During the 2020 presidential campaign, Joe Biden promised sweeping action on student debt. His plan to cancel at least $10,000 of loans for anyone making less than $125,000 a year was popular with younger Americans. But it never came to pass: in 2023, the Supreme Court struck down Biden’s executive order that would have made good on the campaign promise.
The decision from the highest court forced the administration to take a different approach. To date, Biden has canceled over $138 billion in student debt for 3.9 million borrowers and announced a new path to achieving sweeping forgiveness last September.
These moves help many Millennials and some Gen-Xers who have been in repayment on their loans for 10 to 25 years. But unlike his original executive order, Biden’s more narrow action on student debt has thus far left out Gen-Z entirely. Now, this year’s presidential election could be swayed by young voters who are not only worried about their student debt but also lack optimism about their financial futures, job prospects, and the economy.
Born in and after 1997, the oldest Gen-Zer is turning 27 this year. This generation includes 41 million potential voters — with 5.7 million Black young adults among them — who graduated from college within the last six years.
As of August 2023, 34% of adults between 18 and 29 have student loan debt, according to the Education Data Initiative. Student loan borrowers under 25 owe $14,560 on average, and borrowers between 25 and 34 owe around $32,950. An estimated 40% of Black graduates have student loan debt, averaging $52,000.
In a December 2023 Morning Consult and Bloomberg poll, nearly 60% of Gen-Z voters said they somewhat or strongly supported Biden’s efforts to cancel student loan debt. Yet, most still feel he isn’t doing enough to address student loans.
“We’re really only focusing on who has student debt now,” says Mykail James, the finance educator behind The Bougie Budgeter. “But a lot of the younger folks that aren’t in college right now or are preparing to go to college are in this place where they don’t know what the landscape is.”
According to James, who, at 28, is a very young millennial, Gen-Z wants to know: “What reform is actually happening for student loans before students apply or while they’re in school?”
Month after month, the federal jobs reports indicate the country has a stable and growing economy. However, DeNora Getachew, CEO of the non-profit youth civic engagement organization DoSomething, says young people don’t quite feel they are “living in a time where the opportunity for economic mobility and prosperity is as great as it was before.”
And the restarting of payments on student loans after a three-year pause has not helped this generation feel more secure or ready for life after college. In a December survey, DoSomething members reported feeling worried about their financial situation or obligations. Those feelings applied to over a quarter of 18 to 21-year-olds, 35% of 22 to 25-year-olds, and 40% of those over 25.
The ability to find a good job is tied directly to feeling good about what’s in their wallets or bank accounts. Yet, only 15% of respondents were confident they could attain well-paid work with benefits and reasonable hours in a place they could afford to live.
“People said that life in 2023 was the same as or worse economically than it was for them in previous years,” Getachew says. “That’s because of student loan debt. That’s because we spent much of 2023 waiting for a recession to come.”
As for whether or not this group will show up at the polls this fall, Getachew wants to fight back against the long-standing narrative that young people don’t vote. She notes this was already disproved in the 2022 midterms when youth voter turnout was 23% — lower than the 2018 midterms but higher than in 2014.
Biden’s approval rating has slowly declined since February 2021 and is now down to 38%, according to Gallup. But at least half of Gen Z would vote for Joe Biden today, according to an Axios-Generation Lab survey of voters under 35.
“I think what we’ll start seeing is younger folks calling for more politicians to keep their word,” James says. “It feels like they’re putting a band-aid on something that needs a whole reconstructive surgery. And that’s why I’m calling for more of a full reformation of the entire system for all of our student loans. Not just the folks who have it now, but for those coming after.”
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