the "households" had one income. How could that one income be higher than the median individual income? Married men were often the reason why.
Important side note: When media sources lie (neither of these did), they often lie by using the word "household." For instance, they will claim that "household income in the United States has been decreasing for three decades" without telling you that households in the United States have been decreasing in wage earners in the last three decades (ie: the rise of single parents).
