The millennials who are making it

Millennials are often lumped together as victims of bad economic times, but they actually have vast wage disparities — and some are doing just fine.

By the numbers: The median wage for statisticians and financial analysts — both of which have high concentrations of older millennials — is $84,000 a year. That's significantly more than the hundreds of thousands of slightly younger millennials working as cashiers with a median income of $21,000.

• The youngest job paying above the $37,700 median income of all occupations is technicians in the life, fitness and social sciences, with a median age of 35 years.
• Almost half of financial analysts, event planners and market analysts are millennials, and they also make at least $10,000 above median income.
• Physician assistant is the highest-paid occupation with a heavy concentration of millennials with $104,900 median salary. It is also one of the top 5 fastest growing jobs, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics projections.
• Many millennials have turned to waitering or bartending — at least for now, but those jobs offer some of the lowest wages at a median salary of around $21,000 a year.

The bottom line: Many of the jobs in the upper right corner of the chart above are disproportionately older people, white people and men, according to BLS data.