If I'm trying to assess if a typical 25-34 year old is better off now than in 1996 why on Earth would I use a measure which only assesses a specific section of the population which constitutes less than 30% of the U.S. population? CPI-U covers about 90%. Barely anyone uses CPI-W.
>Why not C-CPI-U
I would love to. Unfortunately C-CPI-U figures only go back to December 1999, bit of a problem if I'm trying to work from Q1 1996. Also, C-CPI-U tends to be a bit lower than normal CPI-U meaning that 17% increase would actually be slightly larger if assessed with C-CPI-U.
>How many hours/wk are those people working to get that purchasing power?
Since we're using median earnings I'd need median hours worked for the same age range at the same times in history which is not something I could find. That said, weekly hours worked by employed individuals have been decreasing for decades. That trend shows no signs of reversing. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PRS85006023
A lot of the rest of the questions are harder to answer given available data but most are also of pretty questionable usefulness when trying to assess the financial well-being of a "typical" millennial relative to the previous generation. If your question is specifically "Does the typical working millennial have a worse material standard of living than their parents?" the answer is no.
If you want a more complete and accurate answer then use the data from primary sources to figure it out yourself. Every person that data has to be filtered through before it gets to you adds an extra layer of bullshit because when dealing with economic stuff you should assume that everyone has an agenda. That's true for Huffington Post articles and for random internet comments, like this one.
If I'm trying to assess if a typical 25-34 year old is better off now than in 1996 why on Earth would I use a measure which only assesses a specific section of the population which constitutes less than 30% of the U.S. population? CPI-U covers about 90%. Barely anyone uses CPI-W.
>Why not C-CPI-U
I would love to. Unfortunately C-CPI-U figures only go back to December 1999, bit of a problem if I'm trying to work from Q1 1996. Also, C-CPI-U tends to be a bit lower than normal CPI-U meaning that 17% increase would actually be slightly larger if assessed with C-CPI-U.
>How many hours/wk are those people working to get that purchasing power?
Since we're using median earnings I'd need median hours worked for the same age range at the same times in history which is not something I could find. That said, weekly hours worked by employed individuals have been decreasing for decades. That trend shows no signs of reversing. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PRS85006023
A lot of the rest of the questions are harder to answer given available data but most are also of pretty questionable usefulness when trying to assess the financial well-being of a "typical" millennial relative to the previous generation. If your question is specifically "Does the typical working millennial have a worse material standard of living than their parents?" the answer is no.
If you want a more complete and accurate answer then use the data from primary sources to figure it out yourself. Every person that data has to be filtered through before it gets to you adds an extra layer of bullshit because when dealing with economic stuff you should assume that everyone has an agenda. That's true for Huffington Post articles and for random internet comments, like this one.