31% of Black Men Over 18 More Likely to Still Live with Parents

According to the latest Census figures, the unemployment rate for young adults 18 and over is the highest since World War II, and they risk living in poverty more than others — nearly one in five.

"We have a monster jobs problem, and young people are the biggest losers," said Andrew Sum, an economist and director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University. He noted that for recent college graduates getting by on waitressing, bartending and odd jobs, they will have to compete with new graduates for entry-level career positions when the job market does improve.

Among young adults 25-34, marriage was at 44.2 percent, also a new low.

Broken down by race and ethnicity, 31 percent of young black men lived in their parents' homes, compared with 21 percent of young Latino men and 15 percent of young white men.

Younger women across all race and ethnic groups had fewer children compared with 2008. Births declined 6 percent among 20-34 year-olds over the two-year period even though the number of women in this group increased by more than 1 million.

"Are people just delaying births, or does this represent a real loss of babies that won't be replaced? During the Great Depression, there was a permanent loss of births — they were never made up," said  Kenneth Johnson, sociology professor and senior demographer at the University of New Hampshire.

~YBW Staff