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A general question was posed to me recently, which I interpreted as: What are the economic realities for young adults, and how have they changed from prior decades?
I of course started making graphs. Here's a thread of those. First: job switching.
I of course started making graphs. Here's a thread of those. First: job switching.
I further split this by gender. What I find interesting here is that rates are similar for men and women of similar ages now, but men 25-34 used to switch at higher rates than women of similar ages. That generally stopped with 2001 recession.
Meanwhile, young adult men are generally more likely to work part time than they were before the Great Recession. This isn't the case for women.
Young adults are a lot more likely to have college degrees than they used to be, but this is especially pronounced for women. Though keep in mind: for all of these age/gender buckets, the majority still doesn't have a college degree.
I can look at the prime-age employment-to-population ratio back to the 1960s using CPS ASEC data, as I do comprehensively here, also split by gender to see stark gender differences in trends.
With decennial Census and ACS data, I can examine marriage rates by age and gender over an even longer period. Young adult marriage rates have declined over the last decade, but they've been declining since mid-century.
What about electronics time use? Young (and young-ish) men are spending more time gaming in recent years than a decade prior, but they're watching less TV/movies/streaming video. For young adult men and women, this generally offsets increased gaming.
Just looking at time spent watching TV/movies/streaming video, young adults are watching less while older adults are watching considerably more.
Meanwhile, in recent years the rates of young adult men and women living with parents have been dramatically higher than any other time since WWII. 
This is particularly interesting because, circling back to that increase in gaming time, for young adult men the increase in gaming is concentrated among those living with parents.
With Census/ACS data, I can also look at the age profile of living in an owned home. Young adults are significantly more likely to live in rental housing than in prior decades.
Using the CPS ASEC, I can examine four decades of yearly data on living in an owned/mortgaged home by age group.
Given the economic realities young adults have faced and the delays in marriage and homeownership we've seen, it should come as little surprise that women in their 20s are significantly less likely to have children in recent years than a decade or so ago.
I haven't (yet) broken this down by age, but an important basic fact is that Americans keep moving less and less. A few changes in data collection yielded discrete jumps in the series, but the trend in recent years has continued right up through 2018.
Going back to 1981 in the CPS ASEC, it's clear that mobility rates are down the most for relatively young adults in recent years. Those age 25-29 were only ~60% as likely to report having moved to a different housing unit in the past year in 2018 as they were in 1990.
Taking the series back further shows quite a bit of stability through 2000. Rapidly declining mobility since then is concentrated among younger Americans.
