The term ‘‘millennial’’ comes with many different connotations.
They like socialism. They don’t eat much breakfast cereal. They save more money than previous generations. They enjoy a work-life balance, and they often don’t think they’re millennials.
Now, they’re the largest living generation in the United States.
Pew Research Center broke down population estimates released earlier this month by the US Census Bureau. For this exercise, the millennial generation included anyone who was 18 to 34 years old in 2015. Therefore, the oldest millennial was born in 1981 and the youngest in 1997.
By that definition, there are now 75.4 million living millennials, which is a half-million more than the 74.9 million living baby boomers, who were defined as anyone who was 51 to 69 years old in 2015. The interim generation — Generation X — is projected to follow suit and surpass baby boomers by 2028, Pew also projected.
The number of millennials is rising partly due to an influx of young immigrants. A 2014 White House report on millennials stated, ‘‘Millennials are immigrants or the children of immigrants who arrived in the United States as part of an upsurge in immigration that began in the 1940s.’’
Washington Post