Millennials? Coveted by marketers. The wealthy? Also coveted. Wealthy Millennials? Swoon. So where to find these young high-income earners? Nielsen breaks down [download page] the top 10 US markets by concentration of wealthy (at least $100k in income) Millennials (18-36), with the study results indicating that those pursuing wealthy Millennials might end up finding their fair share of wealthy Boomers too. Indeed, the results suggest that the wealthy – both young and old – tend to gravitate towards the same markets.
Without further ado, here are the top 10 markets by concentration of wealthy Millennials, along with each market’s index in relation to the national average:
- Washington, DC (1.9%; 232);
- San Francisco (1.7%; 206);
- Boston (1.4%; 172);
- New York (1.3%; 166);
- Baltimore (1.3%; 161);
- Seattle-Tacoma (1.2%; 151);
- San Diego (1.2%; 139);
- Austin (1.1%); 139);
- Chicago (1.1%; 137);
- Denver (1.1%; 132).
Notably, those top 3 markets are also the top 3 by concentration of wealthy Boomers. Other markets on the list appearing among Boomers’ top 10 include Baltimore (#4 for Boomers), New York (#6 for Boomers), Seattle-Tacoma (#8 for Boomers), and Denver (#9 for Boomers).
Another way of looking at it? Markets such as San Diego, Austin and Chicago have a high concentration of wealthy youth, but not as much for wealthy Boomers. In fact, separately, the report shows that Austin is the top market in the US by concentration of Millennials.
Nielsen’s study shows that in terms of wealth, Millennials generally trail the rest of the population. The overall US median for income-producing assets is $14,700, but for Millennials (in this case, 20-34-year-olds) it’s a much smaller $8,000. However, that tends to be skewed by younger Millennials (20-24), who have a much smaller amount of wealth on average ($3,900) than their older counterparts (25-34; $9,700).
It makes sense, of course, that Millennials would have less income-producing assets (they’ve had less time to build them up), but the study finds that Millennials are fairly well represented in the top-end of wealth. For example, Millennials account for 23.9% of those with assets of less than $25k, and that share gradually declines to a low of 7.5% share of those with assets of $500-749.9k. But it then rebounds, with Millennials actually accounting for 14.7% share of those with at least $2 million in income-producing assets. Nielsen attributes this to “their penchant for investing in new startups and entrepreneurial opportunities.”
