September 4, 2012|1:39 pm

"They've racked up that debt and they can't pay it because they can't get a job. That's a pretty good definition of getting screwed," Joel Kotin said in an interview on NPR's "Tell Me More."

Kotin is distinguished presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University, Orange, Calif. His newest book is The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050.

No generation has suffered more from the Great Recession than millennials, typically defined as those born after 1980, Kotin wrote in a July 15 Newsweek article. Between 2005 and 2010, median net worth fell 37 percent for those under 35 but only 13 percent for those over 65, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Kotin also notes a Pew Research Center study showing that the median net worth of a baby boomer (65 and older) household is $170,494, 42 percent higher than it was in 1984, but the median net worth of a millennial household has declined 68 percent to $3,662.

Since millennials have less work experience than older generations, they have the highest unemployment rate, making wealth accumulation and debt repayment difficult.

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At the same time, older generations are saddling millennials with a tremendous amount of public debt. This week, the national debt alone is expected to surpass $16 trillion. Public debt from programs such as Social Security and Medicare at the national level and public employee pensions at the state and local level transfer wealth from the young to the old.

In addition to the public debt that will limit their government's abilities to deal with future crises, millennials are accumulating large amounts of personal debt, mostly in the form of student loans and credit card debt. Student loans now average $27,000 and the average college student has $12,700 in credit card debt, Kotin notes.

Additionally, while millennials are often encouraged to go to college, there are not enough jobs that require a college degree. Many college graduates of the millennial generation, therefore, end up working in a job that does not require a college degree. They have college loan debt, but they do not have a college graduate salary to help them pay off that debt. About 16 percent of bartenders and parking attendants have a college degree, Kotin pointed out.

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Millennials Are 'Generation Screwed,' Futurist Argues