Stats show that millennials are living with their parents longer than previous generations, but at what age does this living situation become embarrassing for them? According to a new survey from TD Ameritrade, young millennials (ages 20 to 26) on average said that 28 is the cut-off for them. Only 5 percent of young millennials felt the need to move out by the time they hit 20.
While shocking, these numbers represent millennials’ acceptance of a new normal. Life is too expensive to fly the coop right after high school like their Baby Boomer predecessors.
Millennials faced overwhelming setbacks during the recession, and aside from a drop in unemployment since then, life is about the same. Student debt, combined with the scarcity of lucrative jobs, has kept young people from becoming fully self-sufficient. From 2010 to early 2015, while unemployment shrank from 12.4 percent to 7.7 percent, the number of young adults living with their parents increased from about 1 in 4 to a whopping 1 in 3.
College educated millennials haven’t had much better luck. Moving back in with family after college has become the rule rather than the exception. Just like getting married, buying their first home and having kids, it’s one of several life choices that millennials have had to postpone due to the Great Recession’s lasting impact – -or so the media tells us.
Is the recession really the only culprit, though?
Back when I was in high school (10+ years ago), counselors and teachers inferred that a four-year degree was the only way to have a truly successful career. Two-year associate degrees and trade schools were cast as alternative paths, but didn’t quite have the glamour and glitz of the university path.
Now we have more college graduates and young full-time workers than ever before, yet millennials are living at home longer. They are burdened with debt, and unable to find decent-paying jobs. On average, young millennials suffer with more than $10,000 in debt, and 1 in 7 don’t expect to pay it off until they are 50 or older. Meanwhile, “trade” jobs are in high demand.
Ultimately, four-year universities are not delivering on their promises, and yet they continue to increase tuition year over year. Adjusted for inflation, tuition alone increased 40 percent over the last 10 years at public four-year colleges, and 27 percent at private non-profit four-year colleges during the same period.
Non-Asian minorities have been impacted the most severely by this trend. Over the last couple decades, elite academic institutions have targeted these minority groups in their recruitment efforts, working tirelessly to make campuses more “diverse,” frequently through race-based affirmative action. Sadly, this actually tends to hurt the minorities that these institutions are supposedly trying to help. Statistically, these groups face higher dropout rates, and the promise of economic advancement becomes nothing more than an empty promise. The result is devastating: 32 percent of Hispanic millennials and 37 percent of black millennials have “failed to launch.”
As job growth and salary growth both increase under the Trump administration, the best way to help millennials and their successors move forward is to provide these current and future workers with the skills they need to advance in the job market. This also means that our teachers and professors need to start encouraging their students to pursue fields that lead to jobs.
Encouraging students to pursue pipe dreams that will leave them in their parents’ house through their twenties is just plain wrong. Our generation and those to come deserve better, and our economy depends on it.
