By Rachael Allen

Their uncertain future is now defined not by dreams but by getting by

Ana Hernández Kent, a policy analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, has also analyzed just how wide the millennial wealth gap still is — while millennial white households had a median wealth of $20,100 in 2016, black households had $1,300 and Hispanic households $12,300.

“Many of the jobs that have been lost for these more vulnerable groups … might be slower to come back,” Kent says.

In the last decade, women had gained 11.1 million jobs. “The pandemic literally wiped out every single one of those jobs in one month,” says Jasmine Tucker, director of research at the National Women’s Law Center.

C. Nicole Mason, the president and chief executive officer of Institute for Women’s Policy Research, says she’s “hoping the pandemic doesn’t curtail some of the progress — even if glacial — and erase the gains women have made.”

But many gains have been lost already. Kent points out that millennial mothers had the same unemployment rate (3.6 percent) as millennial fathers in February. By April, the unemployment rate for millennial mothers had plunged to 14.2 percent compared to millennial fathers’ rate at 10.5 percent.

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