More Young College Graduates Are Living At Home. Is That a Bad Thing?
More young adults are living with their parents. The development suggests that they face a weak job market, but also that fewer face stigma in returning to the roost.
When he hadn’t landed a job a few months after graduating from the University of California, Santa Cruz, two years ago, Tommy Balmat moved back to his childhood home in the San Francisco Bay Area. He figured looking for a job would be easier with fewer expenses to shoulder. And, perhaps no less important, he was still close with his parents, who were keen to have him back.
“I communicate with my parents about every thought that goes through my head,” said Mr. Balmat, who majored in literature and anthropology and had hoped for a job in book publishing. “They honestly really encouraged me to come back home if that’s what I wanted.”
Mr. Balmat is hardly the only recent graduate to have accepted such an invitation lately. Data from the economists Stefania Albanesi, Rania Gihleb and Ning Zhang show that the portion of college graduates ages 23 to 27 living with their parents has returned to the high it reached during the Covid-19 pandemic. More than one-quarter did so as of last year, from a low of about 18 percent in 2001, according to updates to the paper that are not yet online.
The fact that so many young adults are living at home reflects persistent weakness in the job market for recent graduates even as the overall economy remains fairly strong. The weakness may be growing as artificial intelligence affects white-collar jobs.
Still, some experts wonder if it is all bad news. College graduates may be moving home because they recognize the benefits of conducting a job search from the relative comfort of their childhood bedroom and, as in Mr. Balmat’s case, they’re no longer discouraged by social norms from taking advantage of that arrangement.
