Key takeaways:
- Nearly a fifth of U.S. adults have been living with their parents in recent years.
- Young adults in the West and Northeast are most likely to live with their parents.
- Parents with their children living at home say they are thrilled to have them.
With fears about the economy running high, many Americans may be considering moving back in with their parents.
But plenty of American adults were already living with their parents before President Trump's trade war and ensuing market turbulence.
Around 18% of young adults, defined as ages 25 to 34, lived with their parents in the U.S. in 2023, and where living with parents was most common varied widely across the country, according to an analysis by Pew Research Center, which reviewed the latest U.S. Census data.
Vallejo, California had the highest percentage of young adults living with their parents among metropolitan areas, with a 33% share, followed by Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura, California (33%), El Centro, California (32%), Brownsville-Harlingen, Texas (31%) and Riverside-San-Bernadino-Ontario, California (30%).
On the other hand, the five metropolitan areas where it was least common for young adults to live with their parents were Odessa, Texas (3%), Lincoln, Nebraska (3%), Ithaca, New York (3%), Bloomington, Indiana (3%) and Bozeman, Montana (4%).
Pew said it didn't find a strong link between unemployment rates and living with parents, despite other research finding the link. Still, the number of adults living with their parents is way down from previous years.
In July 2020, Pew said 52% of young adults lived with one or both of their parents, the highest level since the Great Depression.
Recently, many parents have said they are happy to have their kids living with them.
A surprising 85% of parents said they were delighted to have their adult children living with them, according to a survey by BOK Financial conducted by Talker Research, StudyFinds reports.