Why Moving Back Home After Graduation may be the Smart Choice

[IMAGE: Look Photography/Beateworks/Corbis]

Megan Fischer

 

Post-graduation can be a frustrating, scary time.

It can be difficult to know what to do, or what the right moves to make are. Everyone has to make decisions that work for them. But there is a harsh reality waiting out there for recent grads, and you shouldn’t immediately dismiss the idea of moving home.

Jessica Dickler, a staff writer for CNN Money, wrote in 2012 that “Getting a degree used to be a stepping stone to limitless career opportunities. Now it’s more of a hiatus from living under your parents’ roof.”

In her article, Boomerang kids: 85% of college grads move home, Dickler questioned information from the Pew Research Center. In 2011, they would actually conduct a survey, showing that 53% of college grads actually moved back in with their parents. Although the number is significantly lower, it still reaches over half of all college grads.

Most grads ended up back at home due to the increasing difficulty of finding decent jobs.

“This recession has hit young adults particularly hard,” said Rich Morin, senior editor at the Pew Research Center in DC when interviewed by Dickler.

In another article by the Pew, 5 facts about today’s college graduates, writer Drew Desilver quotes what researchers at the Federal Bank of New York found. While consulting data from the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the researchers found that “in 2012, about 44% of grads were working in jobs that didn’t require a college degree — a rate that, while about what it was in the early 1990s, increased after the 2001 and 2007-09 recessions.”

And of that 44 percent, only 36 percent of that group was in what the researchers called “good non-college jobs,” or jobs that payed around $45,ooo a year.

The amount of underemployed recent grads in low-wage paying jobs (below $25,000) increased from about 15 percent in 1990 to more than 20 percent.

With the scales tipping in favor of low-wage jobs for recent grads, the reality of expensive rent becomes much more significant.

As stated in the article, Top Ten Most Common Mistakes a New Grad Can Make, rent can turn into a financial burden. One that may force grads into careers they weren’t planning for, and probably don’t want.

So it might be smart to consider moving back home (if you can negotiate with your parents) to save some money. Even if the move is only for six months, it could save a recent grad a lot of stress and give you time to figure out what you really want to do.