A Silent Majority Of Undereducated And Underemployed Millennials

Millennials are often mocked as Starbucks baristas with Ivy League educations.

And while they are the best-educated generation to date, data from the Pew Research Center show about two-thirds of millennials between ages 25 and 32 lack a bachelor's degree.

That majority is often ignored in conversations about millennials.

This narrative is alive and well in Boston's Harvard Square, where church bells chime as millennials sip lattes and drift out of bookstores. But take a walk down the road, and the story changes.

More from NPR.

The GOP’s Millennial problem runs deep

From the Pew Research Center:

The Republican Party’s struggles in appealing to young people have been well documented. And even those Millennials who do identify as Republicans or lean toward the GOP are decidedly less conservative than older Republicans.

Overall, Millennials (currently ages 18-33) are the most liberal age group. In our report on Political Polarization in the American Public, we used a scale based on 10 political values questions about the role of government, the environment, homosexuality and other issues to measure ideological consistency. This survey of more than 10,000 Americans finds that, on this scale, Millennials are considerably more liberal than other generations: About four-in-ten Millennials are mostly (28%) or consistently (13%) liberal in their views, compared with 15% who are mostly (12%) or consistently (3%) conservative (44% are ideologically mixed). Older generations are progressively more conservative.

Millennial Marriage Projections

From the New Strategist newsletter:

The millennial generation has postponed marriage for so long it will go into the record books. According to projections by the Urban Institute, millennials will be less likely to have married by age 40 than any generation in American history--even if they hurry up about it.

"The economic shock of the recession put marriage on hold for many young adults and marriage rates are returning slowly (if at all) to pre-recession levels," explain the Urban Institute researchers in their report on the projections. Take a look at the trend: Among women, the percentage who had married by age 40 was 91 percent for older boomers, 87 percent for younger boomers, and 82 percent for generation X. Even if marriage rates return to pre-recession levels, only 77 percent of younger millennial women will have married by age 40. If marriage rates do not rebound, an even smaller 69 percent will have married by age 40. For millennial men, the respective figures are 73 percent with a rebound and 65 percent without.

"With respect to marriage at least, our projections indicate that many of these millennials will not recover in the future from the opportunities they have missed as young adults," say the researchers. As if that's not enough, there's more bad news. Not only will millennials be the biggest "singles" generation in history, but marital status will split the generation into haves and have-nots. That's because marriage rates are higher for college graduates, who earn more and tend to marry one another.

Millennials in Adulthood: Detached from Institutions, Networked with Friends

The Millennial generation is forging a distinctive path into adulthood. Now ranging in age from 18 to 331, they are relatively unattached to organized politics and religion, linked by social media, burdened by debt, distrustful of people, in no rush to marry— and optimistic about the future.

They are also America’s most racially diverse generation. In all of these dimensions, they are different from today’s older generations. And in many, they are also different from older adults back when they were the age Millennials are now.

Read more from the Pew Research Center.

Why Are Cities Growing Again?

Why are the nation's urban centers growing again? The reasons are complex and not easily explained, often resulting in circular arguments such as "Millennials apparently drive less because they prefer walkable places and they prefer walkable places because they drive less," says Robert Steuteville, editor and publisher of Better! Cities and Towns.

Steuteville unravels the mystery of why cities are growing in one of the most insightful pieces on the topic to date, Why Are Young Adults Returning to the City?. He thinks four factors are behind the growing preference for urban life.

1. Millennials "looked around their home towns and saw something missing," says Steuteville. Take a drive and you soon see what he means. In the decades since the baby-boom generation populated small town and suburban America, those areas have lost their soul.

More from Cheryl Russell's Demo Memo blog.

Who Are The Millenials?

An interesting infographic look at the Millennials, who and what they are demographically and socially. "Not surprisingly, we found that Millienials love technology."