CSS Report Highlights Alarming Disparities in Education, Labor Market and Housing Outcomes Between Local and Transplant Millennials in New York City

New York, NY – A new report from the Community Service Society (CSS), Uneven Outcomes: Millennials in NYC, From the Great Recession to COVID-19, highlights the stark divide in educational attainment, labor market and housing outcomes between local millennials (defined as those born in New York State or abroad) and transplant millennials (those born in other states) living in New York City that already existed before the pandemic hit.

Using data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey and the NYC Housing Vacancy Survey, Uneven Outcomes debunks the typical portrayal of New York City’s millennials (defined as those born between 1981 and 1996 and were aged 22 to 37 in 2018) as a homogenous group that is primarily white, affluent and highly educated. Local millennials did not fully recover from the Great Recession, lagging far behind their transplant counterparts in higher education, good-paying jobs, and housing access. The COVID-19 pandemic will only worsen these inequities unless the city takes deliberate action to address the challenges faced by local millennials who are being left behind in the competition for high-paying jobs and housing they can afford.

“Far too many of our city’s young people are entering adulthood without the education, skills and supports they need to secure high-quality jobs and ultimately, an affordable place to call home,” said David R. Jones, CSS President and CEO. “The COVID-19 pandemic is another devastating setback for our city’s local millennials who were already struggling to play catch up to more-educated newcomers to the city. Our new report provides more information on these shameful inequities and offers a blueprint for how New York can tackle the challenges local millennials face.”

Among the report’s key findings are:

• Local millennial city residents are more diverse than their transplant peers: only 30 percent of New York-born millennials and 20 percent of foreign-born millennials are white, compared to 65 percent of millennial transplants.
• Before the pandemic hit, the typical employed transplant millennial was already earning $23,000 to $28,000 more than New York-born and immigrant millennials in 2018. Even among college graduates, local millennials are earning $10,000 to $14,000 less than their transplant counterparts.
• Lower educational attainment among local millennials are contributing to these stark wage gaps: as of 2018, only 43 percent of New York-born millennials had a four-year college degree, while 80 percent of millennial transplants are college educated. 
• Local millennials will bear the brunt of mandatory closures of non-essential businesses and widespread job losses in the hard-hit restaurant and hospitality industries: those born in New York State account for half of millennial workers in non-essential retail and immigrants make up more than half of millennial workers in the accommodation and food services industry. Overall, millennials made up 43 percent of New Yorkers working in industries that face the greatest risk for COVID-19-related job loss.
• Local millennials are more likely to live in low-income communities of color that were the hardest hit by COVID-19. In neighborhoods like Mott Haven/Hunts Point in the South Bronx and Brownsville in Brooklyn where the median household income is below $30,000 a year, those born in New York state or abroad make up more than 90 percent of the millennial population. 
• Nearly a third of millennial transplants live with unrelated roommates, compared to only 11 percent of New York-born and 15 percent of foreign-born millennials. A sizable share—40 percent—of millennials born in New York live with their parents, likely driven by rising housing unaffordability and economic insecurity.

The report offers ideas for what an equitable COVID-19 recovery would look like. These proposals include increased investment for CUNY and work-based learning models, a green infrastructure jobs program, expanding down payment assistance tied to the development of shared equity tenure models like limited equity cooperatives and community land trusts; and enacting laws that protect unregulated tenants, including good cause eviction.

 “New York City’s local millennial population is now dealing with back-to-back crises—the Great Recession and the COVID-19 pandemic—that have put them at a huge disadvantage in completing a four-year college degree and finding good-paying jobs in the city where they grew up,” said Irene Lew, co-author of the report and a policy analyst at CSS. “We need to learn from the city’s inequitable recovery in the aftermath of the Great Recession and focus on making New York a city where young locals can live, work and thrive. We need more investment in CUNY, a better integration of work-based learning opportunities into our city’s public education systems, and a large-scale green jobs program that would not only provide necessary upgrades for our public housing and transit systems, but serve as an important source of quality jobs for local millennials.”

“Local millennials were already struggling to find affordable and stable places to live, before the pandemic,” said Oksana Mironova, co-author of the report and a housing policy analyst at CSS. “A just recovery should include policies and programs that promote long-term housing stability, including stronger tenant protections and greater public investment in shared equity tenure models like community land trusts and limited equity cooperatives.”

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