Other voices, other lives: why a second language is now more popular than before. From the article:

“I think it’s certainly true, at least in Europe, that young people know more foreign languages than before,” says Antonella Sorace, a professor of developmental linguistics at the University of Edinburgh. She points to a 2011 study that found that 77% of EU millennials speak more than one language. “This share fell for each successive age group, with the lowest proportion recorded among those aged 55–64,” she says.

Those numbers were high in young professionals with high levels of education, suggesting that at least some firms prioritise foreign language training among staff, the study says. It also says that as globalisation has fuelled economic growth in less developed countries, as well as prompted travel for both business and pleasure, more people are speaking more languages, especially English.

In the US, a record 65.5 million US residents speak another language at home, a number that has doubled since 1990. Many of these foreign language speakers are not immigrants: the study found half of the growth in foreign language speakers since 2010 was among those born in the US. What’s more, the study found nearly one in four American public schoolchildren spoke a foreign language, a higher proportion than the average for all age groups.