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Will Millennials ever be able to retire? It’s a “question mark.”

By Jessica Adair

In a world where everyone loves to comment on Millennial finances, Jen Mishory, Executive Director of Young Invincibles and David John, Senior Policy Advisor at AARP took to PBS NewsHour to discuss an oft-neglected topic: retirement.

Millennials expect to retire at age 65, though if tough financial circumstances today give us any clues about the future, it could be difficult to retire at the same rate as our parents’ generation — or at all.

In other words, our generation isn’t even beginning to save money. But, it isn’t because we don’t want to.

JM PBSAs Mishory points out, Millennials want to save for retirement, but we’re “seeing an economic picture that’s tough for this generation to then be thinking about socking away money for the long term.”

According to John, when Millennials have the option to use a retirement account through payroll deduction, they participate more than other generations did at this age. But, and this is the big catch, only half of young adults have access to 401k plans or IRAs. Those nice defined benefit pension plans of our parents’ and grandparents’ generations? Most Millennials would be lucky to see one.

The rise of part-time employment across our generation could explain why fewer Millennials have access to retirement accounts. A quarter of all young adults are working in part-time jobs, which rarely offer such benefits. While many young adults may hold multiple part-time jobs, freelance or make money through a “side hustle,” a combination of part-time jobs and income sources does not equal a full-time job with benefits.

While it is possible to save for retirement without an employer-based account, most people, regardless of age, cannot. It’s especially tough for young adults. Millennials now have a savings rate of negative two percent.

It’s not a lack of financial responsibility — young adults are overwhelmingly saddled with student loan debt. In the United States, student loan debt has ballooned to over $1.2 trillion, passing up credit card and mortgage debt as the number one wealth accumulation killer.

But student debt is just one piece of the Millennial economic puzzle. Our generation was the biggest casualty of the Great Recession. And we’re still struggling. As America’s economy begins to recover, young adults, particularly young African-Americans and Latinos, continue to struggle with high rates of unemployment.

Even for those lucky enough to have a job, wages for young adults have bottomed out, falling in nearly every major industry. Adjusting for inflation, real wages for young adults are growing 60% more slowly than wages for other age groups. Young adults’ wages simply aren’t keeping up with where other generations were at our age before the Great Recession.

John recommends starting young to have the best shot of securing a nest egg sufficient to carry you through retirement. It’s sage advice, but obviously difficult to do when unemployed, your wages have flattened or you graduated from college with $30,000 in student loan debt.

To avoid a serious problem in the future, states should focus now on making sure young adults aren’t forced to take on tens of thousands of dollars in debt by reinvesting in higher education to bring down the cost of college. And Congress should do everything in its power to pass commonsense legislation that supports job-training programs, for example, to help young people land a job, contribute to today’s economy and start saving.

Watch the full segment here.