Children Moving Back Home and the Construction Industry

I read a great article about how the current economy has been particularly tough of young workers. They have resorted to moving back home. This trend has directly impacted the construction industry. Edward L. Glaeser is the author of the article and an economics professor at Harvard. He reports that "That unemployment rate almost seems low given that Americans built 60 percent fewer homes in 2009 than we did in 2006... According to the Current Population Survey, only 400,000 new households formed from March 2008 and March 2009. While there were about a million new families, the number of non-family households dropped by almost 600,000. The number of 18- to 24-year-olds living at home increased by 300,000." The direct impact on the construction industry is clear. Tax incentives have not over-come the trend and no clear solutions are evident. Glaeser also sited the people with "less schooling" have been hit the worst. The answer at least in part is understand that as Glaeser said " The world rewards America’s educated far more than its manual laborers. The only good response to that fact is to educate more Americans."

To read full article see http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/kids-moving-back-home-and-the-construction-industry/?hp