In Obama’s America, a third of all young adults between the ages of 18 and 34 are broke, single, and living with their parents.
The Pew Research Center released its new study showing that Millennials are tipping the scales for the first time in modern history. From CBS Money Watch:
About 32.1 percent of Americans between 18 to 34 years old lived in their parents’ homes in 2014, edging out the 31.6 percent who were married or living with a partner in their own household, the analysis of Census data found. The remaining 36 percent either live alone, are single parents, or live in dorms or with other relatives.
“Young adults today are having a different transition into adulthood than previous generations,” Pew researcher Richard Fry said. “In previous generations, setting up new families was a basic thing young adults were doing. Even in the 1980s, half of them were married. Today’s young adults are moving away from that.”
Though this trend began in advance of the latest economic turmoil, Fry said things have definitely worsened more recently, especially for men:
“The labor market hasn’t been kind to young men. Increasingly they are unable to afford to live independently. It also explains why many fewer of them are married or cohabiting. They are probably less desirable as partners given their sinking fortunes.”
It’s even worse for young black and Hispanic men, who are living with their parents at a whopping 36 percent.
Millennials with college degrees are fairing much better with only 19% of those still living at home.
None of this is helping to improve the economy and more specifically, the housing market, which hasn’t seen the recovery it should have. Fry said with Millennials forgoing forming households, they aren’t spending any money in the housing market or on what goes into a new home: furniture, appliances, television subscriptions, cleaning supplies, the whole nine yards.
Add to this a stagnation of wages for men over the past few decades, as Money Watch notes. Annual wages for them have declined to just over $50,000, while women’s wages have actually increased during the same time.
By contrast, only 23% of young adults were living at home in the year 2000.
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