Young Adults Relying More on Parents

Young adults that face limited job options are increasingly turning to their parents for help to weather the recession. Almost one in seven parents with children over eighteen say that they have had a child move back in with them in the last year, according to a study conducted by the Pew Research Center. The study, released Tuesday, says that many college students and even graduates are returning to their parents’ houses due to tight financial situations.

“The journey home for Thanksgiving won’t be quite so far this year for many adults,” said researchers Wendy Wang and Rich Morin, who wrote the report. “Instead of traveling across country or across town, many grown sons or daughters will be coming to dinner from their old bedroom down the hall.”

The survey found the percentage of adults between the ages of eighteen and twenty-nine who lived alone dropped from 7.9 in 2007 to 7.3 this year. Similar drops were seen during the recessions in 1982 and 2001.

Thirty-five percent of adults returning home said that they’d lived independently for a period of time but have moved back in with their parents. Roughly half of these worked full-time or part-time, twenty-five percent were unemployed, and twenty percent were full-time students.

Data released earlier in the year shows that older Americans will be responsible for virtually all of the growth in the United States work force in the next several years, with more returning to work and many young people focusing on school.

“Boomerang kids are a major trend, and they represent a shift in cultural norms,” said David Morrison, president and founder of Twentysomething Inc., a marketing and research firm. “Young adults are the first to feel the brunt of a bad economy and the last to feel the benefits of a recovering economy. So the first way you hedge your bets is to minimize your expenses.”

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