Only 17% of Young Americans Hit Adult Milestones—Proof the Middle Class Is Being Systematically Erased

Let’s quit pretending. The American Dream is dying—slowly, deliberately, and with the precision of a banker’s scalpel. In a nation once defined by upward mobility, home ownership, family, and the promise of better days, only 17 percent of Americans between the ages of 25 and 34 have achieved what the Census Bureau once had the audacity to call “the five major milestones of adulthood.” You read that right. Not even one in five young Americans has completed the traditional checklist: Move out of your parents’ house Finish school Get a job Get married Raise a child That figure—17%—isn’t just some dry number. It’s a red siren screaming the truth: America’s middle class is being deliberately hollowed out. The Great Unraveling: How We Got Here Back in 1975, nearly half of young adults had checked off at least four of these five milestones. And why wouldn’t they? Wages were livable, college was affordable, housing was within reach, and the postwar economy still carried the echo of New Deal policies that prioritized labor over capital. But fast forward fifty years, and the economic terrain has become a wasteland. What changed? The answer isn’t laziness, TikTok, or some invented “work ethic crisis.” The rot began at the top. We dismantled unions. We exported manufacturing. We deregulated Wall Street. We handed the keys of the nation to multinational corporations and turned our youth into collateral. This isn’t just economic decay—it’s institutional sabotage. Barriers by Design: The New Serfdom According to the Census Bureau, young people today are “facing economic barriers.” That's a polite bureaucratic euphemism. Let’s call it what it is: neo-feudalism. Jobs? A Bachelor’s degree now buys you an unpaid internship—if you're lucky. Housing? Good luck affording rent without roommates or generational wealth. Family formation? When raising a child costs more than a year at Harvard, who in their right mind signs up? Let’s pull from the field: Eli McCullick, a 23-year-old sociology grad, can’t even land a cleaning job in Boulder. He’s shoveling manure for food money. Sean Breen, with a degree in communications, says nearly everyone he knows is unemployed and back living with parents in Marin County. He's applying for part-time barista jobs, like it's 2008 Groundhog Day. This isn’t anecdotal. It’s systemic. The Middle Class: An Endangered Species Let’s stop sugarcoating it. The middle class isn’t just shrinking—it’s being squeezed into extinction. For every older middle-class American who dies, fewer and fewer young people rise to replace them. The mobility ladder is gone. What remains is a broken escalator, rusted in place, managed by corporate landlords and Wall Street hedge funds. The key to middle class stability has always been employment. But layoffs in 2025 have skyrocketed—up 140% from last year. Over 800,000 job cuts have been announced. The job market is a game of musical chairs where the music never stops—it just gets quieter until you don’t even realize you’re unemployed. And while the propaganda machine insists everything’s fine, 62% of Americans expect unemployment to get worse. That’s not pessimism. That’s realism. Welcome to the Era of “Job Hugging” Remember the “Great Resignation”? That’s over. We’ve entered the era of “job hugging”—where people cling to whatever gig they’ve got like it’s a life raft on the Titanic. The quits rate, a key metric of economic confidence, has flatlined at around 2%—a level not seen consistently since 2016, and before that, the Great Recession. Translation? Workers are terrified. They're not quitting because they know there’s nothing out there. This isn’t a labor shortage. It’s a future shortage. Historical Echoes: From Dust Bowl to Debt Trap This isn’t the first time America has failed a generation. The last time young people were this economically stunted was during the Great Depression. Back then, young men lived in “Hoovervilles,” hopping freight trains in search of work. Today’s young adults are living in their childhood bedrooms, riding Uber rides they can’t afford to job interviews that lead nowhere. But there’s one crucial difference. Back in the 1930s, government responded with the New Deal. We saw FDR, the WPA, Social Security. The state, for all its flaws, stepped in. Today? Washington fiddles while the empire burns. The Federal Reserve prints money for billionaires, while Gen Z learns how to coupon for groceries. The Counterargument: “Maybe Young People Just Don’t Want Responsibility” Let’s torch this lie once and for all. Boomers and pundits love to sneer: “Kids today just don’t want to grow up.” As if the housing market didn’t triple while wages flatlined. As if student debt wasn’t a trillion-dollar shackle. As if a college degree guaranteed anything anymore except regret. If young people aren’t forming families, buying homes, or having children—it’s not because they don’t want to. It’s because they can’t afford to. The only ones “refusing to grow up” are the political class and corporate executives who refuse to take responsibility for destroying the economy. So What’s the Endgame? Let’s be brutally honest. The American economy has become a rigged casino, and young people are walking in with no chips. The house always wins—and the house is JPMorgan, BlackRock, and the Federal Reserve. If the current trend continues, we’re headed toward a permanent renter class, where wealth is inherited, not earned. Where young people exist as consumers, not citizens. Where every dream of independence—marriage, children, homeownership—becomes the domain of the elite. This isn’t just a crisis. It’s economic warfare against the next generation. Final Warning If you still believe things will “just work themselves out,” you’re living in a fantasy. The institutions meant to protect us—government, banks, universities—have abandoned their posts. The young aren’t failing the system. The system is failing the young. And if we don’t call this what it is—systemic, deliberate collapse—then we’re just whistling past the graveyard of the American Dream.

Only 17% of Young Americans Hit Adult Milestones—Proof the Middle Class Is Being Systematically Erased

Bill Brocius Aug 19

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