NEW ORLEANS — More than eight in 10 young adults in the United States rate the economy as “bad” or “terrible,” according to a recent nationwide survey of over 1,000 people aged 18 to 34 conducted by Generation Lab.

Cloud Benn, 23, lives in New Orleans and wanted to move out after graduating college, but high housing costs made that impossible. Benn works two retail jobs and a third as a writing tutor while paying rent to their mother. “We were fed that; we were told, hey, this is what adulthood is.” “But the reality feels dystopian. Even if you plan it down to the penny, nine times out of 10, it’s never enough, especially in this economy.” Benn is the same age their mother was when she moved out on her own—a step Benn has been unable to replicate despite similar effort.

Nia West-Bey, executive director of the National Collaborative for Transformative Youth Policy, said young adults face a confluence of long-term economic challenges. “It’s been rough for a long time. But I think we particularly have a confluence of long-term economic challenges on the income side and support side, now coupled with an increase in expenses on everything.” She added that it is “really difficult to do long-term planning for your future that young people want and need to do, and is developmentally appropriate, if you don’t know where you’re going to lay your head at night, if you don’t know what you’re going to eat the next day.”

In the Generation Lab survey, 41% of respondents blamed Donald Trump for current economic conditions, while 31% pointed to “corporate greed and large companies.”

Lindsay Owens, executive director of the non-profit Groundwork Collaborative, warned of lasting consequences. “We know that people who start their careers during these sort of economic downturn periods, or difficult economic periods, in some cases never catch up to their peers who graduated a few years earlier, before things went bad, or a few years later, when things start to turn around. These [economic] scarring effects are really real, and have real staying power.”