The picture of a grown child sleeping in a childhood bedroom often comes with an assumption attached: no job, no plan. The numbers from Realtor.com point the other way. Its analysis of 2025 data found about 25.2 million adults under 35 living with their parents, more than during the pandemic.
Roughly 70 percent of 25- to 34-year-olds in that situation are employed, according to Hannah Jones, the company’s senior economist. The bigger obstacle is a housing market that has outrun paychecks, and that gap explains most of the story.
A Record Count, and Most Are Working
The Realtor.com report, as summarized by the National News Desk in June 2026, says nearly one in three young adults lived at home, a record for the group. Among 25- to 29-year-olds, 20.4 percent lived with parents, nearly six points higher than in 2000. For 30- to 34-year-olds the share was 12.7 percent, up from 11.4 percent in 2019 and 7.1 percent in 2000. Realtor.com estimates that about 4.86 million more young adults lived at home than early-2000s rates would predict. The family angle gets a fuller treatment in this post on why adult children still cannot afford to leave home, and the roundup of common regrets in adulthood shows how often money and timing collide.
Employment varies by age, and for retirees weighing a smaller footprint of their own, the benefits of RV living are a different take on downsizing. Jones put the figure at 52 percent for 18- to 24-year-olds living at home and 68 percent for 30- to 34-year-olds, and most of the ones in the older groups are working. In other words, the typical young adult at home is more likely to have a paycheck than not.
Why a Paycheck Often Is Not Enough
Realtor.com reports a median home price of $430,000 in 2025, up 34.4 percent from 2019, and a median rent of $1,673, up 17.9 percent. The company estimates a housing supply gap of about 4 million units and notes that the typical first-time buyer has reached age 40. A LendingTree analysis cited by CBS News found that fewer than 4 in 10 non-homeowner households can afford a typical starter home. In other words, most households without a home of their own cannot afford the typical entry-level one.
CBS spoke with Karleigh Gaudreau, a 34-year-old business coach and content creator from South Carolina who earns about $60,000 a year. She moved back home after a breakup and said she could afford to split rent but not to cover a place alone. By her own estimate, living alone with student loan and car payments would take about $85,000 a year. Susan Wachter, a real estate professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, told the network, “It’s affordability across the board. It’s not just the price of the home and the mortgage.” For families stretched in several directions, there is the post on Gen X in its prime sandwich years. Another take on shifting life milestones appears in a look at adults 25 to 34 in 1975 versus 2024. For parents sorting out house rules, the post on what parents should not expect adult children to take responsibility for can help frame the conversation, and holiday hosts with a full house might peek at the vacuums that get a house guest-ready or at family luggage sets for holiday trips.
What the Federal Reserve Survey Adds
The Federal Reserve’s 2026 Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households, covered by Click2Houston on Oct. 29, 2026, found that 49 percent of adults under 30 lived with a parent in 2025. That is up 6 percentage points from 2022 and 12 points from 2019. The survey also found that 33 percent of adults lived in multigenerational households.
The Fed and Realtor.com measure different slices of the population, which is why the percentages differ. Both point to the same direction of travel, though.
Who Is Under the Roof: Degrees, Marriage and Wages
Realtor.com’s breakdown adds detail on who is living at home. A bachelor’s degree or higher is held by 10 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds at home, 32 percent of those 25 to 29 and 27 percent of those 30 to 34. The share who have never married is 98 percent among 18- to 24-year-olds, 94 percent among 25- to 29-year-olds and 89 percent among 30- to 34-year-olds.
CBS also reported that many adults at home are employed but that their wages are not keeping pace with inflation, while rising prices and higher mortgage rates keep homeownership out of reach. Wachter told the network that “society as a whole has to respond,” a comment aimed at the scale of the housing problem.
What Families Do With the Extra Bedroom
In the meantime, many families are working out the daily details: who pays which bill, how long the arrangement lasts and what the house rules are. As always with these figures, the exact share depends on how age groups are cut. The direction across Realtor.com, LendingTree and the Federal Reserve is the same: more adults are living at home, and most of those under 35 have jobs.
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This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
Image: brownpau – CC BY 2.0/Wikimedia Commons
