Obama's War on Economy Hurts Millenials Most

A recent Pew Research report and the latest jobs report show how badly the 18- to 31-year-old Millenials are suffering under the progressive leadership of the man they supported so strongly.

Pew reports:

In 2012, 36% [21.6 million] of the nation’s young adults ages 18 to 31—the so-called Millennial generation—were living in their parents’ home, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. This is the highest share in at least four decades and represents a slow but steady increase over the 32% of their same-aged counterparts who were living at home prior to the Great Recession in 2007 and the 34% doing so when it officially ended in 2009.

Their "life-on-hold" status appears driven by three things:

• declining employment:  63% had jobs in 2012, down from 70% in 2007;
• rising college enrollment: 39% were enrolled in college in 2012 vs. 35% in 2007;
• declining marriage: 25% were married in 2012 vs. 30% in 2007. [See Pew's chart at end of this post showing the dramatic shift since 1968 in married households in this age group.]

Jobs Report: Despite media cheerleading, the latest jobs report is nothing to cheer about. The primary reason for the slight decline in the unemployment rate is due to more people dropping out of the job market. And the drop-outs are disproportionately young people!

Using Bureau of Labor Statistics, Joe Malchow at powerlineblog.com (under the headline "The Saddest Chart") created the graphic below, which shows labor participation by age cohort, indexed to January 2007. He explains:

Young people—most strikingly 18 to 19, but also 20 to 24, and 25 to 35—are simply dropping out of the work force.

These young Americans are not in the denominator of the headline unemployment figure. They’re the most energetic, strongest, most inventive Americans. They’re sitting on couches in the Obama economy. Su casa es la casa de su madre. It’s not because “the economy sucks,” which is the strange existential answer that even Ivy-educated twenty-somethings will give you. It is because the Obama presidency actively harms young people, and seeks to do so more every day.

Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com blog has an equally eye-opening chart. Of all jobs created in 2013, only 23% were full-time. The rest of the jobs—731,000 of 953,000 in all—were part-time, according to BLS data.

Finally, Pew's marriage factor. In 1968, 56% of adults ages 18 to 31 were married and living with their spouses.  In 2012, that figure had dropped to only 23%:

Joe Manchow is right. To think that the oldest cohorts in the Millenial age group have lived a third of their lives in a childhood cocoon is sad.