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.

[Lazlo in PA]

We don't have to look too far to see why this is happening.

Hopefully these new basement dwellers will see the same thing and vote accordingly in Nov.

[Responsibility2nd]

I read every word of this article. I wish I could say this is not true. I wish I could say this report is full of cheese.

But I can’t. Sad to say - this is the reality for millions of young people.

I know. I have a 25 year old and a 19 year old living at home with little to no prospects.

[muawiyah]

This is the FACTION the Republicans must strip away from the Democrats.

All they have to do is say "We will fix this first".

The Obamistas still deny the Great Obama Recession is the Great Obama Depression for young people. In fact, the Obots think they can "buy" these young people with promises of free condoms.

[jagusafr]

My daughter just graduated from college in December. She’s never been unemployed since she started college. She’s worked both in retail and in her chosen field (exotic animal rescue, rehab and habitat) and she’s earning a decent living. She knows she will need to be on her own before the year is out, and if that means sharing an apartment with roommates, then that’s what it means. She knows she can’t afford to buy a house yet and that all of her bills are her responsibility.

I have a problem with the victimhood perspective of this article. Life’s not supposed to be easy, young adults aren’t supposed to be able to simply continue living as comfortably as they did when they were their parents’ responsibility, and nobody told my kids they were entitled to only have one job at a time. If they need more money, they either cut out what’s costing them extra or they go get a second job.

How hard is that, really?

[ßuddaßudd]

Education failure

[eyeamok]

Yeah, but let’s not forget that it is these very same “young people” that VOTED FOR ALL THIS HOPE AND CHANGE. They have nobody to blame except the person in the mirror.

[circlecity]

"That's when I'm frustrated, angry and wondering why I went to college for 10 years."

"Seven years of college, down the drain." - Senator Blutarski

[Hodar]

How times have changed.

When I was in college, being an engineer was a respectable career. You sacrificed a social life for 4/5 years and busted yoru butt to got your degree. Then you got a job, refined your skills to align with your job; performed your duties responsibly - and you could plan on having that job until you retired, or found a better offer. Job security was fantastic, and job stability was pretty much assumed.

Today, you do your job, you work your over-time, you refine your skills - and you show up to work to find that your department has been out-sourced to India. Or you find that your company’s profits weren’t as high as some nameless entity on Wall Street had predicted, so you are laid off. Or the company has decided to elimate your department, or you are fired so they can bring in new and cheaper workers to use the tools you have developed. All in the name of progress.

Meanwhile, the Business Degree folk, who gambled on an idea, or made short-sighted decisons remain employed only to screw up again, and again, and again.

The World Economy that the Democrats have championed is a race to the bottom. While the living standards in China and India are getting better - the standards in the USA are plummetting to parity with the 3rd world. Unions have killed manufacturing in the USA; the Teacher’s Unions have killed any chance of our children getting a useable education, and colleges have made a fallacy of the College Degree by offering everyone a degree that has no economic value upon graduation, that students will need to repay the loans they took to take courses in “Women Studies”, “Theater Lighting”, “Wildlife Management”, “Child Development” and “Psychology”

[dfwgator]

They wanted change....THEY GOT IT!!!

[DonaldC]

I’m not sure that you understand how bad it is out there, but regardless, whether obama gets another term or not may not matter too much, as I’ve not seen anything proposed by the remaining candidates that would significantly change things.

[bigbob]

It’s easy to poke fun at “mom and dad’s basement” and to chime in about laziness, but I think you’ve nailed it.

Education takes many forms, including the “go get a summer job” many of us heard from our parents, to the counselors that sell the idea of lifetime earning being so much higher with a college degree, to the family members who vicariously live their kids lives by sending them to expensive private schools or tolerating a party lifestyle in dorms and frats instead of insisting the first two years be spent at a local community college, while working part time.

And yes, the teachers in the classroom who fill impressionable young minds with liberal mush are part of the problem. But think about it and I bet most of us would agree it’s the family and other influences that are stronger forces leading to “educational failure”.

[hal ogen]

And to think that a significant number of these yopung people vote for and admire nobama. It will be interesting to hear their tune ten years from now.

[SMARTY]

“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.”

Employers use a ‘college degree’ the way they used to use a high school diiploma, to screen out applicants.

In the end you may be doing work which anyone off the street can do with about a weeks training.... it is sort of a rigged system.

Colleges make lots of money conning kids into thinking they won’t get past the door with employers unless they have a degree. Employers give out that they will only consider college graduates for work that in fact, can be taught once hireees begin employment.

THAT said... public schools have so far failed students by now that a college degree puts graduates on a par with what HS graduates USED to be

[Joe the Pimpernel]

The minimum wage is the fundamental cause. It prices entry-level workers out of the job market. In order to climb the ladder, you have to get on the first rung, and the minimum wage thwarts that.

The minimum wage was invented to do one thing; protect white unionized construction workers from competition from black, non-unionized construction workers, who were paid less (blacks were banned from union membership during the 1930s).

The year the minimum wage law went into effect was the last year the unemployment rate of blacks was lower than that for whites.

[LibertarianLiz]

My youngest daughter graduated from college in December of 2009. She took a lot of honors classes and college credit courses in high school, and then worked her tail off again to graduate within 3 1/2 years from college. She also worked as an RA for two years which really helped with our college costs and hers. She got out, put together her resume, sent out hundreds of copies. Got zero response.

After that disappointment and looking at the state of our economy, she used some of the student loan that was left over to get herself certified to teach overseas and then started that job search (also took an immersion Japanese language course). Finally, in February of 2011 she was offered a job in Japan and is now residing there and teaching English.

She was living at home, but she really was ready to be out and working and living in an apartment of her own. But, there simply were no jobs available.

She is thinking of staying overseas for another year. I believe she is hoping that Zero will be voted out of office and she can come back and get a job in the U.S. It has been a sobering experience for her, and while she was living at home waiting for some news on her job applications, she started reading Ayn Rand. So Zero ended up making her something of a libertarian.

My oldest daughter has kept the job she had; but, she had a plan which included getting experience in this area and then moving to the next step on the ladder as she was trying to climb to the position that she really wanted to finally end up at. Unfortunately, she has also been "stuck" in that position and is finding that there are no openings in the next level. This is really hitting everyone in different ways.

[Baynative]

"Education failure"

BINGO! Have you ever seen a recent grad try to fill out a resume? Many can't spell or articulate their thoughts. The majority don't know the difference between "there and their" or, "your and you're".

[avacado]

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

[dfwgator]

I believe the Minimum Wage has played a huge role in this....why hire a teenager for a job at such a high wage, when there are adults who are willing to work at that wage?

The teenager working a summer job is going the way of the Dodo Bird, so they come out of college with no work experience, whereas before, working summer jobs actually prepared them better for the real world.

There should be a lower minimum wage for people under the age of 18....ahhhh, but the Unions will never allow anything to put downward pressure on wages.

[i_robot73]

You forget too the reason for all this shinola is the GOV’T.

It wasn’t that long ago that the man was able to afford the home, car and also allowed the wife able to rear their young; to get out into the real world without both feet being swiped out from under them, and STILL have some $$ left over....

Hell, couples were off on their own, married and happily living the American dream @ 18 (or younger!).

GOV’T and TAXES, as we were warned, were/are the downfall of the U.S. (HELLO Greece... :S)