As COVID-19 rages, millennials make up growing share of 'sandwich generation,' caring for kids and parents

Cooper Holmes' life is a whirlwind of family responsibilities.

At 36, he takes care of his three-year-old daughter while his wife works as a full-time teacher, and helps support his 76-year-old mother, who has health issues.

Holmes, who lives in Delta, Colorado, spends four hours a day running his mother's 50-sheep farm with his daughter in tow. And since the pandemic began, he has handled her grocery shopping and other errands. He also contributes about $200 to help her pay the monthly bills.

From Friday through Sunday, he works the night shift at a local grocery store, stocking shelves.

“It can be very stressful,” he says. “It always feels like there’s something I need to be doing."

Like many other millennials, Holmes is grappling with just the latest financial woe to bedevil his generation.

Millennials, age 24 to 39, graduated from college just as the Great Recession of 2007-09 was upending the economy, setting back their careers and salaries. They took on hundreds of billions of dollars in student debt. And now, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, they’re suddenly becoming the largest contingent of the “sandwich generation,” the cohort of adults providing financial and other support to both children and elderly parents.

Millennials make up 39% of the sandwich generation, according to a survey of 1,000 adults conducted by Morning Consult for New York Life in late July and early August. That’s about the same share comprised by Generation X, age 40 to 55, with millennials possibly poised to overtake that older group within the next couple of years, according to New York Life, which provided the survey results exclusively to USA TODAY.