Slow Economy Is Tough on Young Adults

Many of the stories about present economic difficulties focus of retirees or on mid-career Americans who lost their jobs in the recession of 2008-9. Other stories ponder whether baby boomers will find Social Security and Medicare reliable. An addition topic involves homeowners and families caught up in the mortgage mess.

But young adult just starting their careers is also profoundly affected by the economic troubles. Noreen Malone of New York magazine has written a long, incisive article about their plight. This featured article has been summarized by Daniel Gross, editor of Yahoo! Finance:

• The average worker gets 70 percent of total raises in the first decade as a worker – so stagnant or non-existent wages during that period means many of today’s young workers are likely to suffer prolonged economic under-performance.
• Students today have huge, stupendous college loans, far more than in earlier years
• The tough times mean young adults are much more likely to be living at home in their twenties. "Thirty-nine percent of us in a 2010 National Journal poll were getting financial help from relatives, including a full quarter of those with full-time jobs," Malone writes.
• The slow formation of new households and independent living is depressing the housing industry. The average age of getting married has increased by a full year since 2006, and young couples are having fewer children.
• The number of women between ages 20 and 34 rose by a million from 2008 to 2010, but the number of babies dropped by 200,000.
• A college degree used to be insurance against unemployment. For those over 25, about 4.5% are unemployed. But for recent college graduates, the unemployment rate is close to 14%.

Summarized from:

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daniel-gross/economic-agony-today-twenty-somethings-143010262.html

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The full article by Noreen Malone is in New York magazine and on line at:

http://nymag.com/news/features/my-generation-2011-10/