-Millennials are now the largest, most diverse generation in the U.S. population
-More Millennials have a college degree than any other generation of young adults. With so many Millennials enrolling in college, there has been an unprecedented expansion of higher education to lower-income and underrepresented minority students.
-Millennials are not only the most highly educated U.S. generation to date, but a larger share of that increase has come from the educational attainment of women. Millennial women are attending college and attaining degrees in greater numbers than in the past.
-Millennials are a technologically connected, diverse, and tolerant generation. The priority that Millennials place on creativity and innovation augurs well for future economic growth, while their unprecedented enthusiasm for technology has the potential to bring change to traditional economic institutions as well as the labor market. For example, ?crowdfunding? has enabled entrepreneurs to raise capital from diffuse sources online, rather than relying on traditional sources like banks to grow their businesses.
-Total outstanding student loan debt has now surpassed $1 trillion in the second quarter of 2014, and there has been a recent increase in student debt delinquency rates even as delinquency rates on other types of debt have come down as the economy has recovered. In part, the growth of student loan debt is due to greater college enrollment among Millennials, but it is also due to a changing composition of students, rising tuition, reduced public funding, and diminished home equity.
So, while there are substantial challenges to meet, no generation has been better equipped to overcome them than Millennials. They are skilled with technology, determined, diverse, and more educated than any previous generation. Millennials are still in the early stages of joining and participating in the labor market. Taking steps to help them access and complete college, manage their student debt, have better opportunities for training and connection to jobs, access the credit they need for a home, protect the network neutrality that is the basis for much of their technological activity, as well as general policies to strengthen investment, job creation and wage growth, all have the potential to have a lasting impact for this generation and thus for U.S. economic performance for decades to come.