February 7, 2023

Boomerang Kids Don’t Derail Their Parents

A popularized image of parents who struggle when adult children move back home is not shaping up as an accurate picture of the arrangements.

Unemployment, divorce, college graduation – adult children in their 20s and 30s move back into a parent’s home for many reasons. And the parents can have all sorts of reactions, good and bad, to their boomeranging kids.

Some parents get stressed out by young adults who return home because they need financial support. Others welcome having the kids back to pad the empty nest, help with household chores, or help pay the bills.

The return home isn’t necessarily a one-time thing either. “As they attempt to gain financial independence, adult children may alternate between living on their own and living with parents,” according to a new study of parents in their 50s and 60s. …Learn More

October 6, 2022

One Reason the US Labor Force is Shrinking

U.S. industries have become increasingly concentrated in the 21^st century, leaving fewer employers in local labor markets. This is not good for workers.

The simplest example is a town with one company in the business of producing widgets. The company has little competition when hiring widget workers and can pay them lower wages.

A new study finds that the increase in employer concentration – one or a few firms that dominate locally – has played a role in the 20-year decline in labor force participation in the United States. When workers have fewer employment options and wages are lower, looking for and finding a job is a more difficult, less fruitful pursuit. Some give up and drop out of the labor force.

Employer concentration “push[es] marginally attached workers out of the labor force entirely,” concluded Anqi Chen, Laura Quinby and Gal Wettstein at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.

Their research builds on several recent studies showing that when firms possess more bargaining power with workers, they can drive down wages. This new study is the first to make a direct link between employer concentration and its impact on employment activity.

Labor force participation – the share of adults of all ages who are either working or looking for a job – is lower in concentrated markets, the researchers found. Actual employment levels are also lower, though this is mainly the case for teenagers and workers in their 20s. …
Learn More

April 20, 2021

How Many Kids Will 30-Somethings Have?

U.S. fertility is already at record lows, and women in their 30s have had only 1.3 children on average – well short of their expectations for more than two children.

But they still have time left on their biological clock. So, will they catch up?

Several factors are working specifically against the college graduates in this cohort. Religiously observant people usually have more children, and the decline in religious affiliation is reducing their fertility. Their fertility is also being hurt by the falling marriage rate, which leaves fewer couples ready to raise a family. In addition, the women’s careers often compete with having children.

In a new study, Anqi Chen and Nilufer Gok at the Center for Retirement Research predicted that the final fertility rate for Millennials in their 30s – the rate at the end of their childbearing years – will average 1.96 children.

If this prediction proves accurate, it would get them somewhat closer to what they’d expected and close to the number of children required to replace two parents.

Predicting the final fertility rate for the Millennial women born in the early 1980s required going back in time to analyze the established patterns of a generation that is now past its childbearing years: women born in the second half of the baby boom wave. The researchers applied what they learned about these late boomers and, after adjusting for recent trends, estimated final fertility for today’s 30-somethings.

The 1.96 fertility rate sounds encouraging, but that number applies only to these Millennials. The longer-term prospects suggest fertility may be lower in the future. …Learn More

December 8, 2020

Video: Young Adults Share Career Setbacks

More than half of young adults are now living with their parents – the highest level in more than a century, according to the Pew Research Center.

This alarming statistic, first featured in a September blog, is the result of a long-term trend that has accelerated during the economic slowdown caused by COVID-19.

In this PBS NewsHour video by Catherine Rampell, young adults 24 to 39 years old who are taking refuge in their parents’ homes talked about their stalled social lives and disrupted careers – their disappointments always tinged with a sense of humor.

They include Marcellus Adams, who was laid off from two jobs, as an auto mechanic and emergency room staffer, and, at 29, has never really lived on his own. Eric Rivera moved from the height of chic – an apartment in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn – to his parents’ home in a suburb of Trenton, New Jersey. And comedienne Nikki Glaser’s white-hot career suddenly cooled when her shows were canceled due to the pandemic.

They and millions of Millenials and members of Generation Z may pay a price for their setbacks in the form of lower earnings and unplanned-for career trajectories.

But a vaccine is coming, they are young, and they will persist.

Read our blog posts in our ongoing coverage of COVID-19. …Learn More

September 22, 2020

More Gen-Zers are Living with Parents

When Millennials’ unemployment rate spiked during the Great Recession, millions of them alleviated their financial problems by moving in with their parents.

Now the coronavirus is chasing Generation Z back home.

Some 2.6 million adults, ages 18 to 29, who had been living on their own moved back home between February and July, the Pew Research Center reports. This pushed up the share of young adults living with one or both parents to 52 percent, which exceeds the rate reached during the Great Depression.

Pew’s analysis included some Millennials. But members of the younger Generation Z account for the vast majority – more than 2 million – of the young adults who’ve returned to the financial security of their parents’ homes this year. [This count does not include college students who came home and attended classes remotely after their schools shut down last spring.]

As was the case for Millennials, what sent Gen-Z back home was a sharp rise in their unemployment rate, Pew said. For example, the rate for people in their early 20s has more than doubled this year to 14.1 percent.

No age group escapes the impact of a recession. The current downturn is the second in a decade for baby boomers, who have faced these major setbacks just as they are trying to square away their finances for retirement.

Losing a job and financial independence as a young adult also has long-term consequences. … Learn More

June 18, 2020

Recession Slams Millennials – Again

Several young adults in my life have been derailed by the COVID-19 recession.

A few examples. My daughter-in-law just finished her graduate degree in occupational therapy and sailed through her certification only to be met by a stalled job market. A friend’s daughter, fresh out of nursing school, has already been turned down for one job. My nephew, a late bloomer who had finally snared a job making jewelry for a major retailer, was laid off and is floundering again.

Student loans, the Great Recession, and now a pandemic – Millennials can’t seem to catch a break.

Going into this pandemic, people in their 20s and 30s already had lower wages, more student debt, and less wealth than previous generations at the same age. This recession arrives at a critical time when Millennials were trying to catch up, build careers and strive for financial goals.

For the youngest ones, this is their first recession. But the downturn is the second blow for older Millennials, many of whom had the bad luck of entering the job market in the midst of the Great Recession a decade ago.

Does this double jeopardy put them in danger of becoming “a lost generation”? Millennials’ predicament prompted the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis to ask this question in a new report on their finances.

The COVID-19 recession, the report said, “could upend many of their lives.”

The situation is far from hopeless, of course – they have several decades to make up for this rough patch! There’s no reason they can’t overcome the setbacks with some pluck and determination.

But this will require much more effort to pull off amid the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression. The Federal Reserve estimates more than 5.5 million Millennials have become unemployed this year – African-Americans bore a disproportionate share of the layoffs.

Young adults were over-represented in the food service, hospitality, and leisure industries slammed by state shutdowns to control the pandemic. And as the recession plays out, Millennials, with their shorter tenures in the labor market, will continue to be vulnerable to layoffs.

Don’t forget about Generation Z either. The recession will be a tough period for its oldest members, who are just graduating from college and haven’t built up their resumés. They may be less appealing job candidates when so many experienced people are eager to work and willing to compromise on pay at a time of sky-high unemployment. …Learn More