NJ Leads Nation In Wellbeing For Young Adults In 2025

New Jersey is standing out as a model of prosperity for young adults.

This is in a country where 13 percent of all adults between the ages of 18 and 24 are not working or attending school. WalletHub dug further into this trend with a new study where they compared all 50 states and the District of Columbia across 15 indicators under two categories to determine where young adults were better off. The Garden State ranks first in terms of overall success.

Under the "Education & Employment" group, the share of disconnected youth, labor force participation rate, share of homeless youth, and the rate of youth detained, incarcerated or placed in residential facilities were among the areas evaluated.

NJ, NY Students Find Inspiration At Port Authority Youth Police Academy

The "Health" umbrella houses indicators such as the share of overweight and obese youth, the share of youth using illicit drugs, and the share of physically, mentally and emotionally inhibited youth were all included. These scores in each category were then weighed and averaged to compile the rankings.

New Jersey finished with an "Education & Employment" rank of 49 out of 51 in terms of most at-risk, and 51st in the "Health" division for an overall score of 23.38 weighted points. The state WalletHub says has the "Most Idle Youth" is Louisiana, finishing with an overall weighted score of 66.05.

The state stands out as the second-ranked in two subcategories that helped shape its overall score. According to WalletHub, New Jersey has the second-lowest percentage of overweight & obese youth (28%), and the second-lowest youth poverty rate (13%). It is also coming off a 2023-2024 school year that saw 91.3 percent of students graduating from four-year public high school, the highest since 2011. New Jersey also offers the second-highest percentage of schools with at least one advanced learning AP course in the nation.

Young adults today are not only navigating high inflation and other economic struggles, but research shows that growing up in these situations also brings more risk for poverty, early pregnancy and violence. According to the National Library of Medicine, "Emerging research suggests a role for social and recreational resources in the link between low socioeconomic neighborhood status and adolescent risk behaviors. These factors seem to play a strong role in the link between neighborhood poverty and adolescent delinquency and sexual risk behavior. The strength of that evidence...highlights the value of community-level supervision and monitoring of youth."

"Think about what young people want," adds Edmond P. Bowers, Ph.D. Professor and Director of Assessment and Engagement, College of Behavioral, Social and Health Sciences at Clemson University. "They want to feel like they fit in somewhere, that they are heard, and that they matter."

MORE FROM PATCH: Internship Or Exploitation? Attorney Warns NJ Youth About 5 ‘Red Flags’