It's All Coming Back To You

Here's your stat of not just the day, but of the year:

Getting a degree used to be a stepping stone to limitless career opportunities. Now it's more of a hiatus from living under your parents' roof.

Stubbornly high unemployment -- nearly 15% for those ages 20-24 -- has made finding a job nearly impossible. And without a job, there's nowhere for these young adults to go but back to their old bedrooms, curfews and chore charts. Meet the boomerangers.

"This recession has hit young adults particularly hard," according to Rich Morin, senior editor at the Pew Research Center in DC.

So hard that a whopping 85% of college seniors planned to move back home with their parents after graduation last May, according to a poll by Twentysomething Inc., a marketing and research firm based in Philadelphia. That rate has steadily risen from 67% in 2006.

Eighty-five percent.  That's staggering.   The 15% unemployment for college grads is bad enough, but 85% of grads are planning to move back in to their old bedrooms?  Really?  It was bad enough in the mid 90's when I was in college.  Now it's not only expected, but almost guaranteed.

So what we have here are college grads with six-figure debt, struggling to find an entry level job anywhere, not just one they're depressingly overqualified for.  And that's if my generation, who has been in the workforce for 10-15 years now, hasn't taken that job first in order to get back on the horse.  And my generation is still knocking around the low end because of all the baby boomers still working in the middle and upper management ranks, because they've got no hope of retiring at 60.

So even if these kids do manage to find a decent job, they're still $120,000 in the hole from college.  That's the equivalent of a second mortgage these days.  No wonder they're camping in the basement until "something comes along."  And keep in mind, unemployment for college graduates is still far less than the average for the rest of America.  So yeah, at this point these kids can't settle for 35 grand to learn the ropes, because just about every penny of that is going to end up going to debt servicing.

Welcome to the new normal.  You're not working hard enough, citizen.