Any broke young professional who still manages to scrape together enough cash for a bar outing in hopes of “meeting someone” can surely identify with this.
The current crop of 18 to 34 olds in the U.S. are more likely to be single, jobless and lower-wage than previous editions of young adults dating back 30 years, according to new data from the Census Bureau. The report “Young Adults: Then And Now” compares the socioeconomic circumstances of millennials with those of young adults in 2000, 1990 and 1980, and the differences with the present day are jarring.
For one, few — legitimately few — young adults are getting hitched. Whereas a minority of them were single in 1980 and 1990, two out of every three of them today have never been married. The trend toward early bachelorhood was noticeable last century, but the jump from 2000 to now — 52.5 percent to 66 percent — is significant.
The lifestyle seems to be particularly prevalent in the Northeast. Every such state north of the Mason-Dixon line but New Hampshire and Maine has at least a 70 percent population of single young adults.
The economic situation of 18 to 34 year olds has worsened substantially in the last decade. Their median earnings climbed to more than $37,o00 by the year 2000, but today, they’ve dropped to a shade below $34,000. The total number of them employed has fallen from 68.7 percent to 65 percent. And the number of them living in poverty is approaching 20 percent after being steadily lower for multiple decades.
This is all despite the fact that millennials have more educational credentials than their young adult predecessors. 18 to 34 year olds have obtained at least a bachelor’s degree in greater numbers decade by decade, to a current high of 22.3 percent. That figure was 15.7 percent 30 years ago — when young adults were better paid and employed in higher numbers than they are today.
The data used in the Census Bureau report are based on five-year estimates, between 2009 and 2013, in the American Community Survey.
Related: Millennials might be moving out of their parents’ homes, but job prospects are still dismal
(h/t CNS News)
