DN Editorial: A dream dies?

A BIG PART of the American Dream - maybe the most important - is the expectation that your kids will do better than you did. A large number of Baby Boomers have lived that dream, earning more than their parents ever did due to affordable education and good job opportunities.

But Census figures released Thursday suggest that it's not going to work that way for many of today's young adults, with serious ramifications for them and for the rest of country.

Young people aged 18 to 29 are unemployed in record numbers. Compared to 2000, when 67.3 percent of 16- to 29-year-olds were working, only about 55 percent of that age group had jobs last year. At the same time, many college graduates who are bringing home paychecks are not working at the jobs they studied for but instead are working in restaurants or retail. Less- educated young adults are even worse off.

Economists are using words like "scarred" and "haunted" to describe what this slow start could mean for this age group. They could be a "lost generation" of workers, always behind, even if the situation improves - since then they would be competing not only with older people but younger ones as well.

And it's not just their careers that are on hold. High levels of unemployment and underemployment means that fewer young people are doing what young people traditionally do: living on their own, getting married, buying houses, having kids.

According to the reports, the number of young adults living with their parents is up 25 percent since the recession began. (Living at home has kept a lot of them out of poverty: about 8.4 percent make less than the poverty line of $10,830 for a single person. If they were on their own, 43.8 percent would be poor. )

Hard times means that fewer young people are able to pursue better opportunities away from home: The number of young adults between 18 and 34 who moved across state lines fell 4.4 percent last year to its lowest point in more than 60 years.

Fewer young adults are getting married: the marriage rate for people aged 25 to 34 was 44.2 percent, a new low. Younger women are having fewer babies - down 6 percent in the past year. And home ownership has gone down for a fourth straight year.

At the same time, older workers are hanging around longer than ever, with more seniors in the workforce than ever. So if it weren't already obvious, this is no time to raise the Social Security retirement age beyond 66.

It also is obvious that future deficits, while important, pose nowhere near the danger to the younger generation as does current unemployment. Rather than slashing spending, government should be spending more to save and create jobs.

The longer it takes to get onto the economic ladder, the lower the chances of climbing very high. Nothing less than the American Dream is at stake.