Gen X

May 14, 1999

You may not care how other people classify you and your colleagues, but the classifiers do care about you (or more exactly, what motivates you). Primarily, marketing manager want to know what will motivate you to buy their company's product, rather than someone else's wares.

This is why there is so much hype surrounding Gen X and its younger sister, Gen Y (alternatively referred to as Generation Next). Marketing decisions are made based on guesses as to what choices large aggregate groups will make. Typically these groups are bunched together by factors, interests, or values (e.g. ethnicity, income, age). Gen X'ers are now in their buying prime, the youngest just graduating from college and the oldest hitting their mid-thirties.

Unfortunately, they are only about half the size (40 million) of either the Baby Boom generation or Generation Next. This is certainly not their fault, but they may suffer from a lack of attention because of it. Policies (economic, social, and political) will tend to ignore their concerns while focusing on those of the age groups that immediately preceded and follows them.

If you're a Gen X'er, prepare for the cold hard fact that you're about to be written off by counselors, money managers, economists, and the whole marketing world. As a relatively underrepresented slice of the US demographic pie, Gen X is about to be crushed by the newest wave of US consuming power, Generation Next. Generation Next was not raised with Gen X's fears about Job security, a bankrupt Social Security System, Stock Market crashes, or not being able to end up better off than their parents were financially.

The good news?

Because of its relatively small size, Gen X is causing labor shortages throughout the Job Market. This is making it easier for Gen X'ers and late baby boomers to shift from one career to another, or negotiate from strength for better pay. As long as the US Economy roller coasters along without hitting 'the big dip', Employment opportunities will be there for industrious go-getters that upgrade both their Job and Jobhunting skills. Until…

Tomorrow: Generation Next

-Mark Poppen

Demographamatic

May 13, 1999

Today's riddle: You can dice them, slice them, or arrange them any way you like. What are they?

Age groupings, or to use the common vernacular, generations. I'm a member of the Baby Boom Generation, which is probably the most over-studied demographic group in the history of the US. Seventy-six million strong, our needs and desires have had an undue influence on Marketing Gurus for years, forcing out alternative options for those that are middle age challenged. We were born post WWII, between 1946 and 1964. Why end this grouping in 1964?

Because birth rates began dropping significantly beginning in 1965 and didn't bottom out and rebound a little until 1979. So demographers looking for patterns in the birth rate tea leaves have sectioned out people born between 1965 and 1979 and called them the 'Baby Busters', or Generation X. The years 1973-78 saw the worst of the birth rate decline, with twenty percent fewer births every year compared to the four million average yearly births during the Baby Boom.

And twenty-two years after the worst of the baby bust (1995-2001) unemployment has fallen to it's lowest level since the time when the first baby boomers hit the Job market nearly thirty years ago. Jobs and Unemployment statistics don't, however, exist in a vacuum. Bustling economies can absorb new workers at a rate that surpasses 'glitches' in birth rates. If the US economy is creating two million new Jobs every year, while shedding itself of one million old ones, that still leaves a net of one million new Jobs for everybody.

The problem with these statistics is what they leave out. While from a fairly reliable source, The National Center for Vital Statistics, (I learned at an early age to distrust government figures - casualty body counts from Vietnam indicated that the entire population of North Vietnam had been killed by US troops twice), a footnote indicates that they are NOT including births to nonresidents of the US, though the births occur here. So since 1970 they have been under-reporting births here by a rate which may make up most of the difference between the milder baby bust years and the baby boom years.

Again, why should you care?

Because the competition for Jobs over the term of you worklife may by about to heat up again. It is very possible that the next 'bust' in the US economy may coincide with the next large wave of new entrants to the workforce in a few years. At that point you'll need to have your networking connections solidly in place, and your skills portfolio upgraded to its highest possible educational level - or else.

-Mark Poppen