The Recession Didn't Really Cause Everyone to Move Into Their Parents Basements

One of the news stories that I've seen about the Great Recession is that more young people age 18+ have moved back into their parents homes.      Such as this Washington Post article Census: Everybody’s moving into their parents’ basements
 There are generally more people living with their parents than say 10 years ago.   But the upward trend was started before the recession and there wasn't a huge spike after the recession.   Also the percent of young people age 18-24 who now live with their parents is actually still lower than the rate it was back through the 1980's and 1990s.   



Here's an interesting chart from the Census showing this:

 

I got that out of a Census report.    Notice that the upward trend was starting back around 2005 which was well before the recession.  The purple bit just after the recession increased at about the same slope as before hand.   The numbers are pretty high as you can see but this is a combination of things including a large number of adults who are still in college and reside at their parents homes officially. 

Now if you look at that same report and go back to the first page you'll see that Figure 1 shows the % of people aged 25-34 who are living with their parents.   That group has increased since the Great Recession and is higher now than in previous decades.  

For that age group the numbers are in fact up and now higher than previous.   However the % isn't too substantial.  Its not as if 70% or 50% or any high amount of adults age 25-34 are living in their parents homes.    It hasn't even broken the 20% level.

Now those numbers are from 2011 at the latest but Census figures do tend to lag some and those are the most recent that I can find.  I doubt that the trend has increased significantly since 2011.

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