He Gets His Old Room but Not for Free, Not Forever

They're coming home.

Many parents already know this, but after four, perhaps five or even six years of school, many college graduates -- faced with a tight job market, higher gas and food costs, and mountainous debt -- have no choice but to move home to get their financial bearings.

And you know what?

Despite assurances that they will stay for only a little while, this time next year many of those graduates will still be living at home. That's what MonsterTrak found in its annual nationwide survey of college students, recent graduates and entry-level employers.

Continuing a three-year trend, just under half of prospective graduates, 48 percent, plan to boomerang -- or move home -- after graduation, according to the online career resource company.

While only 22 percent of last year's survey respondents said they planned to live at home for six months or more, 43 percent have yet to leave, citing limited financial resources, MonsterTrak found.

Chief among the reasons recent graduates say they can't leave home: college loan debt. Forty-two percent of 2007 graduates said they had student loan debt of $25,000 or more, while another 33 percent have a credit card balance of more than $5,000.

Graduates may not earn as much as they had planned, either.

Thirty-two percent of employers expect to offer recent college graduates starting salaries between $30,000 and $40,000, according to CareerBuilder.com, the nation's largest online job site. An additional 15 percent will offer between $40,000 and $50,000. Only 11 percent of employers surveyed said they will offer more than $50,000. Forty-two percent will offer less than $30,000.

So should you allow your graduate to move home?

Lester Lefton, a psychology scholar and president of Kent State University, doesn't think this trend of boomerang adults is healthy.

"Students went to college to become independent and gain the expertise to make a living for themselves," Lefton said. "Therefore, it is not a good thing for college graduates to move back to their parents' home."