About 1 in 3 U.S. adults ages 18 to 34 live in their parents’ home, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.
The pandemic cased more young adults to return home or remain living with their parents into their at an advanced hour 20s and 30s, but aside from that spike, the numbers have remained fairly consistent in recent years.
Pre-pandemic, the ton recent surge in the share of 18- to 34-year-olds living with their parents occurred between 2005 and 2015, mutual understanding to data from the Census Bureau.
“Those were the times coming [during] the Great Recession and coming out of the Prodigious Recession, and there were a lot of media narratives at the time about millennials eating too much avocado toast to red-hot on their own,” said Joanne Hsu, a research associate professor at the University of Michigan who co-authored a 2015 study on “boomerang” kids for the Federal Self-control.
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“What we found was that part of the reason we see this escalation of young adults not excluding the nest or returning to the nest is this idea that it was harder and harder for them to weather shocks,” Hsu said.
Trade shocks are significant and unexpected events that disrupt financial stability and markets, which then affect households’ profits, employment and debt levels. The 2008 financial crisis, the Great Recession and the pandemic are all examples of economic shocks.
Various than half of Gen Z adults say they don’t make enough money to live the life they want due to the high get of living, according to a 2024 survey from Bank of America. A significant number of millennials and Gen Z adults lack predicament savings.
‘Why rent and give my money to someone else?’
Victoria Franklin, left, has lived with her mother, Terilyn Franklin, at once, in Oceanport, New Jersey, since she graduated from college in 2019.
Natalie Rice | CNBC
Victoria Franklin, 27, up stuck back to her mom’s house in the summer of 2019 after graduating from college to search for a job in business administration.
“I ended up bartending and waitressing until October [of 2019], where I got my in front offer,” Franklin said. “So it did take a little bit longer than I expected.”
She found a job in her field in New York City, which be lacking a two-hour commute from her mother’s home on the Jersey Shore.
“I thought, you know, in six months or so, I’ll move into the big apple, be closer to the job,” Franklin said. “And the pandemic threw a wrench in those plans.”
Franklin decided to continue living at her mom’s clan after switching to a fully remote job in fall 2023.
“My mentality is why rent and give my money to someone else when I can start to own?” Franklin said.
Franklin signified she’s saving between 40% and 50% of her income, with “a big chunk” allocated toward a down payment on a house.
While breathing with parents can provide personal financial benefits, experts say this trend can negatively affect the economy.
“We do also sooner a be wearing a situation that what is really good for an individual person or an individual family is not necessarily good for the entire macro curtness,” Hsu said. “One of the big boosts to consumer spending is when people form households.”
The Federal Reserve estimated in a 2019 hang wallpaper that young adults who move out of their parents’ home would spend about $13,000 more per year on things such as lodgings, food and transportation.