The youngest millennials turn 30 this year. We looked at where they live, if they're married, and how much they make.

• The youngest millennials turn 30 in 2026, marking a generational milestone in America.
• This cohort of new adults is more diverse and educated than the average American.
• Young millennials are redefining adulthood with new norms in work, relationships, and homeownership.

2026 marks a big occasion for the avocado-guzzling, mayonnaise-killing generation: The youngest millennials turn 30 this year.

It's a significant milestone for a generation that's weathered multiple recessions, a life-altering pandemic, and the transition of society from digitally curious to digitally native. While millennials, born between 1981 and 1996, have long been the target of "young people these days" ire, they're now officially the new generation of adults — and reckoning with what that means for them.

This year's 30-year-olds are the ultimate cuspers: Teetering on the edge of millennialness, they also identify with Gen Z. They're marked by life before ubiquitous internet access, careers starting just before the pandemic, and the socioeconomic roller coaster of their 20s.

"It feels like we're straddling two worlds. We live in a world where we remember what it was like to not be on our phones all the time, to not be on the internet all the time," Alexandria Rucker, a UX designer in Michigan who turns 30 this summer, said.

That's a contrast to Gen Zers, who have only known a world shaped by the internet, Rucker said. "We know a world that's different from that, but we also didn't necessarily grow up in it."

Born in 1996, Rucker said, "It feels like I'm not old enough to be a '90s kid and really enjoy and appreciate the '90s culture that existed, but also don't feel cool enough to be Gen Z at all."

To better understand who the new group of 30-year-olds is, we analyzed the most recent Census microdata available from the 2024 American Community Survey, accessed through the Minnesota Population Center's IPUMS program, to delve into the cohort.

Where 30-year-olds live and how much they make

It turns out that the nation's capital is also the 30-year-old capital: Just over 2% of the District of Columbia was 28 in 2024, the last available year with data. Assuming those folks have held tight, that makes DC the area with the highest share of 30-year-olds across the US. On the other end is New Hampshire, where just around 0.9% of the state consists of today's 30-year-olds.

Utah and Colorado both hold large shares of the new 30-year-olds, followed by Arizona. Texas also has a larger share of the youngest millennials than the rest of the country.

This soon-to-be-30 group has seen homeownership rates plummet for those under 35, as the median age of first-time homebuyers has risen to 40.

"Just to own a home one day seems more and more unobtainable; to have a job that just pays you a living wage is more and more difficult to find," Tyler Ivey, a 29-year-old video producer and musician in Austin, said.

The good news is that younger millennials are much more likely to be employed than the average American. These adults are in their prime working-age years, but they weathered a rocky employment situation throughout their 20s.

Ansh Sancheti, a soon-to-be 30-year-old and software engineer in Brooklyn, said he left his job in late 2024 to take a brief sabbatical. When he decided to start looking again — with what he felt was a fairly solid resumé — the job market had morphed. Workers are clinging to their jobs after the ample opportunity of the Great Resignation, and the number of job openings compared to unemployed workers has plummeted. Sancheti said the job market was "way, way, way different and way harder than I had expected it to be."

"Just the process of going through interviews, the process of not hearing back from a lot of them was something that I feel like I didn't expect, and something that I feel like only sounds like it's getting worse," he said.

The largest share of the youngest millennials earns $50,000 to $74,999, and fewer earn under $20,000 than compared to the rest of America. However, they haven't reached peak earning potential. Several years into their careers, around 1.8% earn between $150,000 and $199,999, compared to 3.4% of all Americans.

New adults are changing what America looks like

The newest adults are changing the face of adulthood: They're less likely to be white than the average American, and a greater share are two or more races, Black, or Asian American and Pacific Islander.

The new wave of 30-year-olds is also far more likely to have an education beyond high school compared to the rest of America; 30-year-olds are most likely to have a bachelor's degree, and they're more likely than the rest of the US to have either a master's degree or less likely to have below a high school education.

This new group of adults is also, socially and culturally, crafting their own version of the new normal.

"This is a generation that really wants to feel like we're making an impact on the world and care about others," Ivey said. "I think it's a really cool thing to be entering the 30s, which would normally be the just home-building time, but so focused on what am I doing to make the world better."

One area where the new wave of adults is rewriting the rules: marriage. The vast majority of today's 30-year-olds were never married or single — at least as of two years ago, which is the latest data available. That's part of a larger trend, as the estimated median age at first marriage hovers near historic highs; for men, it's creeping toward 31, and for women, it's hovered around 28 to 29.

Rucker said that she has observed that the taboo around divorce has dissipated. She also sees more people in different types of relationships, like polyamorous formations.

And, broadly, Rucker said that being one of the youngest millennials means a constant experience of straddling new frontiers — for better and for worse.

"I appreciate that I can tell my grandkids at some point that I remember the first iPod Nano looked like a stick of gum and that AI was a thing that was invented in my lifetime," Rucker said. "Kind of cool, kind of scary — terrifying."