Though a large percentage of young college graduates are living at home, struggling to land a job despite having a degree, NBC News reports that millions of degree-less young adults in their 20s and early 30s, known as millennials, are currently stuck at home as well.
Following the Great Recession of 2007, a record-breaking 21.6 million millennials lived at home with their parents in 2012, 45 percent of which were unemployed.
A new analysis of government data from the Pew Research Center, released earlier this month, reveals the record-breaking number of millennials lacking a college education who are struggling to find work amid the harsh U.S. economic climate.
"This phenomenon of increasingly living with mom and/or dad, this is more concentrated among the less educated," Richard Fry, a senior economist with Pew Research Center, told NBC News.
Based on U.S. Census Bureau data from 2012, the research center found that compared with 18 percent of millennials with college degrees living at home, a whopping 40 percent of 18 to 31-year olds living at home have no college education, and 43 percent with some education are in the same predicament. Notably, younger millennials (aged 18-24) are more likely to be living at home than older ones (aged 25-30), at a rate of 56 percent of younger versus 16 percent of older young adults.
In census data used for the analysis, the Pew Research Center counted college students living in dormitories during the academic year as still living with their parents.
Research data revealed that men were more likely to be living at home at a rate of 40 percent compared to 32 percent of young women, following a long-term trend in which are more likely to live with their parents for longer than women.
Economists speculate that in the current weak U.S. job market, young adults without a college degree are having a much rougher time than their college-educated peers, especially because they are often forced to compete for the scarce number of jobs available.
"It's hit people harder with lower levels of education, and this [research] sort of underscores that," Heidi Shierholz, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, told NBC News.
A combination of economic, cultural and educational factors appear to be contributing to the problem, including declining unemployment, rising college enrollment and declining rates of marriage among young adults.
From 1968 to 2007, the rate of young adults living at home was relatively constant, at a rate of about 32 percent, but by 2012, had risen to 36 percent, the highest share in at least four decades.
