More millennials are living with their families despite gains in the job market, according to a Pew Research Center analysis released Wednesday. Student loan debt and rising rents could be to blame.
Advertisement
Likewise, while men remain more likely than women to live independently – 63 per cent versus 72 per cent – both genders took a roughly equal hit over the past five years. This video was licensed from Grab Networks. But the decline in independent living stretched across 25- to 34-year-old cohorts with varying degrees of educational attainment, including those who didn’t attend college.
“This may have important consequences for the nation’s housing market recovery, as the growing young adult population has not fueled demand for housing units and the furnishings, telecom and cable installations and other ancillary purchases that accompany newly formed households”, the report notes. The young adult unemployment rate has continued a steady fall since then and was at 7.7 percent in the first quarter of this year. “My expectation was that as the labor market improves, more young people will strike out on their own, but that’s not the case”. The median weekly earnings of young adults was $574 through the first four months of this year, up marginally from their recent 2012 low of $547.
Part of the reason for the increase is just pure numbers – there are just more of them as young adults now than five years ago.
A sixth of those still at home admitted they lived a cushy existence – as 84 per cent of their parents said they still did the laundry for them.
Writing for the Washington Post last summer, Oregon State University professor Richard Settersten argued that talk of a crisis is overblown: “What hard economic times have done is offer a culturally acceptable explanation for young people and their parents to rationalize their circumstances in the face of a cherished American ideal of independence that triggers embarrassment or shame”.
Advertisement
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
