Millennials Not Quite as Pathetic as Everyone Thinks

For the better part
of a decade now, folks have been fretting about “boomerang” kids,
the 20- and sometimes 30-something children of boomers who’ve come
flocking back to their parents’ nests under the duress of a poor
economy. “Everybody’s
moving into their parents’ basements,” The Washington
Post warned in 2012. “A rising share of young adults
live in their parents homes,” Pew Research trumpeted last year.
“One
third of millennials are living with their parents,” the
headlines read in June. 

The dire pronouncements tend to be based on U.S. Census Bureau
data, which does show an increasing number of young adults—more
than half of those under 25, according to the most recent data—to
be living with their parents. But Derek Thompson at The
Atlantic tears
through this gloomy prognosis with one simple fact: The Census
counted students who live on college campuses as living in their
parents’ homes. 

The share of young people living “at home” is at a half-century
high because more young adults than ever before are going to
college: 

As you can see in the graph (above) the share of
18-to-24-year-olds living at home who aren’t in college has
declined since 1986. But the share of college students living “at
home” (i.e.: in dorms, often) has increased. So the
Millennials-living-in-our-parents meme is almost entirely a result
of higher college attendance. 

That’s crucial to know, because the share of 25- to 29-year-olds
with a bachelor degree has grown by almost 50
percent since the early 1980s. More than 84 percent of
today’s 27-year-olds spend at least some time in college and now 40
percent have a bachelor’s or associate’s degree. More young people
going to school means more young people living in dorms, which
means more young people “living with their parents,” according to
the weird Census. 

Millennial generation doomsaying is fun and popular because it
allows young folks to feel aggrieved and older folks to feel
schadenfreude, writes Thompson. But if we’re going to lament Gen
Y’s prospects, than we should at least focus on the real reasons
today’s kids are not okay—like unemployment: The
latest jobs report shows that about 40 percent of unemployed
workers are millennials.

Even this isn’t quite as scary—or at least not as singularly
scary for young adults—when you put it into perspective. When (if)
the job market improves, young adults will likely have an easier
time slipping back into it than their older counterparts simply by
virtue of being younger and cheaper,
said Dan Schawbel, founder of Millennial Branding management
and consulting firm.

Meanwhile millennials are only barely less employed than Gen
X’ers, who make up 37 percent of unemployed Americans. The oldest
Gen X’ers turn 50 next year, while the youngest hover around age
35. This is the generation in the prime of their “prime earning
years.” Whither the concern for Gen X everybody?