How Many Millennials Have Yet to Leave the Nest?

While Millennials are at present the largest consumer group in the United States, it may shock you that nearly a third of all Millennials still live with their parents. Um, good for them? But certainly not good for the economy in the near-term...regardless how you feel about Millennials.

The US Census Bureau recently released a study on how young adulthood has changed over the last 40 years, and one of the pinnacle observations was living situations and the results were quite surprising...

In 1975, 57% of young adults aged 18-34 lived with a spouse, while just 26% of adults in this range lived in their parents' home. Meanwhile, as of 2016, only 27% of adults aged 18-34 lived with a spouse, while 31% of this demographic lived with their parents...clearly the far more popular option. The numbers change a little bit, when you consider that in 1975 only about 1% of 18-34 year olds lived with an unmarried partner, while today 12% do. 

When broken down by state, new trends emerge: in North Dakota about 14.1% of Millennials live with their parents, while the percentage jumps to a whopping 46.9% in New Jersey. Living at home seems to be a more common trend in the South and in the Northeast, while states in the central US have even lower rates. 

Fortunately, regardless of where they live now, Millennials have not given up on the traditional milestones of adulthood...they just do them later. This is good going into the future because it means there won't be a long-term detrimental impact to the GDP...but it may have an impact on Social Security (which I discussed in an earlier blog post).