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The True State Of The Economy: Record Number Of College Graduates Live In Their Parents' Basement
Scratch one more bullish thesis for the housing recovery, and the economic recovery in general.
Over the past several years, optimists had often cited household formation as a key component of pent up demand for home purchases. So much for that.
Recall that last August, the WSJ noted that in a report on the status of families, "the Census Bureau said 13.6% of Americans ages 25 to 34 were living with their parents in 2012, up slightly from 13.4% in 2011. Though the trend began before the recession, it accelerated sharply during the downturn. In the early 2000s, about 10% of people in this age group lived at home." It concluded, quite logically, that "the share of young adults living with their parents edged up last year despite improvements in the economy—a sign that the effects of the recession are lingering."
Of course, the "improvements in the economy" were once again confused with the ongoing Fed- and corporate buyback-driven surge in the stock market, which has since been refuted to have any relationship to underlying economic conditions, and instead is merely the key factor leading to record class disparity - a very heated topic among both politicians and economists in recent months.
But going back to the topic of Americans living with their parents, today Gallup reported that 14% percent of adults between the ages of 24 and 34 - those in the post-college years when most young adults are trying to establish independence -- report living at home with their parents. By contrast, roughly half of 18- to 23-year-olds, many of whom are still finishing their education, are currently living at home.
While this is an approximation of the Census Bureau's own results which should be released in a few months, a 14% print in the critical 24-34 age group means that the percentage of college grads (or those otherwise falling into this age group even if uneducated) living in their parents basement has hit a fresh all time high.
As a reminder, this was the most recent visual update from the WSJ as of last year:
Here is what Gallup had to say about this distrubing result:
An important milestone in adulthood is establishing independence from one's parents, including finding a job, a place to live and, for most, a spouse or partner, and starting one's own family. However, there are potential roadblocks on the path to independence that may force young adults to live with their parents longer, including a weak job market, the high cost of living, significant college debt, and helping care for an elderly or disabled parent.
A statistical model that takes into account a variety of demographic characteristics indicates that three situational factors are most likely to distinguish the group of 24- to 34-year-olds living at home from their peers:
- They are much less likely to be married.
- They are less likely to be working full time and more likely to be unemployed or underemployed.
- They are less likely to have graduated from college.
Being married may better explain why young adults move out of their parents' home than why single adults live at home. For those living at home, their situation may have more to do with their job or income status than their marital status. Being single, however, may make living with parents a more feasible option for young adults than it would be if they were married.
Employment status ranks as the second-most-important predictor of young adults' living situation once they are beyond college age. Specifically, 67% of those living on their own are employed full time, compared with 50% of those living with their parents.
The unemployment rate, as calculated by Gallup, among those in the workforce is twice as high for post-college-aged adults living with their parents as it is for their counterparts who are not living with their parents, 14.6% vs. 7.1%.
The underemployment rate, which combines the percentage unemployed with the percentage working part time but wanting full-time work, is 32.8% among those living at home and 15.4% among those living on their own. In other words, among young adults who live with their parents and are working or actively looking for work, nearly one in three are in a substandard employment situation.
The employment observations are not surprising: after all, one would never voluntarily live with their parents into their thirties, unless one was pathologically lazy and unwilling to branch out on their own of course, if the labor situtation in the economy permitted getting a job which allowed one to at least afford rent.
Neither is it surprising that college grads, saddled with a record amounts of student debt, now well over $1 trillion, or more than the total US credit card debt outstanding, is also crushing college graduate confidence about being able to be cash flow positive once they seek to start lives on their own with the associated cash needs.
However, the marriage observation is more disturbing, and goes to the argument of incremental household formation: namely there is none. In other words, that missing link that at least superficially would provide for some semblance of justification for the rise in house prices that had nothing to do with investor demand and offshore illicit cash laundry using US real estate, is gone.
And while this conforms with Gallup's own implications of these data, there is more bad news:
A 2012 report from Ohio State University sociologists showed that it is increasingly common for young adults to live at home with their parents. The high costs of housing and a relatively weak job market are key factors that may force, or encourage, young adults to stay at home.... The biggest impetus for leaving home seems to be marriage, easily the strongest predictor of one's living arrangement among those between the ages of 24 and 34. This indicates that if the marriage rate increases in the future, the percentage living with their parents may decline. Earlier Gallup research suggests that most unmarried Americans do have a goal of getting married someday.
Also, those who have secured full-time employment or have earned college degrees are more likely to have gotten a place of their own to live. An improving job market and economy should lead to a decrease in the percentage of young adults living with their parents.
To sum it up: a record number of college grads are optin not to start a household and instead live with their parents, and just as relevant:
"An improving job market and economy should lead to a decrease in the percentage of young adults living with their parents."
Considering that the percentage of young adults living with their parents is now an all time high, what does that say about the true state of the job market?
He knows the answer.
Update: just hours after we posted this, Gallup released a follow up report that was largely as expected, and confirms the desolate picture beneath the glitzy surface:
Young Adults Living at Home Less Likely to Be "Thriving"
Young adults between the ages of 24 and 34 who live at home with their parents are significantly less likely to be "thriving" than those in the same age group who don't live with their parents.
These results are based on Gallup Daily tracking interviews conducted from Aug. 7-Dec. 29, 2013, in which adults younger than 35 were asked about their current living arrangements. Fourteen percent of those between the ages of 24 and 34 report that they live at home with their parents.
Gallup classifies Americans as "thriving," "struggling," or "suffering," according to how they rate their current and future lives on a ladder scale with steps numbered from 0 to 10, based on the Cantril Self-Anchoring Striving Scale. People are considered thriving if they rate their current lives a 7 or higher and their lives in five years an 8 or higher.
... even after accounting for marital status, employment, education, and a number of other demographic variables, those living at home between the ages of 24 and 34 still are less likely to be thriving. This suggests that while living with one's parents may have some benefits for young people who have not yet found their full footing in society, the net effect of living at home lowers young adults' perceptions of where they stand in life. In other words, even among young adults who have equal status in terms of being single, not being employed full time, and not having a college education, those who do not live at home are more likely to be thriving than those living at home. Something about living at home appears to drive down young adults' overall life evaluations.
Bottom Line
This research on the well-being of young adults living at home with their parents is the first of its kind at Gallup, although research conducted at Ohio State and elsewhere suggests that living at home is increasingly common among those younger than 35 today.
The data show that those between the ages of 24 and 34 who live at home tend to be unattached -- in the sense that they are not married and less likely to have a full-time job -- and also to be less well-educated. The research reviewed in this report underscores the idea that living at home may have some emotional costs for young adults -- particularly in terms of their perceptions that they are not enjoying the best possible life, beyond those associated with being unemployed or unmarried.
Times may change. If marriage rates rebound, if the job market for young adults improves, and if more young Americans go to college, then living at home may be less common in the years ahead, and if that happens, the overall well-being of young Americans may improve.
Yes indeed: times may change if... Then again, when times change they may get far, far worse.
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The head's not round enough and the hair's all worng. Janet has a basketball cranium.
Comment of the day! Thanks for the laugh I needed it.
Pre-op Janet Yellen. This is during the "wong" phase.
If you're gonna write an article on the state of affairs in 2014 you do your crediblity much harm by posting a picture taken in the 80's(?) of some dude sitting behind dated computer gear with a photo shopped internet page on the monitor (TV). My guess is that guy is printing out the latest from his favorite bulletin board. Remeber those? For his parents sake let's hope that BB wasn't a long distance call.
"don't be jealous that I've been chatting online with babes all day. Besides, we both know that I'm training to be a cage fighter."
since when kip? you have the worst reflexes of all time!
Silver bitchez!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bkRGH4sJDE
Hey that's me with my trash 80 before I got laid........way before
Generation Stupid went a long way towards the current cup of hemlock they are enjoying. "Yes we can!" Fuck them.
I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for these basement dwellers.
I have a couple of youngsters in my office from this age co-efficient I hired. They had no experience, but both the gals had great attitudes and that's half the battle. I have noticed an extreme sense of entitlement among the younger guys - but that's academic anyways since we won't be hiring for a long time to come given where we are heading.
His name is Eric Cartman.
"Screw you guys, I'ma going home!"
fonestar doesn't realize it yet, but satoshi is going to lock all the btc faithful in the Red Robin and then steal their bitcoin with thumb drives.
Man Chuck Palahiuk and Fight Club was so ahead of its time.
It's pretty pathetic fonestar that I know it was your dumb ass who junked me. Shouln't you be mining anyways?
Low Cost Solar and Wind is killing Nuke!
But Nuke swinging back to try to kill Solar and Wind....
Exelon, not quite the slumlords that Entergy is, however, they also run a bunch of old plants. Now they are trying to kill Solar and Wind, and get consumers (aka in their view 'power slaves') to pay a premium for nuclear power? How sick is that? The Criminals That Be (TCTB), i.e. the large corporations, nutli-nationals, and the old money families, want to legislate so that you pay more for the thing that can kill you and your family, and bankrupt you through disease (not just cancer).
Story and my Kill List is here
http://nukeprofessional.blogspot.com/2014/02/kill-list-kill-nuke-as-nuke...
Did someone say Powerslave?
At least that dude wasn't in his PJ's.
Is that dot matrix? What's he smoking? Marlboro Lights? Nice!
Marlboro Lights 100s = Bitchsticks
Those are Salems. See the pack on the desk next to the ashtray.
If you look closely, it appears he is smoking Newports. There is a pack on the right side of the monitor.
If they were Newports then he would probably be black. I'm calling it for Salems.
I miss smoking so much I dreamed I huffed an entire pack last night. Didn't pick up today though.
Maybe America will become a more friendlier and happier society with multiple generational households where families take care of each other.
Get used to it because the standard of living in the developed nations is coming down and with less wealth people will have to rely on each other more.
The reduction in our standard of living may turn out to be a good thing.
I can barely take family over the Christmas holidays.
You go first.
There should be some sort of alt-wealth index of household formation. After all, one definition of poor would be grandma-to-baby all sleeping in the same pile (like the movie "Croods") at one end of the scale, and "every family with their home and 2 car garage" at the other end.
I would be long "Croods". Hmm, maybe that means investing in makers of really big beds.
It's cheaper for everyone to live in the same house. Why not?
I know I did it back in the day, and it helped a lot. If your folks have enough room and get along well enough that they don't make your life hell, it sure helps to work and live with them a while and amass enough money to get on your feet a lot faster. It's not so good for your social and love life but I didn't much care.
Granted, it was all over by 26 when I got my first non-McJob, you have to go where the work is.
It's just as cheap and way more fun to live with your friends in the same house. Did that for years as a single guy. Parties every weekend, sound system and music studio, female roomates and their girlfriends always hanging around. Damn it, I miss being poor...LOL!
Nevermind Newport 100's, or Salems on the desk.
He would be way better off if he got laid by a fat black momma and got 6 kids.
dupe
Often manipulated markets mean higher
prices, less supply.
It's a bogus real estate "market"
with impatient bubble sellers
overpaying buying back early and
others homeless and others living
with their parents.
In health care, it's many learning
their cancer would most likely have
required not so much as an aspirin
if excised earlier but now will be
fatal; but, generally, Mr. Hubris
who doesn't need coverage if that's
his whim and thinks that should be
good enough for everyone else will
actually be paying for all the
uncovered services rendered, cause
though everyone has different policies,
they're all served from the same
facilities.
When you take off from the local
airport, and look back, the services
rendered will get paid for with or
without Mr. Hubris' naivete whether
before or after
privatization of absence of risk
and socialization of risk follows
the inability to move from Southern
California to Las Vegas for a real
estate or employment op, often,
because of a pre-existing condition.
ObamaCare's trickle down (Humphrey,
where's the beef (Mondale.))
http://www.multiurl.com/la/Just_Another_Privatization_Like_Ending_Net_Ne...
A non-privatized system would
offer the end of the very concepts
alarm, insecurity, etc., without
having to lose any freedom on the
part of patient/provider.
Mr. I'm Mr. Tea Party family guy
and that means GMO's are O.K. is
actually I'm Mr. confused
supporter of the privatization
of the food chain including
unwholeseome food for my kids
for the rest of their lives
beginning in their formative
years, particularly if any of
many meaningful reasons to suspect
unwholesomeness pan out, and I'd
personally bet the farm on that.
I love the smell of corruption
in the morning.
Educate. Don't incarcerate.
http://www.dw.de/pesticide-illness-triggers-anti-monsanto-protest-in-arg...
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Weill+and+leaky+gut+syndrome+for+you+to+correl...
http://pages.citebite.com/x2u2b3s3a7qyi
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=pigs%20stomachs%20gmos%20australia&kl=us-en&kd=-1
http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/video/2519/cfs-videos/ge-food
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=sheep+goats+buffalo+gmo%27s+india
http://the-secret-to-success.org/2013/03/livestock-farmers-using-gmo-gra...
http://www.nature.com/cr/journal/v22/n1/full/cr2011158a.html
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/01/the-very-real-danger-o...
http://pages.citebite.com/a2r1f8f7f6gei
http://responsibletechnology.org/glutenintroduction
http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/QAA361058/what-is-leaky-gut.html
The very next QE installment should
actually be half ($US 42.5B)
to student aid/nurses/teachers for
upgrading education and health
and enabling mechanisms, with
their funds mostly reasonably
expected to get spent in the U.S.,
whereas the banks invest in
the greatest adversity available
anywhere in the world.
Save yourselves. Save your planet.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=star+trek+iv+voyage+home+tra...
You're hogging (and wasting) precious comment posting real estate here.
"You're hogging (and wasting) precious comment posting real estate here."
Let's tax him.
Somebody learned how to do a hard return
Is that ZeroHedge he's trolling there?
Ouch. 12% of age 25-34 MARRIED living with their parents. "Son, we ran out of condoms again. Do you mind?" Shudder ...
I now live at home with my parents after moving out 10 years ago. Im the resident financial advisor of the house now! GDXJ has blessed our home rather nicely so far this year ^ ^
The...jobs...are...not...there.
This society is terminally ill.
3 boxes of 5.25" disks. Dude was a serious hacker back in the day.
I hear mustaches are making yet another return. Can't say as much for those goggles. +1 for being able to smoke at work.
LOL at that picture. That picture helped to give this post 5 stars from me.
I have finally figured out pornstar's gig. He's got his computer set up such that every time the word "bitcoin" is written on ZH an alarm goes off. He can then rush in and defend/promote "bitcoin". He's getting paid to do this, much the same as those "like" farms that farcebook uses.
I have an old high school friend who is now over 59, and yes, he lives in his parents basement and lives more or less online. His father was the town Doctor back in the 70-80's but left home for a younger woman. So the guy stayed at home with his Mom, got mutiple college degrees, at least 3 maybe four. Tried teaching for a semester, but the kids ran him out of the classroom, as happens to many would be teachers. Anyways, looking at friends and family, I can see this trend of moving home after college, face it, in debt for loans and being offered minimum wage retail jobs does not allow the earnings needed to live on one's own. More jobs, even good ones do not pay enough in a 40 hour week to cover, food, clothes, transportation, rent, untilites, insurance and dental and doctor bills. So, where do the kids go, back home of course. In many cases, it is "no choice pal". The one, and best ticket into adulthood and into self support is military service. It got me out of the house at age 17, I gave my parnets the finger and my brother drove me to the Federal Building where the Navy put me in charge of 15 other recruits and we headed for the airport. It felt good to be able to walk out on those parents, they enjoyed telling me all the time that at age 17, when I got out of high school I better get out and get a job, because I would not be allowed to live in their house once I was of age. Such a supporting family. I still am grateful to the Navy for giving me a way out, schooling and a place to grow up with others my age. Best decision I ever made. As for jobs, there were some, but the draft was also hot on my heels, in those days the local draft board decided who was drafted and when, I heard via the small town grapevine that me and a half dozen others just out of high school were at top of the list to go. Out of them, I enlisted, 4 were drafted, all went to Nam and one other drove north 20 miles and entered Canada. Such was life in the great free country of America, we had so much freedom it was hard not to love America.
Always enjoy your posts Jack. My situation sort of similar. Went to college first. Graduating in 82 recession there were no jobs. Moved in with my parents after graduating and in less than a year went in the Army. Made it a career. The economic circumstances of the era shaped my future...
Well, I'm a woman and I've worked all my life since I was 16. Got many degrees, had children, built houses.
I teach my kids right now they need to build up their lives. Universitiy degrees, absolutely, then (and even meanwhile), jobs. They're doing just fine.
However, it's the System that doesn't encourage you to have such an independence. We do it in spite of the System, which put us traps all the time.
And which political party do you think these liberally educated, disappointed Americans will be voting for in the future?
No assets, no prospects, no possibilities.
I think that describes the basic supporter of the Democratic Party.
Yeah the Republican party is all the shit.
Or Ron Paul. Any child of the internet generation has at their fingertips the reasons and causes of our vexing politically caused economic problems.
BTW who got us into this mess??
I wasn't even alive when Irwin Schiff was jailed.
I wasn't even alive when Nixon closed the gold window.
I wasn't alive when social security was enacted, let alone the New Deal.
Fucking old ass cowards let the government run amok for the last 100 years.
Time for the internet generation to save the day.
i remember that shit. only 286k of hard drive porn storage available and floppies didn't hold jack shit either. those were the bad old days.
the horror, the horror...
Commodore 64.......thought it was so cool when it came out. LOL, piece of crap.
DON'T COPY THAT FLOPPY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=up863eQKGUI
I'm 28 and i don't live in my parents basement. I still live upstairs in my old bedroom right next to my parents bedroom.
#FuckBasements
Its a Jeff Spicoli Economy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uf5rIuJPTt0
I don't see what the problem is here....these young folks have been "liberated" from having to go work, buy healthcare, etc. by our glorious leader.
Time to out myself. I'm 28 and live with my parents, but it's actually by choice. I own a house (cash purchase, I don't borrow), but rented it out a while back when I moved across the country for work. After a couple years on the west coast, my job was transmogrified into something I didn't want any part in, so I left and decided to move closer to my family. To save money and avoid getting locked into anything, I decided to utilize one of their spare bedrooms, and have been drifting between that and friends' couches. My case is probably atypical since I'm living with my parents by choice, but it stil makes me a member of the so-called boomerang generation.
The government's war on prosperity has been a stunning success!
With any official numbers, remember to multiply by four to get the real numbers.
Cool. Can't wait to live to 300.
You deserve a green arrow for that lol/
living in basement = underground economy
live in basement? wtf?
If you like your basement, you can keep your basement!
Isn't that "if you like your Mom's basement"?
I an unfettered economy, small gov. and no shysters called banksters, there would be few idle resources, much less adults living in their parents basements.
Is it time for the guillotines yet?!
I will not eat what their slinging, I do not like big lies and bullshit, Ponzi-Scam-I-Am."
Italy moves to the US. Welcome!!
What does it say about these pathetic parents that can't tell 30 year old junior to take a hike.
To where?
Fuck every stupid piece of shit that voted (gave their consent to getting assfucked) for this "Hope and Change" parasite.
I hope they choke on the fukken mold spores in their cellars. They deserve nothing less.
An entire generation duped into voting to pay for older peoples healthcare for nothing in return but hopeium... Go figure.
please be kind to the handicapped.
At least they are free to come and go .....if it were Austria
WTH is that a picture from 1987? 5.25" floppies and what appears to be an IBM XT? Cmon there should be a milioon (sic) selfies out there of kids in their parent's basement.
It's just a humorous pic.
Good training for fathers-to-be for when they "graduate" family law.
yep, living with their parents, browsing 4chan, zerohedge and trading bitcoins... getbitcoins.tk
But the gubbamint don't count those who are currently NOT looking for alternative housing... hahaha.
And if they're not living at home, they're living with four other rotating roommates in some godforsaken stretch of hipster decay.
So why would people give money to bank funded highly leveraged hedge fund real estate rental ponzi schemes, when they can keep the money in the familiy.
Am I missing something here?
Hot girls do not date 34 year old guys living with their mom. Even non hot girls have some standards.
after all, one would never voluntarily live with their parents into their thirties, unless one was pathologically lazy and unwilling to branch out on their own of course
Unless their parents are ill or something...
Anyways I wonder what the percentages are by decade? How many work the family business?
Then...Is this actually a big deal considering debt and putting off marriage until later in life?
good thing parents are helping their children beyond 18.
That guy is sad because he can't affort to upgrade to a 900MB hard drive.
If you had an AT instead of XT, you were the man.
In those days if you had a 40MB hard drive, you were king.
I recall those days when the first 20mb hard drive arrived. It held as much data as 16 floppies!
LMAO couldn't we find a more recent picture? That's an office at NASA in the early 70's.
hey look, the picture of a typical ZH poster...ROFLMAO!!! Educated in their own basement, their knowledge gleaned from mold spores, heh...
One day they may wake up, but I dont think so...
graduating from "college' only reflects that you paid tuition.... not that anyting of value penetrated the thcik skull into the gray matter... besides we have exported our "economy" and its not coming back without a competitibve advantage... whcih we dont have except perhaps in technology and aerospace- if that anymore...and sitcoms nad reality programs... how many useless lawyers are there... how many family courts to deal with a fucked up society.. our government is corrupt and rotten to the core, our framework for success has been perverted... by the dumb and the polls they put in office to "solve the problems".... look in the mirror... that person is the problem. The free shit crowd, government dependent. entitled crew has drained the economic resources into non/counter productive WASTE...
There's so much talent out there that isn't even allowed to work, particularly in STEM. While some of the least talented people, particularly in banking/finance, are given enormous salaries and gold plated everything. As I see it, the big problem is in HR on a national basis. Fix that, and maybe we'll be on the road to a broader fix for the economy.
Even yesterday evening I got to play my first shooter game. Try doing that if you don't live in your Mom's basement.
I think he spelled it wrong. Shouldn't it be phonystar ??
Hey good luck to 'em.
Why buy into a bullshit system to form households and buy whitegoods and more crap when you can pool resources under one roof.
It's probably not the reason they're living at home, but it should be encouraged to starve the beast.
The basement dwellers are probably living a life more free than those who've launched anyway - the income is sooner or later swallowed by mortgage, car loan, credit cards and the wife's spendthrift habits, in addition to the student loans.
My parents are gone so that does not help. We came up with a better idea. I have done a lot of business with the guy who started this project in Brainerd and he has invited me to play since I helped a bit financially and it was all private money. Minnesota is a large state so Brainerd is a good deal north of us and I'm not going to drive up there if I don't have to. We might have to finally go now that it is pretty much finished. We were no where near ready for Olympics this year. It's built to Olympics specs though and folks are welcome to come and try.
It's a long story... It's there now. We built it. Let's go you old bastards.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fVrqDEUQ7s
At least we can be confident of one thing:
if all the basement dwellers combine forces together, they can make a Giant Transformer Satoshi robot and attack the banksters with Bitcoin-cannons.