Young adults living with parents hits all-time high
At 32 years old, Kaitlin Hipp has found that one of the more awkward aspects of living at home with her parents is dating.
“It’s not the most attractive thing when you’re dating and trying to find a husband,” the Brackenridge, Pennsylvania, resident said. “But I’m saving money, and I love living with my parents.”
Love it or not, living at home with parents has become a way of life for the majority of young adults in America.
The share of 18- to 29year-olds living with their parents hit 52% in July — higher than at any point in documented history, including the Great Depression, according to a recent analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data by the Pew Research Center.
“This would suggest some of the economic difficulties that young adults are experiencing is on the level and magnitude that we last saw in the 1930s,” said Richard Fry, a senior researcher at Pew and co-author of the report.
The COVID-19 pandemic put older Americans at risk for health complications.
But in terms of job losses and the economic impact of the pandemic, young adults were among the first to feel its effect.
In February, 47% of 18- to 29-year-olds were living at home. The number increased to 52% in July.
The sharp increase in young folks moving back home reflects job losses during the pandemic shutdowns. But the early termination of the spring semester at colleges also accounts for some of the growth in the pandemic period.
Pew researchers track the share of young people living at home using data from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey, which has been produced monthly since 1976.
The peak percentage of young adults living with their parents may have been higher during the Great Depression, but there’s no way of knowing exactly what that number was because Census Bureau data was only collected every 10 years at that time.
A Pew survey found about 1 in 10 young adults (9%) say they relocated temporarily or permanently due to the coronavirus outbreak, and the same share (10%) had somebody move into their household.
Among all adults who moved due to the pandemic, 23% said the most important reason was because their college campus had closed, and 18% said it was due to job loss or other financial reasons.
In past decades, white young adults were less likely than Black, Asian and Hispanic young adults to live with their parents. But that gap has narrowed since February. The number of white young adults living at home grew more than for other racial or ethnic groups.
As of July, more than half of Hispanic (58%) and Black (55%) young adults now live with their parents, compared with about half of white (49%) and Asian
(51%) young adults.
Hipp is among the sizable population of young adults who were already living with their parents, as she has for years. She works as an independent personal trainer and skating coach while struggling to pay off more than $100,000 in student loan debt for a degree in special education.
She’s able to make her $600 monthly student loan payments, but her life is in a financial holding pattern while she waits in hopes of an act of Congress that would allow bankruptcy to wipe out student debt.
“Then I’ll be able to do something to effectively live my life as an adult,” she said.