Pew Research's Millennials surpass Gen X'ers as the largest generation in the U.S. labor force reports that in Q1 of 2015 Millennials surpassed Generation X to become the largest share of the American workforce.
The report chart below shows the generational shifts in the U.S. workforce over the past two decades.
An interesting sidelight to the report is Pew's definitions of age cohorts. Somewhat surprisingly there are no official demographic cohort definitions, so different groups use different definitions. Pew's are to the right.
Most everyone uses the same definitions for the older generations, but there are differences in how people define Gen X and Millennials.
For example, Pew ends the Millennial generation in 1997(see chart on right).
We define Millennials as those born from 1981 to 2000.
In most cases differences of a few years one way or another won't really matter or change the results of most surveys.
But it does make a difference in generational size. Obviously, the total size of Gen Y is larger by our definition than Pew's.
So while it's not a big deal overall, it's worthwhile to check the definitions when you see sizing data by generation.
For example, we recently saw a report that defined Gen Y as those born from 1980 to 2007. The report focused quite a bit on how big Gen Y is relative to other generations.
Had we not known they defined the generation much more broadly than most, we might have misinterpreted their data.