Gen Z workers born in the late 1990s are taking home real weekly pay at age 24 that is 12 per cent higher than cohorts born a decade earlier, according to Resolution Foundation research published on 21 June 2026. This breaks with a narrative of consistent intergenerational decline, but the fuller picture is more complicated. Comparing different birth cohorts reveals that early pay gains do not always translate into lasting wealth accumulation.

The millennial earnings shortfall was baked into the system, not temporary. A person born in the late 1980s earned 8 per cent less at age 30 than a Gen X counterpart born a decade before, according to Resolution Foundation's intergenerational audit. Over a full career, that gap compounds into material gaps in pension savings, home ownership, and total net worth. Housing costs make this worse: today's 30-year-olds spend close to a quarter of their income on housing—a record proportion, according to Resolution Foundation analysis reported by Reuters.

The Millennial Plateau

Millennials, despite widespread commentary about their financial squeeze, saw no net income progress versus Gen X when measured by median real household annual net income after housing costs—even as the overall economy grew. Housing absorbed the gains. Rising gross wages were offset, partially or entirely, by money flowing to landlords and mortgage lenders instead of staying in workers' pockets.

Gen Z's stronger early-career pay may stem from converging factors: post-pandemic labour market tightness that boosted entry-level wages, National Living Wage increases that disproportionately helped younger workers, and a shift toward graduate and technical roles where pay floors rose significantly. But starting salary is not the same as lifetime earnings. Whether Gen Z holds onto that pay advantage into their 30s—or whether housing costs consume it, as happened to millennials—is what actually matters.

A constraint is emerging. Real household income growth was healthy in 2024 and 2025, but Resolution Foundation analysis from January 2026 forecasts it will slow sharply to just 0.2 per cent in 2026. If that slowdown persists, it will compress the wage gains lifting younger workers now. Labour markets that tighten and close generational gaps can also reverse quickly.

Family Formation and the Longer View

The pay picture connects to a separate demographic shift. The share of 32-year-old millennials—born in 1989–90—without children has risen noticeably, according to Resolution Foundation analysis. Delayed or absent parenthood among this cohort likely relates to the housing and income constraints they faced in their 20s. The data do not prove causation directly, but the timing maps closely to when that generation was entering the post-2008 labour market and facing housing prices moving out of reach for first-time buyers in many cities.

One structural gain does appear durable: the gender pay gap among workers in their 20s has halved to around 5 per cent in a generation, according to research cited by Reuters. Younger women now enter and advance through work under more equal conditions than their predecessors. The gap typically widens again around childbearing age, a shift the declining birth rates may partly reflect.

Where this leaves policy is the harder question. Gen Z's pay premium is real and deserves recognition, but it is a snapshot of early career. The intergenerational audit's deeper finding is that wage growth has historically been swallowed by housing costs by midcareer. Unless housing tenure security and affordability improve for younger workers, early pay gains will hit the same erosion mechanism that flattened millennial net incomes. A forecast of 0.2 per cent income growth in 2026 could trigger that squeeze sooner rather than later.