Millennial men earn less than the generation before them in every year of their working lives, a think tank has found.
They earn a total of £12,500 less between the ages of 22 and 30, according to an analysis by the Resolution Foundation.
The trend is due to young men moving into low paid jobs previously done by women, the foundation said. Millennial women did not see a fall in pay.
Foundation director Torsen Bell said the research showed “the long-held belief that each generation should do better than the last is under threat”.
“Policy makers need to recognise the frustration that can follow from finding that Britain does not have the opportunities you had hoped or indeed seen previous generations enjoy,” he said.
The research showed the proportion of low paid work done by young men has increased by 45 per cent between 1993 and 2015-16.
The number of young men working in bars and restaurants, for example, has trebled from 45,000 to 130,000 since 1993.
The foundation said the stunted pay progress in this group had been made worse by an increase in part-time work in the lowest-paid jobs.
Young women have, meanwhile, moved into higher-skilled paying jobs, with fewer in part-time low-paid work.
The foundation said that in the last two decades there has been an overall shift away from low-skilled jobs, but young men had not fully benefitted from the change.
It said that while the change had reduced the gender pay gap among millennials, it had done so for the wrong reasons.
Bell said: “The fact that young women have bucked this trend by moving overwhelmingly into higher-skilled roles is welcome and suggests that the disruptive force of automation has met its match in the forward march of education and feminism.
“But if the last year has taught us anything it is that we need to look beyond the headlines of rising employment, to recognise the challenges posed to groups of workers that are left behind.”