American millennials really can’t catch a break.
If they aren’t getting bad news from the latest unemployment numbers or the student loan debt dollars, they aren’t getting disappointing news from a new study comparing them to the rest of the developed world.
The new analysis, released Tuesday by the Educational Testing Service, makes use of data collected by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development through a project called the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, according to Inside Higher Ed.
It focused on millennials, defining the generation as those between 16 and 34, and focused on three areas of study — literacy, numeracy and problem solving.
The U.S. did not fare well.
The U.S. ranked last in both numeracy and problem solving. They were tied with Italy and Spain for last in numeracy and tied with Slovak Republic, Ireland and Poland in problem solving.
In literacy, millennials in the U.S. were better only than Spain and Italy out of the 22 participating O.E.C.D. countries.
The U.S. millennial population includes both those with and without a college education, Inside Higher Ed noted.
But even pulling out just degree holders does not improve standing too much. U.S. millennials with a four-year bachelor’s degree only scored higher in numeracy than than those in Poland and Spain.
The best-educated millennials — meaning those who have a master’s or a research-oriented degree — only outperformed across all three fields their counterparts in Ireland, Poland and Spain, Inside Higher Ed calculated.
