For a fun new entry into millennials are lazy, consider this: According to new data tracked down by Richard Fry for Pew Research, just 20 percent of 25- to 35-year-olds (Old Millennials, if you will) reported having lived at a different address the previous year.
In 2000, a full 26 percent of Gen-Xers — then at the same age range — had reported making a move in the previous year. In 1963, members of the Silent Generation moved at a 26 percent rate, too. The census data being used here doesn’t include college-dorm moves prevalent with 18- to 24-year-olds, so those young’uns are left out of the analysis.
The 20 percent rate is the lowest level of young adult mobility in half a century, Fry reports, and all this with millennials getting married, owning homes, and having kids less than previous generations. Student debt and less favorable lending rates may be driving down homeownership — imagine that — which further reduces movement. Psychologically, this also means that young adults are more stuck with their personalities and faded of memory compared with their more mobile peers.
Other evidence suggests that it’s not just millennials, but the times we live in. Other research fresh out of the National Bureau of Economic Research finds that the overall rate of Americans moving between states has fallen by half since the early 1990s. Like with everything, technology may also be to blame: When you can work from anywhere, why move somewhere else?
