Forty-nine percent of Americans under 30 lived with a parent in 2025, according to the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking. That is six percentage points above the 2022 reading and 12 points above 2019, the year before the pandemic.
Housing is the obvious driver. Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies says existing home prices have risen 54% nationwide since 2020. Median prices for new and existing homes both sit above $400,000, about five times the median income. In the 1990s the ratio was about three.
The monthly math
Mortgage rates above 6% pushed the monthly payment on a median-priced home to $3,100 in the fourth quarter of 2025, the Harvard center found. In early 2020 it was $1,700. Paying that comfortably takes an income of more than $120,000, against $66,000 five years earlier.
Renters have not escaped. Median rent climbed 20% between 2022 and 2025, the Fed’s survey data show.
Groceries and gas cost more too. Many young adults simply cannot afford to move out, and those who can face a harder time saving for a down payment while paying today’s rents. The old pattern, leaving home after high school or college or soon after, is getting harder to follow.
Help from outside the household
Living at home is not the only support young adults lean on. Forty-seven percent of adults ages 18 to 29 told the survey they had received financial help in the past year from someone outside their household, often to cover basic expenses.
The effects can reach past individual budgets. When millions of young adults cannot move out, delayed family formation, weaker consumer spending and less retirement saving can all weigh on the broader economy.
