12 ms·

Explore how people in the U.S. aged 18 to 34 have changed over four decades

95 points by adnanh 12y ago

debacle 12y ago
The Median Earnings for Full Time Workers page was quite sad for America. Language Other than English Spoken at Home was quite surprising for me. I had no idea it was that high. I don't understand how the employment numbers can be that bad. 35% unemployment - that is mostly impacted by people rearing children and college age folk, I hope.
- zhemao 12y ago
  A significant portion of that age group is still in school, hence not employed nor unemployed. They should really just show the unemployment rate, not the employment rate. But yeah, the median income drop and poverty rate increase is pretty sad.
  - svachalek 12y ago
    True. But another significant portion is considered "unemployable" or "disheartened" which makes unemployment numbers misleading as well.
  - danieldk 12y ago
    I wonder about the median income. Another statistic says that more people have at least a Bachelor degree. Consequently, more people start working at a later age, reducing the median income. On the other hand, new employees with a degree should earn more. It would be interesting to know the interaction between the two.
    - VLM 12y ago
      "On the other hand, new employees with a degree should earn more." Its the other way around, if the jobs don't change but the number of degrees granted increases, then assuming degree holders cluster at the higher end, building downward would have to result in average salary of a degree holder decreasing over time. Another interesting statistic is lifetime income. If you have a job that does not require a degree, and spend 10% of your working life earning a degree instead of earning income, your lifetime income will be about 10% lower. Its actually worse because starting wage for a coffee barista or waiter is the same, but presumably toward the end of your career you'll make more at a better job, but a degree holder will have retired for years 36-40 whereas a non-degree holder will continue to earn income for the full 40 years at the higher 36-40 yr rate. You'd see this a lot more in the trades, obviously 4 extra years of union master payscale is worth more than 4 extra years of journeyman.
- VLM 12y ago
  Engineering estimate of college age folk is 20% have a degree and a degree (optimistically) takes 4 years out of the 16 year interval is a quarter, so the contribution due to school is about 5% not employed. The stats really are that bad.
- azurezyq 12y ago
  I'm living in California. California has a considerable amount of Spanish speaking hispanics for historic reasons. For greater SF/LA areas, actually non-native English speakers communities are growing very fast due to hi-techs and relatives immigrants. Just to mention a few: Monterey Park, 20% whites, 66.9% asians (50% Chinese). Milpitas, 20% whites, 62.2% asians. Cupertino, 30% whites, 63.3% asians (20% Chinese, 20% Indians) Just been to Monterey Park in LA area two weeks ago, and found I can live there naturally even if I can not speak an English word. At the contrast, I think that city would be a bit harsh for non-Chinese speakers...
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    > I'm living in California. California has a considerable amount of Spanish speaking hispanics for historic reasons. More for geographic reasons. The Hispanics that are here for historic reasons (e.g., descendants of Californios) largely speak English.
  - jdmichal 12y ago
    As another point of reference, one could live in certain parts of Miami their entire life without speaking a word of English, and have minimal (if any) friction. Forget about "spoken at home", we're talking "spoken everywhere" here.
tsunamifury 12y ago
These numbers are really grim, and considering the job market only gets more cruel a few years after the top end of this age bracket, it makes it hard for young people to have a lot of hope for the future. Granted, maybe some of them are reflective of age-agnostic trends but still! Start in higher debt then make less than ever! As a young person looking at these numbers I realize I am squandering my blessings as a high paid tech worker. We are setting up our future for failure while claiming we needed to make these sacrifices for today.
- angersock 12y ago
  It's pretty great--all the while, even in tech we're watching fewer IPOs (and thus good exits for non-founders), companies whose business proposition is often literally "We externalize our costs by ignoring local laws and screwing our emplo^Hcontractors", and all the while pissing off everyone else in the economy by telling them how awesome the future is going to be. And we still haven't managed to engage (politically or otherwise) the folks actually running the government. Things aren't looking good. :(
- kaoD 12y ago
  Welcome to "staying competitive". Here at Spain (and generally Southern Europe) we've been told over and over again that we have to stay competitive, which is just an euphemism for working more and earning less (i.e. becoming Europe's China). In a globalized market with a (still) steadily growing population, competition is growing and therefore salaries are shrinking. It's happening in all industries (e.g. tech firms offshoring) but also at homes. I don't know about the USA but here in Spain housewives love hunting for sales, buying as cheap as they can, and proud about it. Why are they surprised later when their children can't find a decent salary? Buying Perú's asparagus cheaper than in our home country (including transportation across the Atlantic!) is only driving prices lower and lower, which hinders the whole economy in the long term. And now the USA is going to sign a trade agreement with Europe which will further increase competition and will drive wages even lower than they're now for both parties. On the other hand, isn't this just leveling the playing field for developing countries? After all, for them to grow, we have to shrink.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
aw3c2 12y ago
*in the USA
- wernercd 12y ago
  Not needed... USA is the only place worth reporting on so it's implied.
lentil_soup 12y ago
Shouldn't the title say something like "in the USA"?
- dang 12y ago
  We put that in.
kleer001 12y ago
35+ y/o here. Every time I hear things like this I call up my mother and thank her for having me earlier than later. Also, I did not like the interface. I'd rather all the data was just <schplat!> there in one map.
- adnanh 12y ago
  Something like this? http://www.socialexplorer.com/ http://www.socialexplorer.com/
- aswanson 12y ago
  35+ here as well. We still feel the effects of lower opportunity for youth; our entire system (I assume you are based in the US) is based on 7 percent growth in perpetuity for our standard of life to continue. This growth, in turn, is based on younger workers contributing to the system as old farts like us age out. What hurts them will definitely hurt us.
- robodale 12y ago
  I'm 41. My years of experience and getting two degrees when I was young and ambitious has helped greatly. I would NOT want to be 18-24 right now.
  - yuncun 12y ago
    I'm 23, it's meh. I think most 18-24 kids browsing hackernews will be ok, but I have a lot of smarter classmates who are having trouble in other-than-CS fields.
hnriot 12y ago
I was surprised at the number who had a degree was less than the national average for California. I guess there's a lot of immigrant workers who don't achieve higher education levels which skews the perception living and working in the valley. States like Virginia and Kansas beat the national average, yet not california, that's really sad.
- jboggan 12y ago
  I almost guarantee that any HN reader lives in a section of California that is radically unrepresentative of the state as a whole.
  - cwang912 12y ago
    i.e. San Francisco != California
  - zackify 12y ago
    I live in Fresno County, it's very representative sadly
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    As there is pretty much no regional section of California that is representative of the State as a whole, that's a fairly easy guarantee to make.
- bpodgursky 12y ago
  Someone has to be below average. Dunno why it's sadder to have unemployed Californians than unemployed Virginians.
  - RadioAndrea 12y ago
    Even within the state of Virginia, look at the difference between Fairfax County and Portsmouth. It's comforting to think that your peers are "beating" the national average, and I think that something we miss when we read these graphs. A reminder about both ends of an average is something we need more in life.
ryanhuff 12y ago
While interesting, it leaves me wanting to filter down and isolate different categories to see how they may impact other numbers. Its difficult to really understand what is driving these trends on its own.
humanrebar 12y ago
Aside from the economic indicators, which are already being discussed here, the numbers for "never married" (up), "veteran" (way down), and "foreign born" (up) really jump out as trends. "Living with a parent" (up) is also a trend, but perhaps one more directly tied to the employment economy. For better or worse, all these trends have had and will have important societal impacts. Why don't we see more discussions on this sort of thing? Other issues, like who's paying what in taxes, seem less important by comparison. Note that I'm not making qualitative judgments on the people that fall into different categories. The numbers just jump out to me and I wonder why they aren't discussed more in conversations about who millenials are, what they think, and how they will approach the society, culture, and government.
- wavefunction 12y ago
  >>Other issues, like who's paying what in taxes, seem less important by comparison. There are many people who think this is exactly what the source of many of these trends. People have been ignoring "who is paying what" for far too long as the burden gets shifted from the wealthy who benefit disproportionately from our civil society to the middle and working classes.
- stronglikedan 12y ago
  I would imagine that the "living with a parent" trend correlates with the "foreign born" trend. From what I've heard about other cultures outside of the US, it's common for a child to live with a parent up until they get married.
- r00fus 12y ago
  A lot of these are indicators of a perverse economy. Living with Parents, Living in Poverty, Never Married are all up, while Employed Population is way down. Meanwhile the security/prison industrial complex and financial sector are essentially unregulated (total regulatory capture).
kilroy123 12y ago
As a millennial these trends are frighting to see. It's frustrating when I chat with friends who are a few years older than me about this (mid 30s), and they blame all of this on millennials just being lazy. Or stupid, for picking bad degrees. I think the issues are larger and more systemic than that.
- colmvp 12y ago
  What we're experiencing in Canada is pretty similar to the U.S. Perhaps your friends should listen to this specific podcast regarding 'lazy millenials': http://canadalandshow.com/podcast/geritocracy http://canadalandshow.com/podcast/geritocracy
- dredmorbius 12y ago
  Gen-Xers were "lazy do-nothings" for a few years in the early 1990s, also a recession (though not as bad as what's come since). Until the Clinton Expansion took off and they turned into the Dot Commies. I see opprobrium heaped on generations broadly as hugely inaccurate and misplaced.
jamesli 12y ago
Considering there has been an increasing larger percentage of the population going to college, the statistics might somehow get skewed by the population between age 18~23. If one is in college, it is natural to assume that she or he is not fully employed, has low income, mostly not married, etc.
ChuckMcM 12y ago
Interesting how 'living in poverty' and 'not married' track.
cryoshon 12y ago
Relative to the year 2000 is the part that scares me the most. It seems that largely things have changed for the worse over the last decade. For Massachusetts: Lower employment by an entire %4. Lower wages by 4k/year (%10 less!!!), adjusted for inflation. More people living with parents, fewer people living alone (read: piled into group houses with their former college roommates/friends). More people in poverty. More people never married (can't afford a real wedding, or ring). More people with higher education, likely not being put to use. Student loan debt and credit card debt aren't even listed on here as statistics. The bleakest part is that the damage has mostly already been done to this cohort of people who I am a part of. The low wages now cripple wage growth in the future, which is bound to be bearish for people who aren't already rich. The race to the bottom is a real thing. Thankfully, many people are starting to refer to our period of time as "late capitalism" for increasingly obvious reasons. Things will have to bottom out and improve at some point.
- existencebox 12y ago
  While I agree with your takeaway, I think you have to be careful which of those points you bucket under the same influence. Take Marriage, for instance. There's a lot that suggests that the newer generations simply put less stead in traditional institutions; not as a sign of wealth. Anecdotally, I was "half engaged" ('we're going to get married eventually, right?' 'yup.') but sans the ring/formality part for nearly a decade before we started settling things down. It just doesn't have the same meaning to us as to my parents, and although I can say my financial future seems a lot less stable than my parents's at my age, despite a _better_ employment position, that's not why I've avoided the ring song and dance. That turned into a bit of a ramble, but you get my gist, I hope. I think we'd agree that having a broader sampling of metrics (including more hand wavy sociological ones) that might try and explain not only the statistics but whether we should be trying to correlate them at all would be valuable.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- ProAm 12y ago
  > More people never married (can't afford a real wedding, or ring). You cannot leap to the conclusion that people are not getting married because they cannot afford it. I seriously doubt that is correlated (of course I have no proof either).
logicallee 12y ago
This is nice but I'm surprised at the bracket 18-34? (at least separating 18-24 and 25-34 would have been better.) The listed bracket 18-34 covers young adulthood where most eventual high earners would be earning near 0 in college, to late twenties with some people pursuing masters but most joining workforce, to mid-thirties with some people fully educated and having 10-12 years of experience in their field. (e.g. a programmer graduating at 24 and earning $90K ($120K bay area) by 34 is not in any way unusual, but here gets averaged with others, maybe including his future peer, who are just starting college and are showing very low earnings for a few years.) Likewise, "living with a parent (18-34)"... "Bachelor's degree (18-34)"... Quite the bracket!
deleted 12y ago
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Spectral 12y ago
The age bracket doesn't really work out for certain categories, as for the below example it automatically excludes most people age 18-21 as with a standard 4 year degree will land you around the age of 22 minimum. Bachelor's Degree or Higher, Age 18 to 34 Percent of total population age 18 to 34 years with bachelor's degree or higher
tswartz 12y ago
Interesting to see how even though % with bachelor degrees has grown since 1980, salaries have decreased and poverty has increased. Obviously, not all correlated, but still interesting.
- dredmorbius 12y ago
  As I've been saying for some time regarding the current employment / opportunity situation: we're not going to educate our way out of this mess.
ryanSrich 12y ago
Time for some personal experience. Both my fiancé and I are employed. Most would consider our combined income to be very good. Considering the economic climate we are both doing well. The problem here, and why I think trends like "never married" and "living at home" are up, is that even though we make a very good wage we still aren't middle class due to student debt. So instead of buying a house we pay over $3k each month on our student debt. Instead of purchasing new cars and a house (thus pumping money back into the economy) we have to pay rent. The point of this post is that even if you are one of the lucky ones to get a well paying job right out of college you'll most likely have to put off purchases that used to be the norm for middle class.

95 points by adnanh 12y ago

The Median Earnings for Full Time Workers page was quite sad for America. Language Other than English Spoken at Home was quite surprising for me. I had no idea it was that high. I don't understand how the employment numbers can be that bad. 35% unemployment - that is mostly impacted by people rearing children and college age folk, I hope.

zhemao 12y ago
A significant portion of that age group is still in school, hence not employed nor unemployed. They should really just show the unemployment rate, not the employment rate. But yeah, the median income drop and poverty rate increase is pretty sad.
- svachalek 12y ago
  True. But another significant portion is considered "unemployable" or "disheartened" which makes unemployment numbers misleading as well.
- danieldk 12y ago
  I wonder about the median income. Another statistic says that more people have at least a Bachelor degree. Consequently, more people start working at a later age, reducing the median income. On the other hand, new employees with a degree should earn more. It would be interesting to know the interaction between the two.
  - VLM 12y ago
    "On the other hand, new employees with a degree should earn more." Its the other way around, if the jobs don't change but the number of degrees granted increases, then assuming degree holders cluster at the higher end, building downward would have to result in average salary of a degree holder decreasing over time. Another interesting statistic is lifetime income. If you have a job that does not require a degree, and spend 10% of your working life earning a degree instead of earning income, your lifetime income will be about 10% lower. Its actually worse because starting wage for a coffee barista or waiter is the same, but presumably toward the end of your career you'll make more at a better job, but a degree holder will have retired for years 36-40 whereas a non-degree holder will continue to earn income for the full 40 years at the higher 36-40 yr rate. You'd see this a lot more in the trades, obviously 4 extra years of union master payscale is worth more than 4 extra years of journeyman.
VLM 12y ago
Engineering estimate of college age folk is 20% have a degree and a degree (optimistically) takes 4 years out of the 16 year interval is a quarter, so the contribution due to school is about 5% not employed. The stats really are that bad.
azurezyq 12y ago
I'm living in California. California has a considerable amount of Spanish speaking hispanics for historic reasons. For greater SF/LA areas, actually non-native English speakers communities are growing very fast due to hi-techs and relatives immigrants. Just to mention a few: Monterey Park, 20% whites, 66.9% asians (50% Chinese). Milpitas, 20% whites, 62.2% asians. Cupertino, 30% whites, 63.3% asians (20% Chinese, 20% Indians) Just been to Monterey Park in LA area two weeks ago, and found I can live there naturally even if I can not speak an English word. At the contrast, I think that city would be a bit harsh for non-Chinese speakers...
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > I'm living in California. California has a considerable amount of Spanish speaking hispanics for historic reasons. More for geographic reasons. The Hispanics that are here for historic reasons (e.g., descendants of Californios) largely speak English.
- jdmichal 12y ago
  As another point of reference, one could live in certain parts of Miami their entire life without speaking a word of English, and have minimal (if any) friction. Forget about "spoken at home", we're talking "spoken everywhere" here.

tsunamifury 12y ago

These numbers are really grim, and considering the job market only gets more cruel a few years after the top end of this age bracket, it makes it hard for young people to have a lot of hope for the future. Granted, maybe some of them are reflective of age-agnostic trends but still! Start in higher debt then make less than ever! As a young person looking at these numbers I realize I am squandering my blessings as a high paid tech worker. We are setting up our future for failure while claiming we needed to make these sacrifices for today.

angersock 12y ago
It's pretty great--all the while, even in tech we're watching fewer IPOs (and thus good exits for non-founders), companies whose business proposition is often literally "We externalize our costs by ignoring local laws and screwing our emplo^Hcontractors", and all the while pissing off everyone else in the economy by telling them how awesome the future is going to be. And we still haven't managed to engage (politically or otherwise) the folks actually running the government. Things aren't looking good. :(
kaoD 12y ago
Welcome to "staying competitive". Here at Spain (and generally Southern Europe) we've been told over and over again that we have to stay competitive, which is just an euphemism for working more and earning less (i.e. becoming Europe's China). In a globalized market with a (still) steadily growing population, competition is growing and therefore salaries are shrinking. It's happening in all industries (e.g. tech firms offshoring) but also at homes. I don't know about the USA but here in Spain housewives love hunting for sales, buying as cheap as they can, and proud about it. Why are they surprised later when their children can't find a decent salary? Buying Perú's asparagus cheaper than in our home country (including transportation across the Atlantic!) is only driving prices lower and lower, which hinders the whole economy in the long term. And now the USA is going to sign a trade agreement with Europe which will further increase competition and will drive wages even lower than they're now for both parties. On the other hand, isn't this just leveling the playing field for developing countries? After all, for them to grow, we have to shrink.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

aw3c2 12y ago

*in the USA

wernercd 12y ago
Not needed... USA is the only place worth reporting on so it's implied.

lentil_soup 12y ago

Shouldn't the title say something like "in the USA"?

dang 12y ago
We put that in.

kleer001 12y ago

35+ y/o here. Every time I hear things like this I call up my mother and thank her for having me earlier than later. Also, I did not like the interface. I'd rather all the data was just <schplat!> there in one map.

adnanh 12y ago
Something like this? http://www.socialexplorer.com/ http://www.socialexplorer.com/
aswanson 12y ago
35+ here as well. We still feel the effects of lower opportunity for youth; our entire system (I assume you are based in the US) is based on 7 percent growth in perpetuity for our standard of life to continue. This growth, in turn, is based on younger workers contributing to the system as old farts like us age out. What hurts them will definitely hurt us.
robodale 12y ago
I'm 41. My years of experience and getting two degrees when I was young and ambitious has helped greatly. I would NOT want to be 18-24 right now.
- yuncun 12y ago
  I'm 23, it's meh. I think most 18-24 kids browsing hackernews will be ok, but I have a lot of smarter classmates who are having trouble in other-than-CS fields.

hnriot 12y ago

I was surprised at the number who had a degree was less than the national average for California. I guess there's a lot of immigrant workers who don't achieve higher education levels which skews the perception living and working in the valley. States like Virginia and Kansas beat the national average, yet not california, that's really sad.

jboggan 12y ago
I almost guarantee that any HN reader lives in a section of California that is radically unrepresentative of the state as a whole.
- cwang912 12y ago
  i.e. San Francisco != California
- zackify 12y ago
  I live in Fresno County, it's very representative sadly
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  As there is pretty much no regional section of California that is representative of the State as a whole, that's a fairly easy guarantee to make.
bpodgursky 12y ago
Someone has to be below average. Dunno why it's sadder to have unemployed Californians than unemployed Virginians.
- RadioAndrea 12y ago
  Even within the state of Virginia, look at the difference between Fairfax County and Portsmouth. It's comforting to think that your peers are "beating" the national average, and I think that something we miss when we read these graphs. A reminder about both ends of an average is something we need more in life.

ryanhuff 12y ago

While interesting, it leaves me wanting to filter down and isolate different categories to see how they may impact other numbers. Its difficult to really understand what is driving these trends on its own.

humanrebar 12y ago

Aside from the economic indicators, which are already being discussed here, the numbers for "never married" (up), "veteran" (way down), and "foreign born" (up) really jump out as trends. "Living with a parent" (up) is also a trend, but perhaps one more directly tied to the employment economy. For better or worse, all these trends have had and will have important societal impacts. Why don't we see more discussions on this sort of thing? Other issues, like who's paying what in taxes, seem less important by comparison. Note that I'm not making qualitative judgments on the people that fall into different categories. The numbers just jump out to me and I wonder why they aren't discussed more in conversations about who millenials are, what they think, and how they will approach the society, culture, and government.

wavefunction 12y ago
>>Other issues, like who's paying what in taxes, seem less important by comparison. There are many people who think this is exactly what the source of many of these trends. People have been ignoring "who is paying what" for far too long as the burden gets shifted from the wealthy who benefit disproportionately from our civil society to the middle and working classes.
stronglikedan 12y ago
I would imagine that the "living with a parent" trend correlates with the "foreign born" trend. From what I've heard about other cultures outside of the US, it's common for a child to live with a parent up until they get married.
r00fus 12y ago
A lot of these are indicators of a perverse economy. Living with Parents, Living in Poverty, Never Married are all up, while Employed Population is way down. Meanwhile the security/prison industrial complex and financial sector are essentially unregulated (total regulatory capture).

kilroy123 12y ago

As a millennial these trends are frighting to see. It's frustrating when I chat with friends who are a few years older than me about this (mid 30s), and they blame all of this on millennials just being lazy. Or stupid, for picking bad degrees. I think the issues are larger and more systemic than that.

colmvp 12y ago
What we're experiencing in Canada is pretty similar to the U.S. Perhaps your friends should listen to this specific podcast regarding 'lazy millenials': http://canadalandshow.com/podcast/geritocracy http://canadalandshow.com/podcast/geritocracy
dredmorbius 12y ago
Gen-Xers were "lazy do-nothings" for a few years in the early 1990s, also a recession (though not as bad as what's come since). Until the Clinton Expansion took off and they turned into the Dot Commies. I see opprobrium heaped on generations broadly as hugely inaccurate and misplaced.

jamesli 12y ago

Considering there has been an increasing larger percentage of the population going to college, the statistics might somehow get skewed by the population between age 18~23. If one is in college, it is natural to assume that she or he is not fully employed, has low income, mostly not married, etc.

ChuckMcM 12y ago

Interesting how 'living in poverty' and 'not married' track.

cryoshon 12y ago

Relative to the year 2000 is the part that scares me the most. It seems that largely things have changed for the worse over the last decade. For Massachusetts: Lower employment by an entire %4. Lower wages by 4k/year (%10 less!!!), adjusted for inflation. More people living with parents, fewer people living alone (read: piled into group houses with their former college roommates/friends). More people in poverty. More people never married (can't afford a real wedding, or ring). More people with higher education, likely not being put to use. Student loan debt and credit card debt aren't even listed on here as statistics. The bleakest part is that the damage has mostly already been done to this cohort of people who I am a part of. The low wages now cripple wage growth in the future, which is bound to be bearish for people who aren't already rich. The race to the bottom is a real thing. Thankfully, many people are starting to refer to our period of time as "late capitalism" for increasingly obvious reasons. Things will have to bottom out and improve at some point.

existencebox 12y ago
While I agree with your takeaway, I think you have to be careful which of those points you bucket under the same influence. Take Marriage, for instance. There's a lot that suggests that the newer generations simply put less stead in traditional institutions; not as a sign of wealth. Anecdotally, I was "half engaged" ('we're going to get married eventually, right?' 'yup.') but sans the ring/formality part for nearly a decade before we started settling things down. It just doesn't have the same meaning to us as to my parents, and although I can say my financial future seems a lot less stable than my parents's at my age, despite a _better_ employment position, that's not why I've avoided the ring song and dance. That turned into a bit of a ramble, but you get my gist, I hope. I think we'd agree that having a broader sampling of metrics (including more hand wavy sociological ones) that might try and explain not only the statistics but whether we should be trying to correlate them at all would be valuable.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
ProAm 12y ago
> More people never married (can't afford a real wedding, or ring). You cannot leap to the conclusion that people are not getting married because they cannot afford it. I seriously doubt that is correlated (of course I have no proof either).

logicallee 12y ago

This is nice but I'm surprised at the bracket 18-34? (at least separating 18-24 and 25-34 would have been better.) The listed bracket 18-34 covers young adulthood where most eventual high earners would be earning near 0 in college, to late twenties with some people pursuing masters but most joining workforce, to mid-thirties with some people fully educated and having 10-12 years of experience in their field. (e.g. a programmer graduating at 24 and earning $90K ($120K bay area) by 34 is not in any way unusual, but here gets averaged with others, maybe including his future peer, who are just starting college and are showing very low earnings for a few years.) Likewise, "living with a parent (18-34)"... "Bachelor's degree (18-34)"... Quite the bracket!

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

Spectral 12y ago

The age bracket doesn't really work out for certain categories, as for the below example it automatically excludes most people age 18-21 as with a standard 4 year degree will land you around the age of 22 minimum. Bachelor's Degree or Higher, Age 18 to 34 Percent of total population age 18 to 34 years with bachelor's degree or higher

tswartz 12y ago

Interesting to see how even though % with bachelor degrees has grown since 1980, salaries have decreased and poverty has increased. Obviously, not all correlated, but still interesting.

dredmorbius 12y ago
As I've been saying for some time regarding the current employment / opportunity situation: we're not going to educate our way out of this mess.

ryanSrich 12y ago

Time for some personal experience. Both my fiancé and I are employed. Most would consider our combined income to be very good. Considering the economic climate we are both doing well. The problem here, and why I think trends like "never married" and "living at home" are up, is that even though we make a very good wage we still aren't middle class due to student debt. So instead of buying a house we pay over $3k each month on our student debt. Instead of purchasing new cars and a house (thus pumping money back into the economy) we have to pay rent. The point of this post is that even if you are one of the lucky ones to get a well paying job right out of college you'll most likely have to put off purchases that used to be the norm for middle class.