Millennials, suffering through high unemployment during the recession, ended up less likely to work for high-paying employers and less likely to complete as much education as workers in places where the recession didn’t hit as hard.

They had to settle for worse jobs early in their careers, depressing their lifetime earnings potential. The employer side changed, too, Rinz finds. Big employers in the hardest-hit areas consolidated power over labor markets and, in turn, offered less to young workers who had few other options.

Yet millennials spend within their means more so than Gen X or boomers did at the same age, Kent’s analysis of separate Federal Reserve data show. That is, they’re more likely to spend less than they earn, and 52 percent of millennials were saving for retirement at age 34. At that age, just 42 percent of boomers had retirement savings.

Millennials with a college degree aren’t far behind previous generations in terms of wealth, Kent found, but their less-educated peers have a bit more than half of the wealth they’d expect at this stage, based on previous generations.

Boomers are the luckiest and also the most pathetic in terms of achievements and damage done to society.