Why Are Record Numbers Of Young Adults Jobless And Living At Home With Mom And Dad?

The Economic Collapse ^ | 02/14/2012 | Michael Snyder

[SeekAndFind]

In the United States today, unemployment among those age 18 to age 34 is at epidemic levels and the number of young adults that are now living at home with Mom and Dad is at an all-time high. So why are so many of our young adults jobless? Why are record numbers of them unable or unwilling to move out on their own? Well, there are quite a few factors at work. Number one, our education system has completely and totally failed them. As I have written about previously, our education system is a joke and most high school graduates these days are simply not prepared to function at even a very basic level in our society. In addition, college education in the United States has become a giant money making scam that leaves scores of college graduates absolutely drowning in debt. Many young adults end up moving back in with Mom and Dad because they are drowning in so much debt that there are no other options. Thirdly, the number of good jobs continues to decline and this is hitting younger Americans the hardest. Millions of young people enter the workforce excited about the future only to find that there are hordes of applicants for the very limited number of decent jobs that are actually available. So all of this is creating an environment where more young adults are financially dependent on their parents that ever before in modern American history.

Since the start of the recession, the percentage of young adults in America that are employed has dropped like a rock. In 2007, the employment rate for Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 was 62.4 percent. Today, it is down to 54.3 percent.

Yes, there are certainly many out there that are lazy, but the truth is that most of them would like to work if they could. It is just that it is much harder to find a job these days.

And it isn't just young people that think that the job market has gotten tougher. According to one recent survey, 82 percent of all Americans believe that it is harder for young adults to find jobs today than it was for their parents to find jobs.

But if they cannot get jobs, then young adults cannot financially support themselves. So more of them than ever are heading back home to live with Mom and Dad.

In the year 2000, 8.3 percent of all American women between the ages of 25 and 34 were living at home with their parents. Today, that figure is up to 9.7 percent.

In the year 2000, 12.9 percent of all American men between the ages of 25 and 34 were living at home with their parents. Today, that figure is up to an astounding 18.6 percent.

Take a moment and let those statistics sink in.

Nearly one out of every five American men from age 25 to age 34 are living at home with Mommy and Daddy.

When you look at Americans age 18 to age 24, it is even worse. Among Americans age 18 to age 24, 50 percent of all women and 59 percent of all men still live with their parents.

Those are very frightening numbers.

Part of this has to do with a fundamental cultural shift. An increasing number of parents these days expect that they will have to take care of their own children beyond the age of 22. The following is from a recent article by Pew Research....

When asked in a 1993 survey what age children should be financially independent from their parents, 80% of parents said children have to be self-reliant by age 22. In the current survey, only 67% of parents say children have to be financially independent by age 22—a drop of 13 percentage points.

But what accounts for the tremendous gender disparity that we see in the figures above?

Well, one major factor is that young women are now far more likely to pursue a college education than young men are. According to an article in the New York Times, women now account for approximately 57 percent of all enrollments at U.S. colleges and universities.

The less education you have, the more likely you are to be unemployed in America today. So that is certainly a significant factor.

But many that have gone on to college are also moving back home. When you are a young adult with no job and no prospects and you are swamped with tens of thousands of dollars of student loan debt, it can be incredibly difficult to be financially independent.

After adjusting for inflation, U.S. college students are now borrowing about twice as much money as they did a decade ago. Many students that go on to graduate school end up with more than $100,000 in total student loan debt.

Sadly, those degrees often do not pay off. In fact, in America today one-third of all college graduates end up taking jobs that don't even require college degrees.

So what does all of this mean?

It means that there are millions upon millions of angry, disillusioned and frustrated young adults out there today. A recent USA Today article told the story of 32-year-old Dennis Hansen....

After a year without work, Hansen, 32, was hired to monitor Lake Michigan and Lake Superior water for the state and federal governments over two summers. He also had short stints as a census worker and as an extra post office hand during one holiday crush.

It hasn't been enough: Hansen says he has a $13,000 credit card debt and that's just for basics — his $600 monthly mortgage, heat and food.

"It's definitely a roller coaster," Hansen says, with the ups coming when he's done well in a job interview and the downs when there's a rejection: "That's when I'm frustrated, angry and wondering why I went to college for 10 years."

If the economy was humming along on all cylinders, it would be easy to blame our young adults for being too lazy.

But these days most young adults have to scramble like crazy just to get a really low paying job. Large numbers of very talented young adults are waiting tables, flipping burgers or stocking shelves at Wal-Mart.

And this reality is reflected in the overall economic statistics. Since the year 2000, incomes for U.S. households led by someone between the ages of 25 and 34 have fallen by about 12 percent after you adjust for inflation.

The "wealth gap" between younger Americans and older Americans is also growing and recently hit a new all-time high. U.S. households led by someone 65 years of age or older are now 47 times wealthier than U.S. households led by someone 35 years of age or younger.

But this is not good for our society. When there is civil unrest, it is not those 65 and older that take to the streets.

We desperately need our economy to get healthy again so that our young adults can get good jobs, get married, set up households, raise families and be productive members of society.

Instead, the percentage of young adults that have jobs is near an all-time low, the percentage of young adults living with their parents is at an all-time high, the proportion of adults in the United States that are married is at an all-time low and we have hordes of angry, frustrated young adults with plenty of time on their hands.

You don't have to be a genius to see trouble on the horizon.

What is going to happen when the next major financial crisis comes and the economy gets significantly worse than it is now?

In the end, we are going to reap what we have sown. We have fundamentally failed our young adults, and those failures are going to produce some very bitter fruit.

[Darren McCarty]

The worst job I've ever had was looking for work. I don't like the game either so I went into business for myself. It's not easy, but I'm surviving. I got 10 times more "jobs" that way than going through the old resume process.

[discostu]

See you just proved exactly why not to hire overqualified candidates. You left in 6 months, so then they had to go through all the expense of the hiring process again. They would have been right to not hire you had you been truthful on your resume because you did EXACTLY what they would have feared.

They might not have had to spend any money training you, but they still spent tons on the rest of the hiring process, the time it took to sort through resumes and interview people to get to you (and then your replacement 6 months later) wasn’t free. That’s paid time that could have spent doing things more directly related to earning money.

I understand your position. Desperate times, desperate measures. What I’m pointing out is the other side, and how your action actually prove the other side is right. You cost them exactly the time and money that’s why not to hire overqualified candidates. Looking at reality from the other side is where real learning happens. There are good and valid reasons not to hire overqualified people and you yourself have BEEN those reasons.

[central_va]

I understand your position. Desperate times, desperate measures. What I’m pointing out is the other side, and how your action actually prove the other side is right.

Bozo, did ever occur to you that the value I added during those six months was probably 5 times what some high school reject would have provided? I gave them way more than I got back.

When I left I told them the truth they had NO PROBLEM with my work and actually called me 4 months later for an engineering position.

[discostu]

I did actually. You won’t believe it because it’s important to your pointlessly adversarial world view that I be a bad person. But out here in reality I’m a normal person with normal feelings and empathy, I’ve been on both sides of the interview table, I know how bad it sucks to need a job, and that knowledge twists a knife in my gut every I’ve ever interviewed somebody and didn’t hire them. Of course that knife twist inspires me to make better decisions. Thanks to doing a really good job hiring people when we expanded my department 6ish years ago I haven’t had to interview anybody since because they’re all still here. Another reason to not hire the overqualified, less wear and tear on the liver.

[discostu]

There you are addicted to the insults again, pathetic really. Even if you did provide 5 times the value (which is unlikely, most jobs at the low end of the world there’s only so much anybody can do and even the best guy can’t be more than 2 or 3 times as useful as the base) they still got stuck going through the hiring process again in 6 months instead of the years that is the goal.

[central_va]

But out here in reality I’m a normal person with normal feelings and empathy, I’ve been on both sides of the interview table, I know how bad it sucks to need a job, and that knowledge twists a knife in my gut every I’ve ever interviewed somebody and didn’t hire them.

For some reason I don't believe you.

pointlessly adversarial world view

Really, with AA, and other quotas , being over qualified and H1-b program which planet are you working on?

[Tammy8]

I agree there may not be enough jobs out there for those just starting out- I believe all the illegals in this country have a lot to do with the job market too.

I can tell you that during the wonderful Carter years I was a young adult getting started- I had a two year degree in Criminal Justice which I chose because I wanted to be in law enforcement and had been told it was really opening up for women and people with some college. The only job I was offered in law enforcement was meter maid- which in hindsight I should have taken because LEO did really open up for women after that and those that were already in jobs like that did well. What I did was get an entry level office job during the day and a job in a bar at night and a roomate so I could make it on my own. I did not go back to my parents, funny I didn’t think of that as an option and I know they would have let me move in. It just didn’t occur to me, I wanted to be on my own- I felt they had done their part.

[central_va]

they still got stuck going through the hiring process again in 6 months instead of the years that is the goal.

Like I said they had no problem when I resigned. They liked me and tried to hire me 4 months later. It was win-win. But I guess to a HR loser, that just can't be. They may have to look at more resumes i.e. do there job, and can't take a 4 hour lunch. Cry me a f-ing river.

[central_va]

Oh God I made a mistake I meant to say their job instead of there job. I guess I won't get the job! LOL

[discostu]

None of those are a reason to put insults in every single post. That’s just you being a jerk for no good reason. Pointlessly adversarial.

Funny too how the guy that admits to lying on resumes doesn’t want to believe what people say. Little bit of pot and kettle action there.

[discostu]

There you go with the insults again. And the lies, I told you I’m not in HR. We can now see your resume isn’t the only place you lie. You’re just plain an all around liar. Probably even lying about their reaction when you left. Or maybe they’re the “meat brains” you referred to a couple of days ago. Or maybe “Nazi HR”.

You really are addicted to being an all around ass aren’t you. We’re done. You’re a liar, and a jerk. And you’re beneath my contempt.

[central_va]

See ya.

[ansel12]

I’m glad that you have managed such a refined life, I don’t know when your dating youth was, I wonder if wealth and age has something to do with your experience being so incredibly different than life for most people, I wouldn’t even know where to go to find a rooming house for girls or rental agencies solely devoted to female housing, nor do I know what kind of girls you deal with who rent apartments next to your part time New York City residence.

A boy dropping out of high school won’t be moving into his girlfriend’s life and apartment, but a girl dropping out of high school is in high demand.

In my experience, males are more likely to have to support their own apartments than females, the females have an easier time of going from relationship to relationship which includes a roof, that is one reason that any normal looking youngish female has to be very off mentally to be living on the streets.

Without digging deeply, some quick numbers are about half of women have shacked up, and in 1995 a quarter of women age 25-34 were shacking up, and I think 34 was well into the older group where many have been married off.

In my experience I was thinking more of females 18 into their mid to late 20s as being the ones who drift from live in relationship to live in relationship,by the way, my son is a struggling artist in New York, he graduated Cooper Union about 5 years ago.

[ansel12]

Good summary.

[miss marmelstein]

Hey, you can call me out on age (I just turned 57) but wealth? Refined? Sorry, I grew up in a working class family in Queens. I came of age in the 70s and 80s. I lived in many a dive with other girls my age. The boarding house I’m talking about was the basis for the movie “Stage Door.” It closed in the 1980s - so did the Barbizon - which is the temporary home of the heroine of Sylvia Plath’s novel “The Bell Jar.” It was a very middle-class hotel and I could only afford to stay there once in a while. Both of these residences were once well-known to New Yorkers.

Yes, indeed, my husband I rent a small apt. in NYC and there are several single women living there. I hear them going out the door at 7am every morning. I’m confused as to why you think this is rare. When I worked in offices throughout the ‘90s and early 2000’s in NYC, most of the women I knew were either living with roommates or living in apartments in the boroughs. Some, of course, lived at home.

If your son is having trouble finding a decent girl, I would suggest he join either a church that holds dances and singles events (my best friend found her husband this way) or join a great group called The Young Republicans (of NY).
Not only will you meet great, conservative people with this organization but you will be invited to events where you will meet many name Republicans and get to know them on a first name basis. That can also be a career boost.

[ansel12]

I never mentioned my son’s marital or dating status, I merely mentioned he is a new York city artist because of your home page.

You have good stories about you, boarding houses and NYC, they don’t seem to mean much to the fact that females are more likely to drift from boyfriend apartment to the next boyfriends apartment, females are much more likely to skate on having to support themselves in their young years, than males.

[miss marmelstein]

I think you simply have a poor opinion of single women for some reason. Nothing I can write can change that.

[ansel12]

Good gosh, there is no reason to make such a hostile personal attack as that.

Your attack reveals why you kept trying to massage the truth and were treating my simple observation so harshly, you seem to have some agenda, an identity chauvinism to your efforts.

I didn’t realize that there was a subtext to what I thought was just an everyday observation.

[miss marmelstein]

I don’t know what you’re talking about! I merely observed that you seemed down on single women. If you’re not, I apologize.