The American Dream's closing gate
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Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios
It's a very good time to be an employed, married homeowner in America, and a very bad time to be looking for those things.
The big picture: Generations of Americans have seen a job, a spouse and homeownership as waypoints in pursuit of the American Dream. Fewer young Americans are on that track than in decades past.
Consider three trends:
- Unemployment is low, but so are new job postings.
- Divorce is down, but so is marriage.
- Home values are at historic highs in much of the U.S., but home sales are the slowest in a generation.
Zoom in: The labor market is frozen.
- Very low rates of Americans with jobs are quitting or being fired each month. But those on the unemployment rolls are now staying there longer than at any time since before the pandemic.
- Employers are instead experimenting with AI to make their workforces more productive, Axios' Courtenay Brown reports.
- Young college grads are hit especially hard by this phenomenon, as entry-level roles are particularly hard to find.
Meanwhile, marriage and divorce rates in the U.S. each year have both been in long-term decline.
Finally, 2025 is shaping up to be one of the worst years for home sales in a generation — possibly the worst in 30 years, per analyst Heather Long.
- Supply is way too low. That keeps values high for people who already have homes, and makes homeownership that much less attainable for many who don't.
- Folks who locked in super-low mortgage rates a few years ago are sitting particularly pretty.
- Now, with relatively high rates and record-high prices in much of the country, millions of Americans are deferring dreams of buying homes or giving up entirely.
The flipside: Americans are waiting longer to get married, and fewer are getting married period.
- It's not just the institution of marriage. Cohabitating among romantic partners is way down, and surveys even suggest teen dating has dropped dramatically.
- We're coupling up a lot less than we used to and, as the Atlantic's Derek Thompson puts it, "marriage is becoming much rarer and much more stable."
Reality check: Not everyone wants to get married, or to stay in their marriage. Some Americans who could buy a house don't want to.
- The job market could also soon get better for those who don't have jobs, or worse for those who do.
Yes, but: These three trends are linked.
- Working-age people who are married are much more likely to be employed (and vice-versa), and people who are employed and married are much more likely to afford a home.
- Studies have shown that income is strongly linked to life satisfaction — and marriage even more so.
The bottom line: Millions of younger Americans might be stuck on the other side of the white picket fence, looking in.
