The entire rich world had a baby boom after the Second World War. But American Boomers did something that most other rich-world Boomers didn’t. American Boomers had a lot of kids — the Millennials. More than half of Americans living today are Millennial. Hi!
That means the American population pyramid has two big bulges. The Boomers are aging into retirement, taking with them millions of productive work hours and billions of investment dollars. Millennials are right now in our late 20s to early 40s. That’s who employers are hiring into mid-level and senior roles. In contrast, Gen X is relatively small — that’s so punk rock of youse all. And what children they did have are Gen Z, whom we love but are another smaller generation — maybe 5-7 million fewer than Millennials.
Try to replace lots of Boomers with a few Zoomers, and we have a structural shortage of workers looming. Early retirements have contributed to our tight labor market. French philosopher Auguste Comte is credited with succinctly capturing how big unseen trends impact our everyday lives: “Demography is destiny.”
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