Trend that is Not A Trend: Millennials Living At Home After Graduation
Supposedly, there is this huge trend in Millennials graduating college, failing to find a satisfactory job, and ending up living at home. Almost every media outlet known to man has written about it. They have anecdotes and pictures of individuals to prove it. But there does not seem to be an actual trend:
It turns out that the share of young people 18-24 not in college but living at home has actually fallen. Any surge in young adults living at home is all from college kids, due to this odd definition the Census uses
It is important to note that the Current Population Survey counts students living in dormitories as living in their parents' home.
Campus housing, for some reason, counts in the census as living at home with your parents. And since college attendance is growing, thus you get this trend that is not a trend.
"Trend that is not a trend" is an occasional feature on this blog. I could probably write three stories a day on this topic if I wished. The media is filled with stories of supposed trends based on single data points or anecdotes rather than, you know, actual trend data. More stories of this type are here. It is not unusual to find that the trend data often support a trend in the opposite direction as claimed by media articles.
