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The dependent generation: half young European adults live with their parents
Eurofound report says it's not just people finishing education who struggle to live independently, but those in their 30s too
An Italian family eating their meal. In Italy, 79% of young adults were living with their parents in 2011, according to Eurofound.
Almost half of Europe's young adults are living with their parents, new data suggests – a record level of dependency that has sobering social and demographic implications for the continent.
One of the most comprehensive social surveys of 28 European countries reveals on Tuesday that the percentage of people aged 18-30 who were still living with their parents had risen to 48%, or 36.7 million people, by 2011, in tandem with levels of deprivation and unemployment that surged during five years of economic crisis.
The data from EU agency Eurofound, obtained by the Guardian, shows that few countries are immune and that the phenomenon is not exclusive to the debt-laden Mediterranean rim. The figures show large rises in the number of stay-at-home twentysomethings in countries such as Sweden, Denmark, France, Belgium and Austria. In Italy, nearly four-fifths (79%) of young adults were living with their parents.
However, Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland and the UK saw decreases in their numbers over that period – in Britain, the figure fell from 30% to 26%.
One of the report's authors, Anna Ludwinek, said: "The situation of youth has really fundamentally changed. And it looks different from the situation of their parents and grandparents.
"It's not only the world of work that has changed but society is changing, so the transitions are becoming much more unpredictable; people are not having a job for life or live in one place for life."
She said it was a myth that living with children and parents in a multi-generational household was all "happy clappy": "Really we see that multi-generational households have very low life satisfaction and a very high level of deprivation and perceived social exclusion.
"One could argue that if you are at the age of 30 and are still living with your parents and, on top of that you have your own family, it is really difficult to start an independent life."
The data underscores the predicament of "Generation Y" – who are better educated than their forebears, but condemned nonetheless to dimmer prospects than their parents' generation.
The growing phenomenon of adults stuck living in their childhood bedrooms has, moreover, raised concerns about birthrates and demographics in an ageing continent.
The trend for parental dependency, the report's authors say, cannot be solely explained by increases in the number of people studying later into their life, as millions more 25- to 29-year-olds have also been found to be living with mum and dad.
For women aged 25-29, this figure rose by five points to 26% while the proportion for men is up three points to 34%. Even among those who have a job, the overall figure rose one point to 34%.
While young adults tend to be as trusting of institutions as their parents, faith in their national government, legal system and the press all fell among the young between 2007 and 2011.
Bobby Duffy from pollsters Ipsos Mori said he had found similar results in the UK: "Our generational analysis of attitudes in the UK has shown how much pressure the youngest generation feel under – they're the most likely to see themselves as poor even a good few years into their careers, which is historically unusual.
"This echoes the Eurofound research – it's not just those straight out of school or university who are finding it more difficult to get going with independent lives, it's people well into their 20s and 30s."
He said these results demonstrated that class and background was becoming even more of a factor in later life success.
"Those from better off or higher social class families will be much better set to deal with the pressures. The real story here isn't about generation alone; it's about how it interacts with wealth and class.
Millennials at Work: Young and Callow, Like Their Parents
By MITCHELL HARTMAN
Camille Perry, 26, works as a bartender in Portland, Ore. She believes there is a 'prevalent laziness' among her peers.
THE generation now entering the work force, people in their late teens and early 20s, are consistently panned by many employers as not ready for the workplace. But while there are real differences, their behavior on the job might not be so different from that of previous generations.
In surveys, middle-aged business owners and hiring managers say the new workers lack the attitudes and behaviors needed for job success. They don’t have a strong work ethic, these reports say. They’re not motivated and don’t take the initiative. They’re undependable and not committed to their employers. They need constant affirmation and expect rapid advancement.
A recent report by Bentley University for example, found more than half of corporate recruiters rated recent college graduates with a grade of C or lower for preparedness; nearly seven in 10 said young workers were difficult for their organization to manage. The Pew Research Center found that more than half of college presidents thought today’s students were less prepared, and studied less, than students did a decade ago.
Professor Cappelli said that young peoples’ attitudes toward work and career had not changed significantly since the baby boomers came of age in the 1960s. “There’s no evidence millennials are different,” he said. “They’re just younger.”
Adam Tratt, 42, manages several employees in their 20s. From a work standpoint, he and his friends looked a bit aimless at that age too, he said.
“I remember very explicitly when I was graduating from college, this stereotype of Gen-Xers as slackers,” he said, referring to those born from roughly 1965 to 1982, and who are now in their mid-30s and 40s. Mr. Tratt, who runs a software start-up in Seattle, said his generation gained a reputation in middle age as entrepreneurial and hard-working.
Professor Cappelli challenged middle-aged managers to remember when they were 22. “You probably wanted to get out of the office in a hurry — you were interested in what was going on after work,” he said. “You had these bursts of energy and great enthusiasm about something, but you also didn’t have a lot of resilience.”
Many people who supervise young workers, though, do echo the prevailing view that millennials have some troublesome work habits.
Robert Boggs is an administrator at Corinthian Colleges in Southern California and has managed several people under 30 on his staff. “They tend to be very self-absorbed; they value fun in their personal and their work life,” said Mr. Boggs. “Because they’ve grown up multitasking on their mobile, iPad and computer, I can’t expect them to work on one project for any amount of time without getting bored.”
Thomas Gallagher has hired several young athletes over the years in his sporting equipment business in Wilmington, Del. He says he thinks many young workers lack perseverance. “I worry that if I give someone a long-term task, if things don’t work out in the short term, I’m going to get an email or phone call saying, ‘You know what? This isn’t for me. I give up, I can’t do this,’ ” Mr. Gallagher said.
Some of these negative views are even shared by many in the generation in question.
“I see a lot of students cheating their way through, just sliding by,” said Claire Koerner, 21, a student at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Ms. Koerner is finishing a B.A. in business administration while working at a wedding-planning start-up, OneWed. She does social media for the company while in class, she admitted. But she said many of her peers had not held a job at all. (According to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, teenage labor force participation is at record lows.) “They just aren’t going to have the skills to work as hard as they’re expected to,” she said.
Camille Perry, 26, of Portland, Ore., said her generation had a poor work ethic, although her own schedule was filled with labor. She holds two jobs: bartending at a neighborhood karaoke lounge and serving at a downtown lunch restaurant.
“We are a generation that spent a lot of time in front of the television or playing video games,” she said. “There’s just a prevalent laziness.”
Academics who study this generation said its members did differ from Generation X and baby boomers, those born from 1946 to 1964, and the differences may persist through their work lives.
“This is the most affirmed generation in history,” said Cliff Zukin, a senior faculty fellow at the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University, where he is also a professor of public policy. “They were raised believing they could do whatever they wanted to, that they have skills and talents to bring to a job setting.
“And when they’re lucky enough to get a job they’re basically told, ‘Be quiet, you don’t really know anything yet.’ For a lot of them, this is a tremendous clash between their expectations and the reality of the job.”
The generation may be shaped more by the Great Recession than by their overprotected, tech-saturated upbringing. If they lack the loyalty and commitment that employers want in entry-level workers, is that really such a surprise?
Young people’s multitasking on mobile devices might seem like a distraction at work, but it also has an upside.
John Scrofano, 31, who is Ms. Koerner’s boss at OneWed in Seattle, appreciates the comfort his younger employees have with social media. “They don’t have that line between work and home that used to exist, so they’re doing Facebook for the company at night, on Saturday or Sunday,” he said. “We get incredible productivity out of them.”
Eurofound report says it's not just people finishing education who struggle to live independently, but those in their 30s too
An Italian family eating their meal. In Italy, 79% of young adults were living with their parents in 2011, according to Eurofound.
Almost half of Europe's young adults are living with their parents, new data suggests – a record level of dependency that has sobering social and demographic implications for the continent.
One of the most comprehensive social surveys of 28 European countries reveals on Tuesday that the percentage of people aged 18-30 who were still living with their parents had risen to 48%, or 36.7 million people, by 2011, in tandem with levels of deprivation and unemployment that surged during five years of economic crisis.
The data from EU agency Eurofound, obtained by the Guardian, shows that few countries are immune and that the phenomenon is not exclusive to the debt-laden Mediterranean rim. The figures show large rises in the number of stay-at-home twentysomethings in countries such as Sweden, Denmark, France, Belgium and Austria. In Italy, nearly four-fifths (79%) of young adults were living with their parents.
However, Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland and the UK saw decreases in their numbers over that period – in Britain, the figure fell from 30% to 26%.
One of the report's authors, Anna Ludwinek, said: "The situation of youth has really fundamentally changed. And it looks different from the situation of their parents and grandparents.
"It's not only the world of work that has changed but society is changing, so the transitions are becoming much more unpredictable; people are not having a job for life or live in one place for life."
She said it was a myth that living with children and parents in a multi-generational household was all "happy clappy": "Really we see that multi-generational households have very low life satisfaction and a very high level of deprivation and perceived social exclusion.
"One could argue that if you are at the age of 30 and are still living with your parents and, on top of that you have your own family, it is really difficult to start an independent life."
The data underscores the predicament of "Generation Y" – who are better educated than their forebears, but condemned nonetheless to dimmer prospects than their parents' generation.
The growing phenomenon of adults stuck living in their childhood bedrooms has, moreover, raised concerns about birthrates and demographics in an ageing continent.
The trend for parental dependency, the report's authors say, cannot be solely explained by increases in the number of people studying later into their life, as millions more 25- to 29-year-olds have also been found to be living with mum and dad.
For women aged 25-29, this figure rose by five points to 26% while the proportion for men is up three points to 34%. Even among those who have a job, the overall figure rose one point to 34%.
While young adults tend to be as trusting of institutions as their parents, faith in their national government, legal system and the press all fell among the young between 2007 and 2011.
Bobby Duffy from pollsters Ipsos Mori said he had found similar results in the UK: "Our generational analysis of attitudes in the UK has shown how much pressure the youngest generation feel under – they're the most likely to see themselves as poor even a good few years into their careers, which is historically unusual.
"This echoes the Eurofound research – it's not just those straight out of school or university who are finding it more difficult to get going with independent lives, it's people well into their 20s and 30s."
He said these results demonstrated that class and background was becoming even more of a factor in later life success.
"Those from better off or higher social class families will be much better set to deal with the pressures. The real story here isn't about generation alone; it's about how it interacts with wealth and class.
Millennials at Work: Young and Callow, Like Their Parents
By MITCHELL HARTMAN
THE generation now entering the work force, people in their late teens and early 20s, are consistently panned by many employers as not ready for the workplace. But while there are real differences, their behavior on the job might not be so different from that of previous generations.
In surveys, middle-aged business owners and hiring managers say the new workers lack the attitudes and behaviors needed for job success. They don’t have a strong work ethic, these reports say. They’re not motivated and don’t take the initiative. They’re undependable and not committed to their employers. They need constant affirmation and expect rapid advancement.
A recent report by Bentley University for example, found more than half of corporate recruiters rated recent college graduates with a grade of C or lower for preparedness; nearly seven in 10 said young workers were difficult for their organization to manage. The Pew Research Center found that more than half of college presidents thought today’s students were less prepared, and studied less, than students did a decade ago.
Professor Cappelli said that young peoples’ attitudes toward work and career had not changed significantly since the baby boomers came of age in the 1960s. “There’s no evidence millennials are different,” he said. “They’re just younger.”
Adam Tratt, 42, manages several employees in their 20s. From a work standpoint, he and his friends looked a bit aimless at that age too, he said.
“I remember very explicitly when I was graduating from college, this stereotype of Gen-Xers as slackers,” he said, referring to those born from roughly 1965 to 1982, and who are now in their mid-30s and 40s. Mr. Tratt, who runs a software start-up in Seattle, said his generation gained a reputation in middle age as entrepreneurial and hard-working.
Professor Cappelli challenged middle-aged managers to remember when they were 22. “You probably wanted to get out of the office in a hurry — you were interested in what was going on after work,” he said. “You had these bursts of energy and great enthusiasm about something, but you also didn’t have a lot of resilience.”
Many people who supervise young workers, though, do echo the prevailing view that millennials have some troublesome work habits.
Robert Boggs is an administrator at Corinthian Colleges in Southern California and has managed several people under 30 on his staff. “They tend to be very self-absorbed; they value fun in their personal and their work life,” said Mr. Boggs. “Because they’ve grown up multitasking on their mobile, iPad and computer, I can’t expect them to work on one project for any amount of time without getting bored.”
Thomas Gallagher has hired several young athletes over the years in his sporting equipment business in Wilmington, Del. He says he thinks many young workers lack perseverance. “I worry that if I give someone a long-term task, if things don’t work out in the short term, I’m going to get an email or phone call saying, ‘You know what? This isn’t for me. I give up, I can’t do this,’ ” Mr. Gallagher said.
Some of these negative views are even shared by many in the generation in question.
“I see a lot of students cheating their way through, just sliding by,” said Claire Koerner, 21, a student at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Ms. Koerner is finishing a B.A. in business administration while working at a wedding-planning start-up, OneWed. She does social media for the company while in class, she admitted. But she said many of her peers had not held a job at all. (According to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, teenage labor force participation is at record lows.) “They just aren’t going to have the skills to work as hard as they’re expected to,” she said.
Camille Perry, 26, of Portland, Ore., said her generation had a poor work ethic, although her own schedule was filled with labor. She holds two jobs: bartending at a neighborhood karaoke lounge and serving at a downtown lunch restaurant.
“We are a generation that spent a lot of time in front of the television or playing video games,” she said. “There’s just a prevalent laziness.”
Academics who study this generation said its members did differ from Generation X and baby boomers, those born from 1946 to 1964, and the differences may persist through their work lives.
“This is the most affirmed generation in history,” said Cliff Zukin, a senior faculty fellow at the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University, where he is also a professor of public policy. “They were raised believing they could do whatever they wanted to, that they have skills and talents to bring to a job setting.
“And when they’re lucky enough to get a job they’re basically told, ‘Be quiet, you don’t really know anything yet.’ For a lot of them, this is a tremendous clash between their expectations and the reality of the job.”
The generation may be shaped more by the Great Recession than by their overprotected, tech-saturated upbringing. If they lack the loyalty and commitment that employers want in entry-level workers, is that really such a surprise?
Young people’s multitasking on mobile devices might seem like a distraction at work, but it also has an upside.
John Scrofano, 31, who is Ms. Koerner’s boss at OneWed in Seattle, appreciates the comfort his younger employees have with social media. “They don’t have that line between work and home that used to exist, so they’re doing Facebook for the company at night, on Saturday or Sunday,” he said. “We get incredible productivity out of them.”
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