George Abraham
Are today's young Canadians better off than older generations?
Are today's young Canadians better off than older generations?
Image: Pexels
The Topline
- Home ownership: Millennials in Canada have lower homeownership rates than Generation X or baby boomers had when they were the same age, while the rate of millennials living with their parents is nearly twice what it was for boomers.
- Wealth transfer: Between 2023 and 2026, a “trillion dollar tsunami” of wealth was expected to transfer from Canadian baby boomers to their millennial and Generation X children.
- Information at their fingertips: Internet use among Canadians aged 15 to 24 is effectively universal — 99.2 per cent in 2024 — giving young people immediate access to information, education, research and digital tools on a scale unavailable to previous generations.
- The AI multiplier: The Bank of Canada says there is early evidence that AI reduces some entry-level opportunities, but it also gives workers new tools to perform tasks, learn skills and increase productivity.
- Longer lives: Canadians today can expect to live about 82 years — roughly 13 to 14 years longer than Canadians born in the early 1950s — reflecting decades of advances in medicine, public health and living conditions.
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It’s the best-equipped generation in history
Baby boomers and Generation X might have had an easier time buying a home and building wealth. But millenials and Generation Z are far better equipped to handle whatever the future holds for them.
Younger generations have started receiving what is described by both the New York Times and Merrill as the “greatest wealth transfer in history,” with US$124 trillion expected to change hands from baby boomers to younger generations by 2048.
The American wealth management firm puts it like this: “As baby boomers increasingly lean into the trend of ‘giving while living,’ passing assets on to their children now rather than leaving it to them in their wills, the impact of all that money changing hands could be felt sooner than expected.”
In Canada, it’s not much different. CBC reported that $1 trillion of wealth was expected to be passed down by baby boomers between 2023 and 2026.
Since we obsess over headlines predicting doomsday economic scenarios and U.S. President Donald Trump’s upend-the-world-order social posts, it’s easy to come away believing that we should travel back to some imprecise time in the past when it was easier to accumulate property and wealth.
But here’s what actually matters: today’s youth have more opportunities and more knowledge at their fingertips, are healthier, and enjoy more personal freedom and easier access to the rest of the world.
Those measures are far more valuable than whether someone can buy a home at the age of 25.
According to the 2021 census , more youth than ever before have a bachelor’s, master’s or doctorate-level education.
With education being the big differentiator, today’s Canadian youth have far better access to knowledge, specialized careers, and international opportunities — plus the ability to navigate an increasingly complex economy when compared to earlier generations.
While much of the media coverage harps on AI as a barrier to youth employment, organizations like Great Place to Work, which certifies “company culture” and workplace productivity, see it differently.
Instead of a “dead end for young workers,” senior vice president of client services Nancy Fonseca writes in an online post that AI is “creating a more productive, innovative economy full of opportunity for both employees and leaders.”
There’s one more — often overlooked — aspect of this generational question: Canada’s unique advantage as a highly diverse and interconnected nation.
Today's young Canadians are growing up in a country in which racial, cultural and immigrant diversity are all givens — far more than for previous generations.
They’re virtually guaranteed to encounter people, cultures, cuisines, languages and perspectives that previous generations might have never seen, giving them a huge leg up in a globalized world.
There’s no point spending energy on being frustrated over what the boomers once had.
Time to refocus and recognize the unique advantages today’s generation has going for it.
Today’s youth are fed up — and rightfully so
Last year, from Indonesia to tiny Madagascar, street protests made up of young people started calling for a “total system overhaul.” A couple of those demonstrations even helped topple governments in Peru and Bulgaria.
Calling out high youth unemployment, wealth disparity, and even corruption, young protesters are highlighting the ever-growing list of challenges facing Generation Z — especially since AI started chipping away at entry-level job opportunities across a variety of professions.
Canadian youth haven’t yet revolted in the same way. But some eagle-eyed political watchers did notice something during the last federal election: a growing number appeared to be leaning conservative.
In a post-election Globe and Mail column, Rob Csernyik noted that an April 2025 Nanos poll had nearly half of intended voters aged 18 to 34 backing the Conservatives, defying the age-old convention that “people lean left politically when they’re young and grow more conservative with age.”
His explanation for the shift is simple. Today’s youth are frustrated.
There’s even a charitable organization in Canada called Generation Squeeze that recognizes how Canada “has become better at protecting the living standards people have already achieved than creating comparable opportunities for those still trying to build them.”
Today’s economy is living proof of that. The Bank of Canada calls it a “low hire, low fire” environment. When companies aren’t hiring, and people aren’t leaving, it makes it especially hard for young people to find work.
To get a sense of just how bad things are, consider this: Canadian youth historically had it better than their peers in the U.S., but not anymore. As of July 2026, 12.6 per cent of Canadians aged 15 to 24 were unemployed, compared with 8.5 per cent in the U.S.
A new report from the Montreal Economic Institute offers a deeper dive, identifying a range of barriers — from housing costs and taxes to labour-market regulations — that can make it harder for younger Canadians to move up the economic ladder.
Generation, a global employment nonprofit, has warned that higher youth unemployment doesn’t just waste valuable talent. “[I]t stifles economic growth by reducing the potential output of the economy and increasing the dependency ratio, where a larger portion of the population relies on a smaller working-age population for support.”
Once you toss in the environmental threats posed by climate change and a heightened sense of conflict around the world, it doesn’t exactly paint a hopeful picture for our youth.
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