Life as a young American is a mixed bag. On the upside, the skin on your face hasn't yet begun to crinkle and droop like a leather bag left in a pool of standing water (yet), but the downside is, you're probably broke. If you're not broke, you will be. Just wait.
Here's some disheartening data, courtesy of the Atlantic: Between the ages of 25 and 34, 41.3 percent of Americans will spend at least a year earning less than 150 percent of the poverty line. For example, if the poverty line is $11,500 for an individual, 41.3 percent of Americans in this age range will spend a year making less than $17,250. By 35, more than a quarter of Americans will live under the poverty line. Look, a graph!
This is because young people, for all their boundless enthusiasm and full heads of hair, tend to get laid off and fired more frequently, in addition to lacking the job experience required for a halfway decent salary. Though it's common knowledge that Millennials are the natural enemy to a productive workforce, the Atlantic points that this isn't a Recession-induced trend: The data used in this research spans from 1968 to 2009. This means that in 20 years, when our fresh, hopeful faces have been ravaged by the sands of time and financial terror, we can assume with reasonable certainty that a new crop of ingrates, with their iEyes and their lack of ear hair, will be just as miserable as we are now. It's the circle of life.
