Millennials make 75 per cent of the global workforce. But as a generation, they’re deeper in debt, only half as likely to own a home, and more likely to live in poverty than their parents. The same forces that are driving massive inequality between the top one per cent and the rest, are also creating a vast wealth gap between Baby Boomers and Millennials.
So what are the core reasons that drove Millennials to the brink of distress? And what could be the possible respite?
Firstly, its stagnant wages. Median wages grew by an average of 0.3 per cent per year between 2007 and 2017, just as Millennials were beginning their careers. Before that, between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s, wages grew at three times that rate.
While the wages have stagnated, the costs of essentials such as housing and education have been going through the roof. Millennials own fewer homes, the most common way Baby Boomers built their wealth in the past. Education costs have soared. Incremental technological advances are so rampant that many jobs and roles are increasingly becoming obsolete. An average millennial is expected to take a couple of college degrees and change their career at least twice to land a secure job.
Adjusted for inflation, the average college education in 2018 cost nearly three times as in 1978. That expensive college education means that the average graduate carries a whopping US$28,000 in student loan debt. As a generation, Millennials are more than US$1 trillion in the red. In addition, the average young adult carries nearly US$5,000 in credit card debt, and this number is growing.
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Millennials are finding it harder than previous generations to save for the future. Among Fortune 500 companies, only 81 sponsored a pension plan in 2017, that’s down from 288 twenty years ago. Employers are replacing pensions with essentially “do-it-yourself” savings plans.
All of this means that fewer millennials are entering the middle class than previous generations. Most have less than US$1,000 in savings. Many young people today won’t be able to retire until 75, if at all.
So what is the escape?. So what is that one thing that this generation has that can be considered the most valuable weapon in their arsenal?
The answer is data
While this generation is living in distress, on the other side of the coin, markets have never seen the trillion-dollar tech giant sprung up like this before. Through their murky policies, tricky wordings, and sneaky details about consent, tech giants have been collecting insane amounts of data about the millennials.
Whether data is used for targeted advertising, predicting buyer behaviour, deploying AI, or buying or selling to third parties; it is clear that the fortune of these companies is built on the intimate information of the users.
Companies can take a customer-driven approach to information sharing, empowering the consumer to share and rescind their consent. Instead of simply asking for consent, organisations can capture gained consent in an auditable workflow; one which enables an automated and secure digital communication link with the customer.
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Once consent is secured, companies can build flexible, secure platforms to store and manage the data in a customer-driven way. Next, build digital rights management services that create a digital ‘vault’ for customers to store personal data and give the user an opportunity to monetise the same.
A tech company pays an average of US$208 per day per user for the data.
If the proposed approach is to be implemented a millennial can secure a minimum of US$75,000 per year per company. And the sky is the only limit to how many companies an individual can sign at US$75,000 p.a.
The questions, to trade or not trade?
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