By Joe Pinsker, Paul Overberg and Drew An-Pham

When a recent Wall Street Journal article compared the finances of baby boomers and millennials, the generation born between them wondered: What about us?

"Thanks for remembering Gen X," one commenter wrote.

In a reader poll asking which cohort had it harder, Gen X nearly beat out both of the generations the article was actually about.

So let's see how Gen X stacks up. Now ages 45 to 61, members of the generation early on saw the dot-com bubble burst and then were hit by the 2007-09 recession as they approached middle age.

From their mid-20s to their mid-30s, their median inflation-adjusted income wasn't sharply higher or lower than boomers' before them or millennials' after them.

The housing crash of the late 2000s was a major obstacle as Gen X started building wealth. Lots of Gen Xers purchased their first homes in the preceding years, whereas boomers generally bought earlier and millennials generally bought later.

"Many were relatively early in their homeownership journey and more likely to be buying at or near peak prices, which translated into larger wealth losses during the downturn," said Odeta Kushi, a housing economist at First American.

The long, slow recovery from the 2007-09 recession unfolded during Gen X's 30s and 40s, with the national unemployment rate in the high single digits for years.

The housing bust also weighed on Gen X's homeownership rate, as some lost their homes in foreclosures and others opted to rent for fear of another crash. But Kushi said that today, they are closer to boomers when they were similar ages.

Student debt has been another hurdle for many in the generation.

After younger boomers finished college, access to government student loans expanded, tuitions rose and loan balances soared. With fewer safeguards in place, the default rates on federal loans were higher for older Gen Xers than was the case for older millennials years later.

Today, many Gen Xers still have remarkably large student-debt burdens as they approach retirement.

And yet Gen X's average household net worth, which includes student debt, has mostly been growing steadily.

It did sink significantly in the 2007-09 recession, falling about 40% in under two years. But today it is on par with boomers' average wealth when they were similar ages, after adjusting for inflation.

Write to Joe Pinsker at joe.pinsker@wsj.com, Paul Overberg at paul.overberg@wsj.com and Drew An-Pham at drew.an-pham@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 17, 2026 11:50 ET (15:50 GMT)

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