I had a chance to look closer at the Bureau of Labor Statistics figures in the July Jobs report over the weekend. After reading AGBeat’s article they pointed out a little hidden gem buried in the report. They pointed out some good news for the 25-34 Age Group.
…among 25-34 year-olds, the prime age group for housing demand, 74.5% were employed in July, well up from 73.2% one year ago; their unemployment rate dropped to 8.2% from 9.7% one year ago. The job market has improved a lot in the past year for this prime age group for housing demand.
Reading this spurred me on to look closer at the age groups. The 25-34 age group is the age group that has been struggling to get out and form new households because of lack of jobs thus holding back the housing recovery. This is what is referred to as Pent Up Demand. When someone buys their first home, the seller of that home then moves up to the next home, and that seller goes and buys another home and so and so on… so 1 sale triggers a series of sales. The market has been slugging out foreclosures and short sales that don’t trigger another sale, if this age group hits the housing market we will be seeing a healthy housing market.
Upon verifying the claim from the article, I noticed something interesting. The 35-44 and 45-54 age groups seem to be getting squeezed out of jobs by the 25-34 age group. See chart below.
All age groups are having a tough time, but the 35-44 age group (Gen X) has been getting crushed…. The 25-34 age group have have been seeing some improvement in their employment in the last year. This doesn’t really give an explanation, but I would suspect that Gen Y’rs are getting hired before Gen X’rs because they may be willing to work for less money starting out. The 45-54 age group has been struggling too, but not nearly as severe as 35-44 age group.
From 07/01/2007 to 07/01/2012 (5 year view):
- 25-34 – Employment is down 1,083,000
- 35-44 - Employment is down 3,627,000
- 45-54 – Employment is down 1,591,000
- 55+ Age Group- Employment is up +4,324,000
(For the Gen X’ers: As a Gen X’er myself, I couldn’t help but imagine a South Park episode on this… “They Took Our Job!!” )
Employed persons consist of: persons who did any work for pay or profit during the survey reference week; persons who did at least 15 hours of unpaid work in a family-operated enterprise; and persons who were temporarily absent from their regular jobs because of illness, vacation, bad weather, industrial dispute, or various personal reasons. Each employed person is counted only once, even if he or she holds more than one job.
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