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Title: America's Millennials in the Recovery
Citation Type: Miscellaneous
Publication Year: 2014
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Abstract: In the last few months, there has been no shortage of public concern over the opportunities for America’s millennial generation of young adults—be it their prospects for school, job, house, or life partner in the aftermath of the Great Recession. Such attention is certainly well merited. The Great Recession was felt acutely across the American population but perhaps more so for our youths: while the unemployment rate for those over 34 peaked at about 8 percent, the unemployment rate among those between the ages of 18 and 34 peaked at 14 percent in 2010 and remains elevated, despite substantial improvement; delinquency rates on student loans have risen several percentage points since the Great Recession and even into the recovery; and the homeownership rate among young adults has dropped from a peak of 43 percent in 2005 to 37 percent in 2013 concurrent with a large increase in the share living with their parents. As often occurs when precipitous changes appear to mark a generation, there has been much speculation regarding the economic forces driving the differences between millennials and those in my generation or my parents’ generation. Are good jobs harder to find for today’s young adults? Will growing student loan debt hold back millennials’ homeownership opportunities? Will they ever purchase homes or are do we have on our hands a “Lost Generation” consigned to a lifetime of renting, living in small condos, or even worse for all concerned—spending the coming decades living with their parents? To be sure, these questions do not admit any straightforward answers, and it may take years before we are able to fully disentangle the interplay between the housing and labor markets in a satisfying way. But today I would like to look at millennials more closely and bring to bear some of the existing economic data and research on the issue in an attempt to better understand the trends in millennials’ behavior, with particular attention to its implications for the housing sector. These data imply that it may be premature to suggest that trends among today’s youth are a reflection of a profound change in their preferences or attitudes in the aftermath of the Great Recession when many of these trends were on the horizon long before the recession began and they have been compounded by the large but likely temporary effects of the recession itself. However, regardless of the cause of the recent developments, the ultimate outcomes for this generation will also depend on our policy choices.
User Submitted?: No
Authors: Furman, Jason
Publisher: The Zillow Housing Forum
Data Collections: IPUMS CPS
Topics: Other
Countries: United States