1/3 of all millennials receive financial help from their parents or family

h/t Craig Berger, Kristi Eston at Campus Progress writes on how the lack of job creation means that there are fewer opportunities for Millennial generation young adults to start off own their own lives than there were at the time when their parents, the Baby Boomers, were their age:

The economic opportunities for the Baby Boomer generation, born between 1946 and 1964, were vast. [Oregon State human development Professor Richard] Settersten notes that the current economic recession is making tasks that were once associated with the start of adulthood more difficult; now young adults are living with their parents longer or returning home later. In fact, Millennials are similar to the youth of the G.I. Generation (born 1901-1924) because they are slow to leave home and start families. For today’s young adult, the recession is largely blamed for the delaying of adulthood. In fact, half of Millennials still rely on financial support from their family, while a third of all 18 to 29 year-olds receive help from parents or other family members, according to the Pew Research Center.

Stone has since gotten a paid internship that has potential to turn into a full-time job, and soon plans to move out of his parents’ house. But as the study shows, many other recent graduates can relate to Stone’s story. Graduating seniors look at a bleak job market and the high costs of living on ones own. A 2009 Pew Research Center survey found 13 percent of parents with grown children said one of their adult sons or daughters had returned home in the past year. Such economic factors, however, are not the sole reasons for delaying adulthood, Settersten says.

Eston points out that while Congress--through passage of a Wall Street reform bill including a Consumer Financial Protection Agency--has correctly recognized that things like loans from higher education and credit card debt are increasingly a barrier to any sort of wealth creation for young Americans, stopping predatory banking practices helps, but will not be sufficient to move the next generation of Americans into full-fledged independence:

But what young people need most of all, to avoid living among their old trophies and stuffed animals, boils down to a single word: jobs.