‘Dear Millennials: You’re Ruining the Economy. Move Out.’ That is the actual headline:
During the dreary days of the recession, it made sense for young adults who needed a roof over their heads to stay home while job opportunities were slim. But they were expected to move out when they got jobs or better-paying jobs.
Of course, the job market still has a way to go to give young adults better financial footing. Yet unemployment is less of an issue now, with 7.7 percent of those 18 to 34 unemployed, compared to 12.4 percent five years ago. Pay has also improved, although it hasn’t popped back to pre-recession levels. Pew notes that the median weekly pay is $574 compared to $547 in 2012.
If the trend continues, there could be serious implications for the economy. Adult children curled up on their parents’ couches don’t need to buy their own furniture.
WELL, the median pay doesn’t mean shit when you have $60,000 in student loans and the rent in your ‘hood is $1,500 for a sixth-floor studio walkup with a hole in the floor and no air conditioning. Christ. Not to mention the cost of reasonable health care is still total bullshit, gas is $3 a gallon, and if you haven’t noticed food is fucking expensive because we have broken the environment.
But no, it’s just the selfish reluctance to buy their own dining room tables.
A study by the New York Federal Reserve in June found that areas of the country with high youth unemployment, expensive housing and high incomes tend to be where more young adults were living with parents.
Still, the majority of people 18 to 34 are living independently, although the tendency to be on their own has been shrinking.
So wait, everything is fine? Then WTF, with that headline?
Besides living with family members, millennials have also been doubling up with roommates who are not spouses or unmarried partners. Early this year, 47 percent were living with another person, most often a parent or adult relative. But 16 percent were living with a nonrelative, apparently sharing expenses rather than stoking the economy on their own.
Right, how dare they not lay back and think of Janet Yellen? I mean, they shouldn’t just live their lives the way they have to. They should get on the ball of working for the Reich!
Why this overweening need to create a scapegoat for an economy that’s still, years after the crash, no better than lackluster? I guess it’s much easier to blame young people than to place the blame where it squarely belongs–on the masters of the universe that fucked up badly, and then paid their people to find ways to profit on their fuckups. Just about all the economic gains since the crash have gone to the people who caused it, so it’s damned sure not young people who are hoarding cash and throttling the economy.
Good thing there’s a Chicago Tribune. Otherwise, this woman would find herself on an unemployment line… just like a lot of those millennials. Now, how about scapegoating useless, thoroughly captive and submissive conservative business writers?