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Their generation is often derided for being work-shy, self-centred and overly sensitive. But when it comes to making money, people under 30 are proving they are something else entirely: successful.
A record 1,000 taxpayers under 30 earned more than £1m last year, an 11% increase on the year before, HMRC records show.
In total, these earners took home more than £3bn in the past year, making an average of £3m each.
Lubbock Fine, the accountancy firm which obtained the figures from HMRC, suggested that the surge could partly be driven by influencers’ income from marketing spend on social media platforms such as Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.
The record increase may also be down to bigger pay deals for sports, music and media stars, as well as higher salaries in technology and financial services, the accountancy firm suggested.
Under 30s now account for roughly 3% of all £1m+ earners and are thought to include Erling Haaland, the 25-year-old Manchester City striker who is estimated to earn £525,000 a week (about £27.3m a year) and 26-year-old Molly-Mae Hague, a former Love Island contestant and influencer who is reported to command up to £60,000 per post.
Overall, there are now 31,000 taxpayers who earn £1m a year or more, which is only a 1% rise on the year before.
This indicates the number of very high earners under 30 is increasing at a much faster pace than the number of high earners in older age groups.
But earning so much when you are young does not necessarily mean you will be wealthy for life, warned Russell Rich, head of sports and entertainment for Lubbock Fine. “Footballers, boxers, and sports people generally tend to live beyond their means when they retire,” he told the Times. “People in the arts also do not tend to be good at saving and investing the money they make.”
The number of people under 30 who earn over £1m has risen by 54% since the pandemic, when just 650 young taxpayers were recorded by HMRC in this income bracket.
Over roughly the same period, the amount spent on influencer marketing in the UK tripled to £917m, according to Lubbock Fine, and is predicted to exceed £1bn this year.
But it is not just young people who are cashing in – older generations are now waking up to their earning potential as influencers. Research from media analysts Ampere recently found it was people in the 55 to 64 age bracket who were delivering the highest growth in YouTube traffic, up 20% since 2020 in the US and 14% in the UK. TikTok, too, has had a 16% rise in British users in this age bracket in the past year.
“We’ve been seeing this trend over the last few years where older audiences who have traditionally [focused on] linear and broadcast TV have been digitising,” Minal Modha, the head of Ampere’s consumer research division, told the Guardian in December.
High profile older influencers include Caroline Idiens, a 53-year-old personal trainer from Berkshire who has 2.4m followers on Instagram, and Valerie Mackay, 62, who posts about her life as an older woman as @embracingfifty.
However, their reach still pales in comparison to the likes of Abby Roberts, a 24-year-old makeup influencer and music artist who has 15 million followers on TikTok and reportedly earns £14,000 per post.
