Young adults are drowning in debt.
Debt among Americans aged between 19 to 29-years-old exceeded an eye-watering $1 trillion in 2018, according to a report by the New York Federal Reserve Consumer Credit Panel.
This is the highest level of debt for this age group since 2007, Bloomberg reports.
Student loans make up the majority of the $1,005,000,000,000 owed, accounting for more than $378 million of it. This amount has swelled by 102 percent since 2009.
Following student loans was mortgages ($362 million) and auto loans ($166 million). However, mortgage debt is increasing at a much, much slower pace than student loan debt, rising just 3.2 percent since 2009 — suggesting that despite ballooning debt levels, millennials and Gen Z may not actually be actively spending as much as their baby boomer parents.
A recent survey from the University of Michigan found that that adults under 35-years-old have reduced their spending due to a weak job market, student loans and delayed marriage plans, Bloomberg reports.
And to deal with the weaker economic environment and rising cost of living, some millennials are even taking up side hustles to keep up with their bills.
A recent Post report found that nearly one in every two millennials in New York have student loan debt, and thousands of them are moonlighting as waiter and bartenders to pay them off.
“Many young people in New York who work in local bars and restaurants are paying off student loans and paying for college — and they don’t want to see the tip credit eliminated,” Tezra Bryant, a veteran of the New York hospitality scene, told The Post.
“They don’t want to see a decline in their incomes.”