Six years after the economy shit the bed, let’s check in with the “Boomerang kids.” If you guessed “long-term cultural trend” rather than “recessionary blip” sometime back in 2010—ding ding ding! You’re a winner! Your prize is this wadded-up copy of the Wall Street Journal full of dead bugs.
The New York Times Magazine just dropped a big piece on the phenomenon, complete with a really great photo essay. America’s young adults just aren’t leaving the nest like they used to: A fifth of people in their 20s and early 30s live with their parents, and 60 percent receive some financial support. And it’s not just because they missed mom doing the laundry:
Nearly 45 percent of 25-year-olds, for instance, have outstanding loans, with an average debt above $20,000. (Kasinecz still has about $60,000 to go.) And more than half of recent college graduates are unemployed or underemployed, meaning they make substandard wages in jobs that don’t require a college degree.
For all the talk of entitled millennials, recent grads are dealing with a giant, stinking trash heap of garbage economic trends. There’s the fact that anybody graduating during a recession never makes up for the lost wages, sure, but the term “entry level” has also become a joke. A college degree barely gets you in the door, because companies won’t train new employees anymore. Or, as the Times depressingly puts it:
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