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Originally Posted by opendoor
True, there are more adult children living with their parents now than in the past, but that has much more to do with economic factors than it does peoples' preferences. When you combine post-secondary education being more expensive, it being far more of a requirement even for entry level jobs than in the past, the increased cost of housing, and the relative dearth of opportunities for young graduates, then it's not surprising that the rate of young adults living with their parents has increased.
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Yes, opportunities for graduates are worse than they were in the 60s and 70s. But are they really worse than they were in the 80s or 90s? One of the problems I have with these comparisons is they're premised on comparing two generations - the Boomers and Millennials - and completely ignore the cohort of people who reached adulthood in the 80s and 90s - Gen X.
Youth unemployment was much higher in the early 90s than it is today (18 per cent vs 11). And if young graduates think it's tough getting established in a career now, they might want to consider what it was like when unemployment in Canada was far higher, and the largest cohort the country has ever seen was 30-50 and in the prime of their working lives, clinging to every position on the ladder. And this before the knowledge economy, back when employers didn't think they had anything to learn from recent graduates and your value as an employee was strictly how many years you had put into your career already.
Quote:
Originally Posted by opendoor
As it stands, about 19.5% of people aged 25-34 live with their parents (and this is heavily skewed towards people in the 25-29 age range).
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Do you have a source for that? Because the
Census says that 35% of Canadians aged 25-34 live with a parent. And a Maclean's article from 2011 reported:
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The most striking change is that a slim majority of Gen Y twenty-somethings now live with their parents (51 per cent). In 1998, fewer than a third (31 per cent) of Gen X twenty-somethings were living at home. In 1986, only 28 per cent of twenty-something boomers were with mom and dad.
http://www.macleans.ca/education/uni...-with-parents/
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Quote:
Originally Posted by opendoor
To me, that looks like a group that is mainly made up of people burdened with post secondary school expenses and/or debt who can't find good enough employment to live independently. This is backed up the fact that the rate of 18-34 year olds living with their parents increased by over 30% after 2008. In 2005 the rate was closer to the rate in 1975 than it is to today's.
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What's good enough employment to live independently? My friends and I all went to college or university, moved out between age 20 and 24, and in our 20s did jobs like barista, commercial painting, golf course maintenance, book store clerk, landscaper, grocery store clerk, etc. We rented in ever-shifting households of 2 to 4, used furniture we dragged out of dumpsters, and had 15 year old TVs. An extravagant night out was pints at the Ship followed by a piece of pizza from the Wicked Wedge. This was pretty normal for 20-somethings in Calgary in the 90s.
And oil and gas was considered a dead-end career when we went to university, so none of us had educations suitable for the energy industry. When the boom hit we saw people 10 years younger than us walk straight out of school into high-paying jobs in the energy industry while we want back to school in our late 20s and early 30s (while still renting) to try to cobble together a viable skill set.