At 18-22 people are very young and, generally speaking, have very little life experience. They are looking for their place in life, so it's not surprising they are trading places easily. As they mature, they become more stable and better realize what they need/want in life (and job is a major part of life for most of us), so it's only natural they start sticking more to what they found.

This seems a little too psychological: even people who know exactly what they plan to do at a very young age are likely to change jobs many times during those years.

I spent 18-22 enrolled at one university earning a degree in the major that I listed on my application packet, but I interned at a different company each summer. If I'd worked during the academic year, I'd probably have had several additional jobs during the period: folding towels at the gym, computer laboratory attendant, resident advisor, off-campus food service and off-campus retail.

PS: I'm not just trying to pick a fight here: I dislike political discourse where the challenges of being a young adult are attributed to imagined moral, emotional, or intellectual deficiencies of people under 30 / 40 / 50.

Similarly, one could argue that people accumulate debt 18-22 because their immature brains are too stupid to understand cause and effect, ignoring more salient facts like: 1) 18 year olds have not had time to establish specialized professional experience so their earning potential is low due to no fault of their own 2) Immigration and trade policies have deliberately and drastically reduced the earning potential of unskilled labor (which includes basically all 18 year olds, including future MD's and PhD's) 3) Housing costs and especially education costs have skyrocketed in the past 40 years 4) Education is increasingly financed through debt rather than loans.

This is not as much fun as "kids today are so stupid!", but IMO a far more accurate explanation for why a current college student will incur more debt than a Boomer who could earn enough each summer hauling hay or working in a unionized factory to pay a year's tuition at State U.

Yes, this definitely makes sense. I'm just surprised that this is consistent across all those dimensions when almost nothing else is.

I was on my 6th job by age 22, but the first 5 were a string of minimum wage stints.