Young Americans are living with relatives at highest rate since the Great Depression

Despite declining unemployment rates and recent job growth, nearly 40 percent of young Americans, also called millennials, live with a family member, the highest number in 70 years, according to real estate data.

Trulia, a real estate tracking agency, shared its analysis of U.S. census data dating back to 1900 with the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday. All told, 39.5 percent of those between the ages of 18 and 34 live with their parents, siblings or relatives, according to the Journal.

The last time that many young people lived with family was 1940, just as the Great Depression was ending and shortly before the U.S. joined World War II.

According to data from the U.S. Department of Labor, unemployment among people 20 to 34 years old has been trending down, but median weekly earnings are also down, meaning young people can find jobs more easily but are not being paid as much.

Those statistics, coupled with economic anxieties born from growing up in the midst of the Great Recession, have led to plummeting home ownership rates among millennials, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Another added element to how many millennials live with family members is the recent trend among both men and women to delay marriage. According to the Christian Science Monitor, the average American woman gets married at 27 now, while the average man waits until 29. The Pew Research Center found in May that more young adults lived with parents than with a spouse or partner for the first time on record.

For the past decade the number of young adults living with relatives has been on the rise and, per Fortune, the analysts at Trulia believe that trend will continue “indefinitely,” even as the percentage of the workforce comprised of millennials continues to rise.

This story was originally published December 22, 2016 at 4:11 PM with the headline "Young Americans are living with relatives at highest rate since the Great Depression."