Finance & economics | Earning power

Generation Z is unprecedentedly rich

Millennials were poorer at this stage in their lives. So were baby-boomers

Illustration of a girl leaning back on a chair with her feet up on the desk. On her feet are a pair of crocs with money-themed jibbitz on them.
Illustration: Vincent Kilbride
|Kalamata and New York

Generation Z is taking over. In the rich world there are at least 250m people born between 1997 and 2012. About half are now in a job. In the average American workplace, the number of Gen Z-ers (sometimes also known as “Zoomers”) working full-time is about to surpass the number of full-time baby-boomers, those born from 1945 to 1964, whose careers are winding down (see chart 1). America now has more than 6,000 Zoomer chief executives and 1,000 Zoomer politicians. As the generation becomes more influential, companies, governments and investors need to understand it.

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This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline “Winning the generation game”

From the April 20th 2024 edition

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