STUDY: More Young Adults Living With Parents
More of today’s twenty- and-thirty-somethings are living with their parents than in generations before them. The pattern is generally the result of delayed adulthood and lingering effects of the Great Recession, an Ohio research concludes in a new study.
About 17 percent of the adults between the ages of 20 to 34 lived with their parents in 1980, compared with 24 percent during the Great Recession period, which the study describes being between 2007 and 2009.
The increase was sharpest for young people under 25; that group grew from 32 percent to 43 percent during those times, according to the study “During the Great Recession, More Young Adults Lived with Parents.”
Part of the reason that more young adults stayed at home was that the Great Recession, while it affected everyone, hit young people the hardest. The study’s author says they where generally the last to get hired and the first ones to get fired.
The findings are not surprising considering that Generation Y, while more educated than previous generations, is facing a tougher time finding steady employment.
RELATED STORY: Millennials Still Optimistic in Tough Times.
Young people are also more likely to earn less than those who graduated in better economic times. A 2010 Yale University study suggested that those with a college degree would likely earn about 17.5 percent less per year than their peers who graduated in a more robust economy. That’s because there are fewer jobs to pick from and their job experience might not be a direct match.
But Dan Schawbel, author of the personal-branding book Me 2.0 said that this generation isn’t afraid to take jobs in retail stores, bars, or entry-level clerical jobs to save money to fund the projects they’re passionate about. “They understand that life is about sacrifices,” Schawbel said. Some might be living at home to save money to buy an apartment, launch a start-up company, develop a project that could turn into a business, or while they get more education, he said.
“As much as people think that they are entitled, they [of Gen Y] understand that a lot of things aren’t coming to them because of the economic situation,” he said.
Asian-Americans were the ethnic group that had the greatest increase of young adults living with parents between 1980 and the Great Recession period. In 1980, about 17 percent of Asian-Americans lived at home, compared with 26 percent during the 2007-2009 period, according to the study.
