A study published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences offers a rigorous accounting of what the Boomer generation cost — and what their departure may now unlock. Steven Ruggles, a demographer at the University of Minnesota, tracked U.S. labor-force flows decade by decade from 1910 to 2040. His findings are arresting. The sheer size of the Boomer cohort suppressed economic opportunity for young workers throughout the 1970s and into the 2010s. Economists had long predicted a rebound: as Boomers aged and smaller generations entered the workforce, competition would ease and wages for young workers would recover. It never happened. Female labor-force participation and immigration filled the gap, keeping competition high and young workers’ incomes depressed for an extra three decades beyond what models anticipated. But Ruggles’ most striking finding looks forward, not back.…