LONDON – Men in their 20s are earning significantly less than the generation before them and it is closing the gender pay gap.

They are taking up jobs that used to be predominantly taken by women – part-time, low-paid work – according the think tank Resolution Foundation’s “Intergenerational Commission” unit.

Millennial men, those aged between 22 and 30, are operating at a cumulative pay deficit meaning that by the time they hit 30, they will be earning £12,500 less, on average, compared to men at that age from the previous generation.

Millennial men have earned less than Generation X men in every year between the ages of 22 and 30, resulting in a cumulative pay deficit during their 20s of £12,500 ($15,638). However, the unit found that millennial women’s pay is stagnant compared to the last generation.

This in turn means the gender pay gap is closing – but it’s not good news. In fact, Resolution Foundation says “millennial women have experienced neither generational pay progress or decline. This has narrowed the gender pay gap for millennials – but for the wrong reasons.”

"The Foundation's analysis highlights a shift towards lower-skilled jobs, often done part-time, as the key reasons for the stunted pay progress of young men. Both men and women have been affected by a reduction in some traditional mid-skilled occupations over the last two decades, with a 40% fall in young men (aged 22-35) doing routine manufacturing jobs and a 66% reduction in the number of young women working in secretarial roles," it added.

The roles that women usually took up when finding a job were generally lower-skilled and lower-paid in the past. Now more men are moving into that sector, while "employment growth amongst women has been overwhelmingly transferred into higher-skilled jobs," it has seen men earn on a par with women in the last generation.

Here are some key points from the report:

    Between 1993 and 2015/16, the proportion of low paid work done by young men rose by 45%. There was a doubling of young men going into retail jobs - from 85,000 to 165,000 - while the number of millennial women doing these jobs has fallen at the same time. The number of millennial men working in bars and restaurants trebled to 130,000, from 45,000.

"The long-held belief that each generation should do better than the last is under threat," said Torsten Bell, Executive Director at the Resolution Foundation.

"Millennials today are the first to earn less than their predecessors. While that in part reflects their misfortune to come of age in the midst of a huge financial crisis, there are wider economic forces that have seen young men in particular slide back."