5.9 million young adults between ages 25-34 still living with parents

It’s not your imagination: It really is more crowded at mom and dad’s place. The Census Bureau made headlines yesterday with news that the nation’s official poverty rate hit 15.1%, the highest since 1993. Tough times have also translated into a rise in adult children moving back into (or never leaving) their parent’s homes. In the spring of 2011, 5.9 million young adults aged 25 to 34 lived with their parents, up from 4.7 million before the recession. And these adult kids still at mom and dad’s make very little money: Over 45% have incomes that’d put them below the poverty threshold.

The U.S. Census Bureau puts these adult children living with their parents in the category of “doubled-up households”—when at least one extra adult resides in the home who is not in school and/or is outside the typical family unit. As of last spring, doubled-up households represented 18.3% of American residences (21.8 million total), up from 17% four years ago, when there were 19.7 doubled-up households…

The phenomena of the boomeranger—an adult child who had been living on his own, but was forced to move back in with his parents—spread widely soon after the recession hit.