Moody's Talks - Inside Economics - Jason Dorsey on Generations

Episode Date: June 21, 2024

The Inside Economics podcast welcomes Jason Dorsey to talk about the generations that characterize the American population. The conversation takes up what event(s) define each generation, from 9/11 for the Millennials to COVID for Gen Z, and then turns to each generation’s traits and behaviors. The podcast was generationally well-balanced, with Mark the aging Boomer, Marisa and Cris the skeptical Xers, and Jason the creative Millennial.  Guest: Jason Dorsey - President of Cener for Generational KineticsFor more on Jason Dorsey: LinkedIn: @JasonDorsey Instagram: @Jason_Dorsey The Center for Generational Kinetics   JasonDorsey.com  Hosts: Mark Zandi – Chief Economist, Moody’s Analytics, Cris deRitis – Deputy Chief Economist, Moody’s Analytics, and Marisa DiNatale – Senior Director - Head of Global Forecasting, Moody’s AnalyticsFollow Mark Zandi on 'X' @MarkZandi, Cris deRitis on LinkedIn, and Marisa DiNatale on LinkedIn    Questions or Comments, please email us at [e-mail]. We would love to hear from you.  To stay informed and follow the insights of Moody's Analytics economists, visit Economic View. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to Inside Economics. I'm Mark Sandy, the chief economist of Moody's Analytics, and I'm being joined by my two trusted co-host, Chris DREDI's and Marissa Dina Talley. Hi, guys. Hi, Mark. Good morning, Mark. Happy Friday. Thank you so much. It's a nice Friday here in the suburban Philly. But Chris, yours, where are you? Are you still in Italy? I'm in Italy at my mother-in-law's house. Are you in Tuscany? Where are you?

No, no. In Abruzzo. A little further. south and I guess would be east. Across from Rome is what we usually say. Across from the coast. Oh yeah, right, across from Rome. And how are things there in Italy? Going well.

Yeah, nice. Nice weather. Yeah. Can't complain. Yeah. I've been doing very important field, economic field research, though. So I'm happy to, you know,

give you a little insight. And what's going on? Far away. What do you go? Tourism is strong. American tourism is, through the roof here. I've never seen it this strong. Asian tourism is down, though, by my assessment here. Is that because the dollar is strong and the yuan is cheap? Is that

what's going on? That's my take. Is that the, it's currently related on the floor, right? Yeah, it's not going anywhere. So. All right. Yeah. So I think just the economics are there. It's just a cheaper place to go for Americans. You see a lot of Americans milling about. I did in the tourist spots. Now, where I'm now, it's like it's remote village. There's nobody here, but. Managed to get away from them.

But in the hot spots, they're really hot. You know, no slow down. That's good. That's very good. Well, I'm thinking about going to Tuscany in early November. Oh, it's a beautiful time of year. Yeah. You go hunting for truffles, apparently.

You know. Is that your thing? I didn't know. Well, I now have a new son-in-law who's European, he's from Germany, and he's telling me about the truffle hunting in Tuscany in late October and early November. Is that, does that sound right to you? Yeah, sounds right. But you have to have either a good dog or a good pig. You don't shoot the heart.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, well, hopefully he finds both. So I think we're going to do that. And hopefully the dollar remains strong against the euro. There you go. There's a little at least. Yeah, anyway. Yeah.

And we have a guest, Jason Dorsey. Jason, good to see you and hear you. Good to see you as well. Glad to be here. I'm already learning things, just joining right now. So thank you. That's what we do on Inside Economics. We educate.

Yeah, yeah, I've got truffles, pigs, and dogs covered so far. So this is great. Heavy content. And Jason and I met at a, I guess you'd call it a convention, the Consumer Bankers of a Consumer Bankers Association. And do you remember that convention, Jason? Because I know you do a lot of speaking. Oh, yeah.

That was a great one. It was in the D.C. area and had a huge audience. And it was fun. I got to follow you, which was fun because I don't hear many funny economists. And you were quite entertaining, made fun of your own clothes, which was really strong. And you got to follow a regulator. Oh, yeah. It doesn't get better than that.

Like, this is really exciting. So, yeah, it was a wonderful day. I enjoyed it. That's right. Right. I spoke right after the director of CFPB, who really brought to hammer it down on the audience, I thought. I think wasn't he saying, and actually he's got a point, although the folks in the Bakers Association didn't think so, that lending rates are awfully high. Like if you look at credit card interest rates, they're very, very high. Now, they obviously have risen a lot. because of what the Federal Reserve has done over the last couple of years.

But even abstracting from that, the rates are high relative to any other interest rate, the federal funds rate or other interest rate. Is that right, Chris? Am I right about that? The credit card rates are just unusually high. The spreads are awfully high relative to the risk-free rate. I haven't looked recently, but I think that that is the case, or at least it was not too long ago. Yeah, Jason, wasn't he hammering the group for that?

I think he was. I think that was one of the many things he was hammering the group for. Yeah, he had a lot of points that he was trying to make, I think. And, you know, I don't know the details of that. That's above my pay grade. But I know that he is definitely on a mission to try to create some change. And the industries are trying to figure out how to deal with that and navigate through it. So I was really glad to follow him after following you.

Yeah. There was a nice buffer before I went on, which I really. appreciated. And at least for me, because I talk about generations and behavioral research, the CBA audience was all over it. Now, maybe they were just excited for a different topic. I don't know, but they were definitely very excited during my talk. So you set me up, which I appreciate. So thank you for that. Now that you mentioned, I forgot completely about it. It was like you were supposed to wear jeans, right, or something like that, I think. Yeah. And you still showed up and I think khaki's in a jacket. So you really represented well.

It's good. It's a very strong statement. You were on brand. Well, this maybe goes to general. the generational thing. You know, I'm definitely a boomer. But I don't, I don't think I own a pair of jeans. What? Right? Stop the pod. Oh, come on.

That's generational. No. No, I don't think I own a pair of jeans. Maybe somewhere in my closet, I'll have to go dig, you know, take a look. Please do and get back to us? Jason, do you own jeans? You're saying boomers don't wear jeans? Is that?

Do boomers wear jeans? I don't know. They do. They do. They do. You're a special one. You're very special. I'm a special boomer. Yeah, you're a cacky's only kind of person. So, yes, you were you on brand. Were you wearing jeans? I was wearing jeans. Yeah. They said it was business casual. So yeah, I got the message. It's great. It was great. But, but you looked very stylish in the khaki pants, which you then talked about. So it was great. That's great. That's right. That's right. Yeah. So Jason and I met at this, at this convention, conference doesn't seem to be the right word, because it was massive. I mean, there were a lot of people there who felt like a whole convention. And you gave a speech, you're the president of generational kinetics.

Is it generational kinetics? Is that the way? Yeah, it's a center for generational kinetics. Center for generational kinetics, yeah. And you speak widely on issues with regard to how generations behave and kind of tie that back into, of course, for the folks at this conference convention about banking issues, but more broadly about how people are spending their money across generations. That's sort of what your focus. I know I'm butchering this. Blame it on the COVID. I've got COVID brain. But do I have that

roughly right? Yeah, sort of. Yeah. I mean, what we do is primary research to try to understand why different generations do the things they do or don't, right? How they view the world, why they're interacting in certain ways, different work styles, for example, in addition to things like spending, even attitudes towards credit cards, like which you've referred to a little bit. Like all of those tend to vary sometimes dramatically by generation. And we try to figure out why that's going on. And, you know, is it true? Because a lot of things that are said about generations are not true. And so being able to separate myth from truth, I think is really valuable for leaders. And at least at that event, they're thinking about it through the lens of the banks

that they leave, right? So not only on the lending side, but their team members, various generations of customers that they serve. And banks, in particular, banking and finances are largest industry, banking, healthcare and technology. But banking is interesting because they serve pretty much every generation at the same time. And that puts them in a challenging situation, because they tend to represent the generation they're in, much like you and your wonderful presentation with tons of PowerPoints and charts. It was amazing, you know, like that sort of thing. And if you can help people create a little perspective around that with some healthy data or at least just some stories that are grounded in data, it seems to create more trust and connection and influence, which is really what we try to help people do. So, yeah, we think every generation is important.

And you have your own, your firm, own business, and I know you work with your wife. How did, can you just tell us a little bit about your story? How did you get to where you are and what you're doing? Yeah, sure. the slightly extended version, which will make the rest, make it more understandable. I wrote my first book when I was 18, and I really wanted to help my generation and decide that was what I was going to do.

So I dropped out of college as a junior and said, I'm going to write a book and I'm going to help my generation, my people, and my parents basically disown me. And I ended up sleeping on the floor for two years. And I borrowed money from everybody I could. I turned 19. I was $50,000 in debt, sleeping on the floor of a garage, like a tiny garage apartment, had no furniture, no anything, just 5,000 books that I'd printed.

And then a local newspaper wrote a story about me and said, you know, this 18-year-old kid writes this book called, Graduate to Your Perfect Job, hasn't graduated, doesn't have a job. And all of a sudden, I started getting invited to speak. And then for whatever reason, people seemed to like it. And then they would buy the books. And then they invite me to speak. And that book ended up becoming a big bestseller and ended up on the Today Show and the View and all these different TV shows.

and then been on just over 200 television shows now, 60 minutes, you name it. And then out of that, what sort of led to the research was I was speaking all over the world at arenas and executive retreats and board meetings and all this sort of stuff. And I end up in D.C., not far from where you and I spoke, and I was speaking to this big public company to their board of directors, and they were just bashing millennials. And I'd been on 60 Minutes, and after the 60 Minutes segment, all these companies called, all these execs are like your people, they're driving this crazy, their pants are falling off, their mom's here, they won't work on their birthday, like what is going on, can you help?

And so I showed up to start speaking to these companies. And this one in DC was for their board and some executives, and the CEO was just really bashing millennials. This was like peak, you know, bash millennials time. And I didn't know any better, right? This was like 2006 or seven, somewhere in there, maybe eight. and the I just asked him I said well can I see your data like you know what do I know I'm still basically a kid right can I see your data like maybe it'll help me to understand what's going on

and so he sent me their data or their team did and I was back in the little condo where I lived and my wife walks in her name's Denise she's like what are you doing I'm like oh I'm looking at this data it doesn't make any sense and she's like well why not I said well the CEO told me that his millennial engineers are just not great and yet the data from his own workforce system doesn't match what he said in front of the board of directors and all these executives. I was like, I don't know what to do about this.

And Denise, my wife has a PhD, she says, well, we should start a research firm because if the CEO of the big fancy company can't read his own data, imagine if we gave him data he could actually use. And so that's how we started. Everybody thinks it's me because I'm on TV all the time and write out of the books,

but it actually was her idea because she's a researcher by training. And so we started the firm initially just to do studies to separate myth from truth about generations, like what's really going on? But every time we release a study, sort of like in your world, we get all this media coverage, all the time, right? I had three media interviews this morning, I request. And so

the more we did that, the more companies started hiring us and saying, hey, can you do our studies for us? Can you figure out what's really going on with our customers, sort of like what you talked about with CBA? Or what's really going on? Do millennials actually want to buy houses? Or is this some other thing? Because most of the data in the world, including in economics,

which is sort of fun to get to hear Christian talk about this, most the data in the world is what we consider tracking data. It's particularly true in economics, but it's true for most of our clients, right? They're tracking. Does something go up? Something go down? Did it stay the same? Did it start? Did it stop? All really important things to know. We make decisions based on this all the time. We run, you know, AI models against it all this stuff. But the challenge with tracking data by definition is generally speaking, it's already happened. That those tracks. And so it tells us a lot about what happened, but it doesn't tell us why.

And so if we can do studies to figure out why people are doing things or why they're thinking about the world in a certain way, then we can add some layers that don't normally show up. And that's what we're really good at. So for example, that people say all the time younger generations don't want to buy houses. That's total nonsense. Every study we've ever led, they've said they wanted to buy houses, vast majority of them. But they just say they're not ready yet. They don't have the down payment. They can't afford the monthly payment.

Like they owe student loan. We come up with a whole bunch of things. But the headline thing says, look, millennials aren't buying houses, therefore the housing markets, you know, in trouble. And that's just not true. And so we try to challenge a lot of those myths that people run, yeah, with, and then bring some truth to it. So, yeah, and it's fun.

I get to speak every day all around the world. That's a very cool story. I didn't realize that. Well, let me ask you this. It always perplex me. What defines a generation? I mean, I mean, we've got the boom. We got Generation X, then we got the Millennials, then Generation Z.

I mean, how did these groups of people get kind of combined together? What defines a generation? Yeah, so it's a really hot topic debate, but I'll give you my take on it, which is historically the way that we looked at generations was actually through death. And if you look at mortality rates, what people were looking at originally was how long were people living? They started tracking this. This was kind of interesting. Nobody tracked it before. But all of a sudden, a while back, people started looking at how long are you living and all this sort of stuff. And then ultimately what came out of that is people started to think

about this concept of a group of people born around at the same time. Like forever, we've always talked about young people. Like you can go read any of the ancient Greek or whatever stuff. Like, oh, these young people are terrible. Right. We've always said that. But that tends to be more life stage and not generational. And so what we're really interested in are these generational cohorts. And so ultimately what happened is people probably the mid, like 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, you started seeing a lot of conversation around generations. And usually it was tight after events, right? Maybe after World War I, World War II, different things that sort of group people through a unifying experience that then they became more similar in certain ways, right?

Baby boomers were a result of all these people coming back from the war. Many times they didn't have jobs. They had skills that were misaligned what was going on, and they wanted to go make babies. So we had this massive baby boom, which by the way, Gen Z and millennials don't know that baby boomers are actually named for a baby boom. Oh, really? That's pretty funny, right? Yeah, it is. Yeah, I just take it for granted. Yeah. Yeah, like, everybody knows what that is. No, it's totally a generational assignment of the name. So they, so you started having this conversation and a bunch of people sort of pioneered the space and talked about like who you are is where you were when and a lot of themes around that and where

it got off track is people started to use generations to divide us. It's happened a lot during the 60s and the 70s. You can even see some of my, well, there's my LAW magazine, this side, right there. That says the generation gap, right? And that is from 1966. And if you look really closely at that cover of that Life magazine, it's an older guy and a younger guy yelling at each other and the younger person has long hair. And the older guy is like, what's wrong with these young people? This is not a new conversation. All right. Right. But what then became this sort of common accepted definition is a generation's every 20 years, which is total garbage. Like it's completely made up, but everybody likes it because we like round numbers. We're like, oh, 20 years, that makes sense. It doesn't mean anything.

So what we try to look at the CGK is what we call predictability by scenario, which is when is a group of people born about the same time, race in about the same place, start to behave differently than the group before or after them. And so you don't actually know, for example, like we don't know when a generation starts and stops until enough time has passed where you can look back and go, oh, look, it stopped back there. We had something that happened. So for example, an easy one. In the U.S., 9-11 was a defining event for millennials, people like me. That was our like, where were you at that period of time? Who were you with? How did you feel? All of those things. Typically, you create fear of the unknown. And it challenges your beliefs or your views of the future, right? You're like, oh, my gosh, the future, like, I don't know what's going to happen. That's what caused. is that's to stop in our tracks. And it looks different in different places around the world, right? 9-11 and other parts of the world meet something totally different. I want to go speak there. It's a totally different experience or no experience, like Brexit and other places, tsunamis, wars, we can talk about all that. But the idea is that if you took 9-11, which happened in 2001, what people historically would do, including a bunch of big famous research firms, is they would say, well, the generation ended in 2001.

That's total nonsense because you have to be old enough to remember the experience, to create fear of the unknown, to contextualize it in some way and to assign a value to it. So you actually have to back up, right? So like we were the ones who came out and said millennials actually in around 1996. Because if you're born after that, you probably don't remember 9-11. It wasn't a shared experience. You assign no cultural or other values to it. It's like you just don't remember it, right?

And so the generation went in before the date of the actual experience. So sometimes you have really clear events that happen. We call them generation-defining moments. And you're like, oh, this happened. And we're going to back up and we're going to know. when this matter. Challenger explosion in the U.S. Many of all know the challenger tragedy. It skews younger than normal because there was a teacher on board. Because there was a teacher on board, they showed it during school when the tragedy happened. If a teacher hadn't been on board,

it wouldn't have impacted kids so young because it would have made the evening news. Does that make sense? And so all these sorts of things play into it. So when we look at this predictability by scenario, you start to get these broader trends. Our whole belief is, and this is about talking about all the time of my speeches is that generations are clues and not a box. Everybody wants to put us in boxes based on our birth year and it never works. But what they are is they are is their clues that if we understand the clues through research and data, they help us to better connect and build trust and have influence. They give us a head start. And that's the end of it. Like there's no, oh, you're born in 72. You're all these things, right? And so if we can begin to process it that way, then you seem as clues and not a

box, then we start to look at what unifies them. And ironically, or interestingly for you all, the top unifier is geography geography so whenever yeah so if I speak outside the US and you want to talk about generations they can be vastly different than the you than a generation in the US but people don't ever talk about that they're like we're just going to pick up this construct

and drop it somewhere else and it doesn't work you know like Christian you're in Italy very different event shaped Italy right at the same time totally different relationship with government and politics in Italy right lots of going on I just just like here in the US the generations are, at least in my mind, the boomer, then the generation X that followed, which is a smaller generation, then the Generation Y, which is the Millennials, that's you.

Chris and Marissa, are you, what would you characterize yourself as? Xers or? I'm an Xer. You're an Xer. And Marissa, are you an Xer? Yeah. You're an Xer. Yeah.

And then we have Generation Z. and then I guess now we got Generation Alpha that's starting to develop. At least that's kind of in my mind the way. Is that kind of how you think about generations here in the U.S.? Is that roughly right? Roughly.

So we actually think baby boomers are two generations, not one. They've just been misgrouped. Because older boomers and younger boomers had very different formative events. Totally agree with that. So am I an older or a younger or a younger? or Boomer? Just looking at it. What do you think, Jason? I don't know. And remember, he doesn't know a pair of jeans. So take that. Yeah. Yeah. He's strongly unique. I'm my own generation.

There you go. There you go. Yeah. And so, but that's sort of the way you just responded to that is how runful of executives respond. Because for the last 50 years, they've been told their one generation. And you're like, no, you're talking about a group that was more 50s or 60s kids versus 70s. Very different experiences like technology parenting style what was going on in the world and so forth um so yeah so yeah boomers like you said gen x which you referred to our gen xers on here gen x are the most um questioning and skeptical oh is that right the most questions oh yeah for sure yeah yeah that they're definitely marissa she definitely she's very questioning yeah yeah well she keeps she's she's had to bite her tongue like four times she's wanted to ask a question so the the

the the uh while genix appears shorter when most people are you know share these, the birth years. It's actually not true because if you think about boomers really being two generations, not one, it's a little bit more similar to Gen X. And then for millennials, which are Gen Y and then they switch the name, same generation, we think millennials are going to break apart as well. We're definitely starting to see that. But what we always try to separate is life stage from generation, right? Because everybody thinks that you're like, oh, if you're 25, you're a millennial. No, there's no millennials who are 25 anymore. or 40 something, right? That's a whole huge generation. Do you have that. And then Gen Z, like you said, I predict, which is unfortunate because my book is called Z economy over there, Gen Z, their name will be changed eventually because it was Gen Z was a filler name just like Gen Y.

It was a continuation of Gen X. Like it's sort of a lazy name. And then Gen Alpha, which is a submerging generation, we don't know what their name will ultimately be. But what we've been studying is that they will not remember. COVID. So we know for a fact that the COVID experience is not a part of their experience. So like Dun Deal, they don't remember it. What we don't know is when Gen Z ends and Gen Alpha, or whatever I want to call them, begins because they're too young to do our type of studies because we have to have

parental consent and you have to watch them and all this sort of stuff. We also don't know if Gen Z is going to break apart as well because older Gen Zers had a very different COVID experience younger gensiers. If you think about that, right, you were maybe in college or starting out in the world and all of a sudden, everything gets turns upside down. Maybe you go back in with your parents. You suddenly have remote work, which all of a sudden is normal for your career trajectory and like a whole other conversation. All of these things happen.

Government sends you money. Like this is all new and it's all they know where the younger part of the same generation had a very different experience. Right. My daughter's 13 and during COVID she suddenly went to remote school. She goes at the time went to a Spanish school. So she's doing fully remote school in Spanish over Zoom at home. That's a very different experience than somebody who was much older and had, you know, a friend group or other things.

Texas had a very different experience in, for example, New York. Like all of these things play into that. So, yes, that's a sequence of the generations. The birth years will vary, by the way, around the world because it's not exactly the same. And so you have to always be careful, like when I speak a lot outside the U.S., you want to try to make it as appropriate as you can for the geography that's represented. Can I ask, do people in the rest of the world think about generations the same way we do? I understand what you're saying is that the generations are different because their experiences are different. But do they think about the world in terms of generations?

Like it feels like here in the U.S., we think about everything. When we talk about demography, demographics, we think about generations. That kind of is the natural way we kind of frame the conversation in the way we think. Is that the way the rest of the world thinks about things as well? well? Not in the way that we do in the States. So for example, in other parts of the world, they have different relationships with people that are elders, for example. So, you know, if you have a different relationship with how you think about people aging, like historically, maybe they moved in with you when they got older versus what we do here in the U.S.

Like that started changes the idea. You always have a pretty consistent older versus younger conversation because that does play out pretty much everywhere and all the ways you can think of where we see the most conversation is around Gen Z and Millennials. And the reason is they are the trend drivers. And so people like to talk about them. They also tend to be more different than previous generations. And people want to talk about that and they want to understand that. So I do a ton of work outside the U.S. But they really want to hear about millennials and Gen Z and what are the trends that they're bringing and how do we think about them more so than understanding boomers who they tend to be in the room or Gen X, right? They're like, we got us.

What about this other group? So those are really hot conversations outside the U.S. We do a ton of work and studies outside the U.S. too. Okay. So coming back to the U.S., I'd like to talk a little bit about each generation. And maybe the way to do this is what is your favorite generation? I mean, I don't know if that's a fair question. That's most interesting that's just a little weird.

or a little off. You define it the way you want to define it. But what generation do you find the most interesting that you like the most to focus on? Yeah. We try not to pick any one general. I'm going to answer your question. What happens a lot of times is people only want me to talk about one generation, like just talk about Jet Z, right?

But that generation, if they're watching, feels picked on. And everybody else is going, what about me? And what we're actually trying to create is generational context, which is how are they similar and different so we can build bridges? but the one I like to study the most is Gen Z. And that's because they're very different than advertised. And I love that. Like we were constantly shocked by our findings.

And you're like, wow, this is amazing, you know, because you think you know something. And then you do the research. I'm sure all of y'all, you know, this is your space. And you're like, wow, I had no idea that that's true. And then it just leads to all these other things. So I'll give you one that's like a hot potato, for example, because I know you all like data here. In our study, we do a state of Gen Z study every year.

In our last study we did, we found that 70% of Generation Z, right? So they're all the way up in like 26, 27-ish. 70% of Gen Z believes in universal basic income. Say that again? How many? What percent? 70, 70. Oh, wow.

That is interesting. Yeah. And I'm watching all three of your faces. It's so fascinating because all of us go, well, is that a good thing or is that a bad thing? Yeah. And how do I feel about that? And what does that mean in my own family?

And, you know, how does this impact retirement? Just for folks out there, universal basic income is the government provides a certain level of income regardless of anything. It doesn't, you just get this income. And you can use it however you want to use it. And everyone gets that. Everyone gets that. Yeah, basic living wage provided by the government to pretty much everybody that's over adult. and then adult age.

Yeah, and it's wild. We've been doing this for years, and that number keeps going up, and it jumped up dramatically after COVID, because what happened during COVID? Right. The government said stimulus pay. Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. Right. And so now all of a sudden, something nobody thought was possible, is suddenly what? Possible, and you can't put the genie back in the bottle. But when I share that stat as an example, half of a room is like,

we are totally in trouble. The world is ending. And the other half is like, finally they got it. Speaking as a boomer, though, I'll have to tell you, my mind has changed. I think my mind is changing on this. I was of the traditional view. Really, you want to do what exactly? I mean, are people just going to stop working?

I mean, what's going to happen to the world? And now I'm going, oh, well, maybe that makes some sense, you know, because we, there are some experiments around the country. We actually had a nice conversation with us. someone who is operating universal basic income program in Denver. And the results are really quite interesting. I mean, really things are turning out much better than I would have anticipated. It's giving people options and choices and making their lives better and everyone else's lives better. So speaking as a boomer, or maybe I'm that weird boomer again, my mind is changing

on this one. Yeah. Well, in our studies, because they're cross-generation, the older you are, the less you support it. Like, it's really clear. And so, so I just share that because we don't have to assign a value to it. To me, it's not as a good or bad. Like, that's everybody else's personal choice. But if I bring that and people go, okay, and then we talk about the fact that Gen Z doesn't believe they'll ever be able to afford to retire. Okay, that's really interesting. Yeah. So now if you don't think you'll be able to afford to retire and in our studies, what we see is Gen Z doesn't believe social security will exist, not in any meaningful way. So now all of a sudden, and this is how we help leaders think about this, you have a generation that's, I don't know, 25 years old, and they think

that they're going to have to work forever. The government is not going to be able to support them. They're probably going to have to end up supporting their own parents, and they're already starting to figure this out because they're seeing these things play out. And so then you go to them, this happens to me at events all time. So they're going to be like, Jason, I know you are all positive about Gen Z, but they're just lazy. And I'm like, well, okay, maybe. Maybe. Why do you think they're lazy? And I'm like, well, we offer unlimited paid overtime, as much paid overtime as you want and they never take it. And I'm like, okay, well, are you open to another perspective? You don't have to agree with it like it or anything. And they're like,

and I'm like, okay. Well, if you're 25 years old, that sounds like Chris, by the way. Do you want to do that again? Chris? It sounds like you. Yeah, there you go. That's definitely Chris. Really? But if you're 25 years old and you're. you think you're going to work for the next 70 years. You truly believe this. Yeah. Do you want to work on Saturdays? Do you want to work overtime at night?

No. There's tons of behavioral reasons. There's not that they're lazy. They're going, I've got to work for 70 more years. Why be in a rush? Are you sure about that, Jason, though? How do you, how do you, how do you, that's, are you sure that's what the way they're thinking?

Well, in our studies, they consistently tell us that work-life balance is dramatically more important to them. Yeah. That they don't think they should be in a hurry. that they're going to be working forever, right? All of these things. And if you start to add it together, it's not a huge leap to go,

well, there are probably good reasons behind the choices they're making, which is really what we're trying to get people to see. We're not saying it's the right choice. It's not that they're lazy. You're just saying they've got a different worldview because they've got different circumstances, at least in their thinking about how things are going to play out.

They've got a different worldview. And that's what we're trying to get people to see. We don't need people to agree. with each other. Like that's not our goal. We're not trying to create consensus. But if I can get somebody to go, oh, there are real reasons behind their thinking. It's not just that they're lazy, then maybe we can have a better conversation and get to know what they really want or figure out some other way to shift recruitment. So I'll give you example. We have to solve workforce problems for companies all the time, right? Everybody thinks all these jobs are hybrid in the world or remote.

The majority of the jobs in the U.S. are still not hybrid or remote. You've got to show up and do stuff. And if you're a manufacturing, you've got to show up every day. And so we have to solve the problem of how do you recruit and retain people that maybe you don't think about work the same way you do. And so, for example, one of the solutions we found with our clients is if you can shift your start or stop hours by one hour. So if you let people show up, let's pretend it was eight to five just for simple. And you let them show up at nine and stay to six or show up at seven and leave at four. You can drive really significant recruiting and retention outcomes without having to pay people more

money. And so all of a sudden, the manufacturers go, oh, it's not that they're lazy. they're trying to fit this into their lifestyle. And if we can just be flexible a little bit, we can achieve our goals and they can achieve their goals. And all of a sudden, now you've got people rolling this out and it's really working. Those are the sort of solutions we can ultimately get to if we don't start from the place of, well, they're just lazy.

But it takes a while to get people to, you know, understand that. And once they do, it's like the whole world changes. It's amazing. So Gen Z is your most, the generation you like most, the generation you like most. the most, the most interesting, the most interesting to. I think they're the least understood just because of their age and they're still forming a lot of their beliefs and opinions. I mean, if you think about it, they've entered the workforce later than any previous generation that we've studied. They are getting their driver's license

if they're getting it later than ever before. Like we could go through this whole long list of things that are dramatically different, including their communications profile. So yeah, they're causing all kinds of challenges and we see them as opportunities. So that's really interesting. The generation we most focus on retaining for clients is actually Gen X, because Marissa and Christian or Chris, like their Gen X in our research is deciding over the next three years, do they stay where they are and finish out their career or do they go somewhere else? Well, all of a sudden, Gen X becomes the most important generation to retain, not Gen Z or millennials. And so now we've got to work with these companies to go, okay, well, what's your Gen X retention

strategy? We may not call it that, but just this idea of people that are in these roles are being poached, they're deciding do they make one more move or not and they have the experience you have the relationships they have all of these things so they're really sought after but if we focus all our attention on gen z we actually miss the people with the experience that we need to keep right and so that's why the conversation becomes very layered and for me really fun so gen z are they the generation defined by 9-11 that's kind of the they don't remember 9-11 we don't remember 9-11 we don't our big discovery. Yeah, they're the generation after 9-11. What were the birth years, Jason, just to level set? Yeah. Yeah. So it's sort of everybody has their own birth years that they use.

So that's even a hot topic like who names what generation, all of these sorts of things. So we think of them as clues and not a box. They're a guide. And if you're born on around any of the birth years, usually within two or three years, you're a cusp for anyway, which is a huge advantage because it makes you empathetic to both. You're a natural bridge. And in our work, you're more likely to be a leadership role because customers tend to move up because they've had to be a bridge. It's really fascinating. Like I spoke at two different events this week and we had all the customers in the room raised their hands and it was way more than you should statistically have because they've naturally had to be a bridge, which is really fascinating. So for Gen Z, for example, we usually start around like

1996, 1997 as the oldest, the beginning birth years. We're not exactly sure when Gen Z ends because of all the things I talked about, they're minors. So there's only so much research that you can do. to really see their behavioral differences. But we know there's a generation board after them. So if we had to guess, you know, it might be like 2012-ish, might be the end of them, something like that. But somewhere in that range, millennials are a huge generation. We were born anywhere from like 1980-ish,

slightly before that to slightly after, depending on who you ask, up to about 1995-96. Massive generation, 80-ish million in the United States. Everybody thinks we're not working. We're the largest generation in the workforce. course. And that's the generation that's the generation that's influenced by 9-11, I guess. That would be the one. You got it. Yeah. So what's Generation Z? What's the event that kind of defines Generation Z or events? Is there one? COVID. Oh, COVID. Oh, sure. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah.

And it wasn't an event. This is a thing where you really get into the weeds in our work. 9-11 was an event. Yeah. It was something that happened. And then, you know, depending on where you wore, you were connected to it in different ways. COVID, And our work is really important because it was a true global event. And it wasn't just a day or a week or a month, right? I was doing virtual events all around the world for that whole period of time. And we would have Gen Ziers on one of the events for one of the big companies you would know. So we would have them from Singapore.

We would have them from all across the Middle East. We'd have all these different places. And in many ways, they were having some of the same experiences. Now, it did it very sure. But a lot of what they were feeling and sharing with us was very similar. So it's a true global event in ways that we've not had global events, which is really wild. And so it became very unifying in terms of a generational identity, right or wrong, it doesn't matter. It's something that they experienced.

And because it happened over such a long period of time, it created all kinds of side effects and outcomes that we're still dealing with. Massive mental health issues being one of the most important that's not talked about enough. There's so much there that this generation went through all around the world. So Gen Z, interestingly, in our work, continues to be the most consistent generation in the world. So whenever we do these global studies for all these big brands, Gen Z is more similar than any other generation. Due to cheap mobile technology, social media, and COVID,

they tend to be much more similar. The older you go, the more they're like from different planets. Like boomers in different parts of the world are like all over place. Really? Really. Interesting. So because of COVID, because of COVID was such a global event and everyone had to shared experience, that defined that generation and it's very consistent across the globe. It was a consistent influence. Yeah. And consistency in being the same are different, right?

They're not the same everywhere, but they had this one big shared experience. So what happened was, and I'm always careful about shared, the word shared, they went through an experience at the same time. Their experience could still be very different, but a lot of the emotions and things that they felt, their parents not knowing how to help them, which was a big theme, being one, two, three people away from somebody who died. All of these hit at a really critical life stage in terms of their maturation and had this huge impact all around the world. So when I talk about in different places,

like people really respond to it, particularly Gen Z, because this was such a formative experience that they went through. But, you know, if you look back and you try to name one, y'all are all economists, like what's the last time that there was an event or experience that people went through all around the same time, all around the world? across socioeconomics, right, across all of these things. Yeah, yeah, good point. Okay, so that's Generation Z.

Talked a little bit about the millennials. What's the kind of defining event for Generation X? What would define Generation X? Also hotly debated. So when we look at Gen X, right, remember you talked about that they were sort of these shorter birth years, right? We look at their, you know, depending on how. how you look at it tends to be around 1965-ish to anywhere from, you know, 76 to 78-ish.

That's sort of the group that they have there. This is where like the Challenger Explosion, like we think the Challenger Explosion was very big deal for Gen X. You can also see, you know, in the U.S., oil embargoes, you know, I'm not a crook, like all sorts of stuff that you can sort of talk about. Big ones for us and our work, though, are things like, this is kind of interesting. Most people don't guess this. Women entering the workforce.

massive impact on Gen X. Divorce rate through the roof. Massive impact on Gen X. What do you end up with? Lachkey kids. What are Lachke kids really, really good at? Being self-reliant and skeptical. I mean, these are like, and so if you start to, you're like, oh, I mean, even things

which is funny, like the microwave had a huge impact. And nobody talks about it, right? It's so funny. But like, yeah. What do you mean? How so? Oh, the microwave was a big deal. People were able to go home and make their own food.

have their mom cook it for them. That was a big deal. It was made quickly, which was a big deal. Lashkey kids could do it. Microwaves were expensive. If you bought a house, microwave didn't convey with it initially. These are big things that we overlook because they're not big to us. If I talk about the microwave, because I talk about technology a lot, younger people are like dying laughing. Like, who cares? It's a freaking microwave, right? And I'm like, no, this was a breakthrough. Yeah. Yeah. All generational context. So Marissa and Chris are your exers. Does that resonate with you?

you? It does. It does to me. Yeah. I mean, the microwave and the latchkey kid thing goes hand in hand. I could heat up hot pockets every day when I got home from school and I was alone, babysitting like a seven-year-old when I was 10. Yeah. Yeah, that my mom going back to work and us being alone every day for a few hours, it was definitely like a defining part of my childhood. And the space shuttle challenger. I remember everything about that experience in that day. I remember them wheeling a television into the classroom for us to all watch it. And I think I was in second grade when it second or something like that. Yeah. But certainly the- Yeah, Gen X also was sort of in the eye of the AIDS epidemic. I mean, there's so many things that happened during that period of time. And that's

where it's interesting. You sort of dive into like late 70s, early to mid-80s, and you come up with all kinds of things. And people attach that to millennials, but you got to remember, millennials are two. Like this is like, you know, and that's why we always have to sort of think about what was the formative age when they were going through this. I mean, in some places we'll talk about hip hop. Like all of these things are important. And that's why it's clues and not a box. And geography has a massive role. So even in the U.S., you see trends earlier in urban areas. And so they would take longer to ripple out. Same thing if you're affluent, you would see trends sooner. There's all kinds of interesting stuff around that.

And Gen X is sort of caught between these two big generations. So they're never talked about. They're always overlooked. Right? Their theme is trust, but verify. They always want to see my data. I mean,

I love them. Like, it's amazing. So that sort of stuff is just really fun for what we do. First, that doesn't resonate with you, though, huh?

I hesitate to speak, though, because I'm skeptical. The number one attribute. The whole thing. The whole thing. The whole generational construct. but oh yeah and uh yeah and i i certainly remember the the challenge i remember i was in health class

and the tv being wheeled in and watching the uh launch and then all of a sudden you know the horror um but i think it's more i i would identify perhaps more on the different technology like the walkman right that's a big deal or star wars coming out or you know so they're pcs computers right so yeah you know i would identify more with those but i don't know i'm i am a bit skeptical whole generational construct to your point. And you make all the points about the it varies so much by geography. So how can we really say these cohorts are similar? So but yeah, the more I speak, the more I emphasize my generation Xness with my yeah, the point. Yeah. The irony. Yeah, it's funny because I'm talking about Gen X,

we spend most of the time talking about their healthy skepticism. And like some people take it as cynicism and I just, that's applying a judgment to it. Like, you know, And what's interesting is Gen X is the most loyal generation, which is really fascinating. Because once they buy into something and believe it, they're by far the most loyal, which is really wild. They'll follow bosses, different places they go, but they get a boss they don't like, then they're going to go to another place. It's really fascinating. There's a lot there that we could dig into. But Gen X is really important, and we think people don't talk about them enough.

I actually spoke at an event not long ago. And, you know, people change. Title My Talk is crossing the generational divide, right? And it's all these hidden insights and data and it's stories. And it's like hilarious, right? It's really funny. And then we share a bunch of strategies that we've tested that work across the industry or the situation we're trying to solve for them.

But this one client, they changed the name of my talk, which happens all the time, right? And they said, you know, a conversation, you know, about generations, Gen Z, millennials, and boomers, getting to the heart of it. I'm like, again, they left out Gen X right out of the title. It was so funny. Like, they just never get talked about. And they're actually the glue in the workforce, which is really fun. So most skeptical of the generation conversation, by the way.

Chris, is there anything else you wanted to say about why you're skeptical about this whole generational concept or should we just move on? We can move on. I mean, even just the birth years, for example, there are different definitions, right? And it seems to be a, forgive me, it seems a bit like a horoscope, right? You can kind of see yourself in any definition that you give me. I can see those positive attributes of a Gen X. But if you hit the name and described Gen Z, I'd probably see positive attributes of myself in that same description, right?

Yeah. Well, you're right on, Chris, that everybody's a mix of these, right? And the way I view them as clues and not a box. We've looked 140 studies now, a massive consistency in terms of the answers. We can even predict what a lot of them are based on the generation. So at one level, they're pretty highly predictive. And then at another level, we're all still people. We're all still unique.

We also have the experiences. have in the world. And I always believe in this way we teach leaders is like, this is one of many lens to understand people better. And if we just add that to every other thing that you're learning about others, it's just another way to be hopefully a little more empathetic and understanding and remove the us versus them, which is how a lot of these conversations become. And we really want to make it positive and constructive and like, how do we bring people together? Because for our clients who are trying to grow their business, right, they're solving a workforce problem or sales problem. They need to have to.

have better understanding to drive deeper connection in whatever that situation is. And so if we can make it a little bit better for like you to be skeptical and me to go, ah, it's fine, Christian skeptical. Of course she's skeptical. He want to go download the studies and see what they say. Like it's totally fine. Like to not be, take that person. Like this is amazing.

We can have a deeper conversation. But we'll have, for example, millennials we work with and they'll be like, oh, Christian started questioning me. Like he doesn't like me. And so we have to teach millennials. No, it's not that Christian doesn't like you. It's that he doesn't believe you. And if you know that, then you will know how to work really well with him.

And that's what we do. And this happens every day. That's better. That's better. That's better. That's got nothing to do when he loves you, but he doesn't believe you. Yeah. Which is totally workable.

I mean, it's workable. It's funny, but it's totally true. So that's why I love this stuff. Yeah, it's fun. I want to come back and talk about the boomers. Personally, my favorite generation, just saying. But before we do that, let's play the stats game. because that could be a lot of fun in the context of this conversation.

And that is we each put forward a statistic. The rest of the group tries to figure that out with clues, questions, deductive reasoning. We want a stat that's not so hard that we'll never get it, one that's not so easy. We get it right away. And if it's apropos to the topic at hand, that would be great. I've got a really good stat, but I generally go last. So I'll stick to that. Maybe we'll go with the tradition is to have Marissa go first.

Marcy, you want to go first? Sure. And it's not, it's not germane to the conversation. So apologies on that. It's not germane to the conversation. No. All right. You're not going first then.

All right. No, no, go ahead. Go ahead. Far away. It's an economic indicator that came out last week. I was trying to look for something age-related, but I kind of gave up. Okay. Go ahead.

So minus 0.5%. in May. And this was, oh gosh, the leading economic indicators. Yep, there you go. Oh, and you're on vacation. There you go.

Holy macaroni. Why in the, why, okay, so explain, why did you pick that? This is the conference board's index of leading economic indicators. It has, we look at this every month,

it has 10 different economic indicators in it, and it tries to, historically, it's been pretty good at predicting a recession when this has been deeply negative for a period of time. It's been in negative territory for about two years, right? And it fell again in May. And it's actually, we got a listener question about this specific piece of data recently, which is why I picked it, because I thought we could talk about it a little bit. It's, you know, it's touted as having a really good predictive power on recessions. It's been, it's been basically predicting a recession, though, for quite a long time, and we

haven't had that. Some of the things that go into it are other things that typically predict recessions, like the yield curve is one of the indicators that is part of this leading indicator, right? Consumer confidence is in this as well and has been dragging this lower, and we've talked a lot about consumer confidence and how it's at odds with the economic data. So it's, you know, it's... So what minus point five, that sounds pretty negative. Yeah, it's just... It's been wrong for two years.

It's just still wrong. Exactly. It's been negative every single month. It has fallen for two years, right? And so at what point do you say this is no longer predicting a recession? I said that a year ago. Yeah. I said two years ago.

But there are many people that say, well, it just hasn't happened yet. It can't predict the timing of a recession. Well, there will be a recession at some point. Exactly. So at what point is it just lapping itself, right? Yeah, I mean, there's, so the person who asked this question of us pointed to it and said, many economists look at this and say that it's never been wrong. Is this yet another economic indicator that's wrong in predicting a recession?

and I would say, you know, it's probably time to give it up on that, right? And like I said, the yield curve is one of the indicators that is in this. That is also not. Is the University of Michigan survey in there too? I think it is, isn't it? The consumer sentiment from the University of Michigan? Well, the conference board's consumer confidence survey is in it. Oh, that's right.

It's a conference board. You're right. Because it's the conference board. Yeah. So I doubt Michigan is in it. No, probably not. Yeah. No, I would expect not.

Yeah. Yeah, I guess my thought was that most recessions are led by the declines in interest rate sensitive manufacturing and construction sectors, right? And this go around, those two sectors of the economy have held up admirably well for lots of idiosyncratic reasons. So they've gone, they haven't, they, they're not, they've gone flat essentially. they're not, but they're not declining. Therefore, you know, the leading indicators just aren't as useful because they're really

focused on those two sectors and those two sectors just not have not led the way down. Yeah, that's true. I mean, it's very focused on the manufacturing sector and not so much on services. Right. And it's got all these financial metrics in it. That's right. So it could be overweighing how manufacturing and goods producers are doing. But that was pretty impressive, Chris.

Holy cow, and you're on vacation, you're just like, boom. I was getting settled in to ask a bunch of questions. And you nailed it right away. I'm waiting for that recession. So, Jason, do you see how this is done? Do you want to play? I think so. Yeah, okay.

Do you want to do one more with Chris and then we'll come to you? Yeah, sure. Okay, let's do one with Chris. My's not particularly, it's more germane to me. It's all about me. Oh, it's all about you. That's also, that's an extra thing, isn't it? It's all about me, me, me, me, me.

So if you want it, I'll give it to you. But otherwise, I can move on. All right, go ahead, far away. You want it? Okay, let's see. I want it, definitely. This will be impressive. Two numbers, 5% and 33%.

And I kind of alluded to it at the top of the hour. Oh, boy, I don't remember the top of the hour at all. I can barely remember five years ago. Does it have something to do with Italian tourism? Yes. Oh. Well, not just Italian tourism. But European tourism.

Oh, what are the two numbers again? 5%. 5% and 33%. 5% is, and you're saying it's related to tourism. Yes. European tourism. Is it the makeup of tourists? Is it?

You're so close. What? I'm going to give it to you. You're so close. You're U.S. tourists are up 33% overall tourists, 5%. No. No.

They're both shares if you want to keep going. Is it Americans and Chinese tourists? Nope, no, let me just give it to you. Give it to us. 5% is the population, the share of the global population in the EU, in the European Union. Okay. And 33% is the share of international tourist dollars in the European Union. Just to show the displacement here is so 500 trillion dollars of,

of, I'm sorry, $500 billion of tourist dollars are spent in the EU every year. So 32% of tourist dollars are spent in the EU. Correct. Of all international tourism, you get a third, even though it only has 5% of the population. So that is all about me, me, me, me, me. Yeah, yeah, exactly. All right, Jason, you want to go next? All right, I'll give it a shot.

I've changed mine since I got to hear y'all's too. So the number is 45%. And do you all guess now? How does it work? Or should I give you a question? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now is it related to generational dynamics? It's related to generations, money, and food.

Generations, money, and food, 45%. in so is a share of something. No? Is it a growth rate? Is it a growth rate? It's a percentage that have done or not done something in the last three months. Oh. Eating out in a restaurant?

Now you're getting closer. Yeah. You know what I read? I don't know. I'm just going to throw it out there that 45% of people have worked in jobs where they got tips. Oh. I think it's actually. 43% maybe. But that's not what you had in mind. No, but, you know, we're circling it.

You're saying, you're saying ever, ever worked in a job. Ever, ever worked at a job where you got a tip. At a job where they've gotten a tip, 43% of America. This is not a workforce stat or work related stat. That's in the context of President Trump and President Trump proposing not taxing tips. That's where I learned that stat. So 45% of Americans, it says generational and money. money, 45%. It's Gen Z, so I'll make it even worse. Okay, 45% of Gensi. I have the other generations here too, but yeah.

I've not cooked at home in the last three months or something like that. That's a good guess. I like that. Use a microwave on a daily basis. You know, I use the microwave continually all day long. When I have a cup of coffee, it has to be the same temperature. if I, so every time it comes down a degree, I stick it into the microwave. All morning long, I'm doing the goddict, well, excuse me, the microwave, doing the microwave.

You know, that's a solved problem. They have these, these wonderful. I know. I know. On your phone, you can actually set the temperature. I'll say there all day. But Jason, I like this certain mug. I have to have this mug.

That's my problem. That's my problem. There you go. That's definitely bloomer behavior. That's more behavior. Yeah, that is not happening over and over again for hours. Yeah. That is not happening over here.

We have the electric mug. 45% of Gen Zs have something regarding saving. Some savings. All right. I'm going to tell you all because, is that okay? Yeah, yeah. So I was trying to find an economic one that would be interesting for you all and generational and, you know, relevant to our conversation today.

So in this new study that we have hasn't yet been released, 45% of Gen Z had in the last three months have skipped at least one meal because they needed to save money. Oh, wow. Which was nine points higher than the other generations on. Oh, my gosh. That is something. Yeah, I'm looking at the chart right now. Pretty wild. The, so.

Wow, that's scary, actually. Well, there's a lot going on with, but yeah, and it's dramatically different than the other one. So way outside of Marjoramara. 45% of Gen Z respondents say they have skipped a meal in the past three months to save money. And these are, by the way, these are only employed Gen Z. Employed. Yeah, part time or full time. Mm-hmm.

Wow. So that shows what? How stressed these folks are. Yeah, that's what this whole study was looking at around employed generations, the employed workforce today in the U.S. and how they're thinking about payday and making money last till then and how they're spending their money and so forth. So I thought that was sort of like a wow, interesting stat that we could all interpret

differently and have a whole other hour conversation on. You're saying that you said something like nine percentage points more than any other generation. Is that what you said? Yeah. I guess that makes some sense, right, because they're younger. Huh. Wow. It's all how you want to think about it.

Do you have a time series of that? Do you know how that's changed over time? No. Yes. And that one, I don't have the follow up to it, but I know it's grown since the last time we did this, which was two years ago. I know it's increased. I just don't have that slide next here on that I can look at.

But yeah, it has gone up because in this study that we led with this really fascinating company, all of the financial pressures increased since we asked the same benchmark questions in 2022. So, yeah. All right, I got a stat. It's apropos like it should be, apropos to the topic at hand. I'm just saying, 1.62, 1.62. And it is demographic.

Is that the dependency ratio? Not the dependency ratio. Replicity ratio? Replicit ratio? No. The replacement rate's 2.1, right? So what's 1.62? The replacement ratio is the kind of the fertility rate where at which.

Oh, so yeah. You're saying that's the birth rate, right? That's birth rate. 1.62 in 2023, 1.6. Lowest on record. Lowest on record. Oh, yeah. So you got it, Jason.

You got it. Yeah. Lowest on record in 2023. And in the U.S. or globally? This is U.S. U.S., U.S. U.S. U.S.

And a lot of debate as to what's going on, you know, but one thing that I found, one explanation that I found very interesting in the context of the conversation is that people of that age, I guess this is now, you know, would this be now Generation Z? wouldn't it be that are in kind of in their 20s at this point, they're very worried about the future and what that holds and therefore much more reluctant to have children, which I find interesting. Yeah.

So yes, but so yes and the trick with the birth rates, particularly when we look at the average age where people have their first child, which is split by gender, male and females, That's the way we look at in the U.S. The age of which you've become a parent for the first time, all of those numbers have been increasing, so they're going up. And if you look at it sort of on a waiting basis, a lot of that is due to millennials, not Gen Z.

So the millennials have delayed kids. They've delayed marriage. They've delayed all this stuff. And what we're waiting to see is, and we're starting to see this. So this is what we're really interested in, the 36 to 44 age group, and their rate of having kids now. So we're ending up with a lot of older parents. because what the millennials told us was,

I want to have a kid, I'm just not ready yet. And so now they're also crashing into the biological wall of can they have a kid, right? And so now you have these sort of, I don't like the term geriatric pregnancy, but that's what happened to us in our family with Denise and I. So you have this sort of situation where you have a lot of much older first time parents even,

which is really interesting. So Gen Z's, as you said, delaying it, they have a lot of anxiety about the future, a lot of anxiety in general. But you're also getting pulled up because you're seeing people now start to have kids later who might have traditionally had it earlier. Same with first marriage and buying a house. Yeah.

That's exactly the other explanation that has been put forward. And also the technology. There's now technology that allows women to have children later, like freezing eggs, for example, has become much more commonplace among millennials. And they're just waiting longer to have their children. Yeah, and there's tons of good reasons. I mean, right? They had drowning in student loan debt, cost of housing.

You know, many of them have put off some of this relationship. Or careers. Some people want to have careers, you know, and just have, get that going and then, you know, have children after they get started. Tons reasons. Yep. That's a fun part of this. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Let's come back to the boomers. What do you think? What do you say about the boomers, Jason? What's your... Do you see that? He's so excited. Did you all see that? He's like, I'm really calm and patient. Now tell me. Yeah, now tell me. What do you think? Really. What do you really think? No, I love boomers. We always... No, they've got the work experience and life experience. No, for us, when we talk about them a lot, it's just the fact that they have all the money. That's right.

They got the money, the houses, they're really strange, they actually vote. They know state capitals. I mean, it's amazing. Yeah, but, but what we, the way we like to think about boomers is that. I do. I know every capital in the country. I could tell you. Go ahead.

I know. I'm sure you probably have cash, you know, an emergency check. You're amazing. But the, Thank you. That's exactly what I wanted to hear. So thank you. Where we think the interesting part is that younger generations don't value boomers enough is actually what we find interesting.

Like the whole OK boomer and a lot of this sort of thing. Yeah. Because boomers do have the experience. They have the relationships. We work in highly regulated industries. And so in regulated industries, they're really important because of the relationships and the understanding that they have and the experience that they bring. So there's a lot there. I was speaking at this event and this young guy is like, Jason, why are you talking about boomers?

Like, they're so great. They don't even know technology. And I was like, seriously, they invented the phone you're using. Good point. That's a good point. Yeah. But a lot of what the criticism on both sides is really around work style. Like boomers have a very clear definition of work ethic. But what we try to reposition that as is actually work style. It's not work ethic. And so that's one of the things we're frequently trying to bridge with them. They obviously overindex for senior leadership roles because they've been working the most. And now what we see in our work is they're often trying to decide, you know, do they exit the workforce?

How long can they stay? Many of them are thinking they're going to have to keep working a lot longer than they thought they would for a variety of reasons. Their identity is more connected to work we find than other generation. So if you ask a boomer, for example, where are you from? They tend to tell you the name of their employer. if you ask a Gen Zer, they tend to tell you the place they live. So, like, that sort of stuff is really helpful because if you have a group that tends to identify and have a lot of their identity tied to what they do versus another group that tends to

have their identity time to other things outside of work, then you can see where there's sort of this natural conflict that we've got to figure out of bridge. That's totally right because, like, I always ask my kids, my kids are millennials. I'm a boomer, my kids are millennials. And they're talking about their friend or whom, an acquaintance or something. They go, what do they do? I have no idea what they do. My kids don't know.

They don't even ask what they do, right? I find that so bizarre because that's how we, at least my world, that's how we defined ourselves. What do we do? What do we do? And that's not how they think about it at all, which I find really interesting. That's Americans and Europeans, too, though, right? Is that right? Oh, yeah.

100%. It's not even polite to ask me. What are you doing for a living? Right. You have to be close friends to get to that point. Get to that point. Yeah. Well, and in the European side, too, living with your parents longer,

like even living with your parents and they're married, like all these, on the board of a European company have been for years, like very different views. That's why I always go back to this clues, not a box, and geography is really important because there's just differences, you know. I mean, I don't know about you, Mark, but like, you know, what we saw as people, oh, you're boomer, you're 18, you're out of the house. In other places, they're like, no, you're not out of the house.

Why was you leaving? You don't love me? Yeah. We're here for ever. Yeah. So it's so fascinating. So fast. Anything else we, maybe connect one last question because I know we're running short on time here.

Try to connect it back to the economy. Is there kind of one thing from your generational prism or perspective that says something about the economy that you find? particularly unintuitive or just something you wouldn't expect. Yeah. So through that lens, what I find most interesting is in our work with Gen Z, they frequently have emergency accounts, which is highly unusual given how young they are. But they've come up through this period of instability. So they'll have money set aside in one of their accounts, usually digital, it's

occasionally cash, but not so much. But they'll have this money set aside for emergency accounts. because they just assume things are going to go wrong. And if you look at their savings rate, because y'all are all economists, like people notice the savings rates are decreasing and all this stuff. And so you hear people say all the time, oh, well, this generation doesn't want to save. It's actually not true. They have these emergency accounts.

And they have had them for a long time. I like to joke about like the 17-year-old, they have a birthday party to get 50 bucks. They take the 50 bucks. They put it away. Then they go back to you and they say, hey, can I have 50 bucks? I want to go buy something. Right. They really define it as their money versus.

is your money. Yeah. And I think that distinction over time could be really interesting to dig more into. So that's one of my favorite. Well, a really fascinating conversation, very interesting. And I really appreciate you taking the time. Now it's been honored. You wrote your first book when you were 18.

And it sounds like you've written a few more, a couple more. How many books have you written? Five. Five. Five bucks. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. Congratulations.

Is he coming one? Yeah. That's really excited about. Those are the different translations. I was on a Zoom the other day and they're like, Jason, you realize one of them is upside down? I was like, well, don't actually read that language. So thank you for that. Well, congratulations on all your success.

And I can see why you make this subject a very interesting, fascinating, and fun to digest. So thank you for that. And I really appreciate you taking the time. Chris, Marissa, anything else before we call it a podcast? Oh, I did want to say, just before we leave, changing the subject a little bit, Jason. I'm actually getting a little nervous about the economy, to tell you the truth. It feels increasingly soft to me. And, you know, the retail sales, the housing starts, the unemployment insurance claims,

our tracking estimates for GDP, looks at growth for the first half of the year is going to be 1.5%-ish. it just feels like things are turning soft. So I'm going to raise my odds of recession. Yes. Oh, yeah, I am. You know, it was at 20% now I'm going to put it up over the coming year. I'm going to push it up to 25%. So I think the Fed's waiting too long here and risks are rising.

So I just wanted to throw that out there, you know, get it out there where we call it podcast. Your leading economic indicator is negative. Yeah. Wow. So I just wanted to say that when I showed up to the event at that CBA, the big event where I met Mark, y'all should know this because, you know, Chris, you and Mercer and I know this. I saw him and I was like, that's Mark's it. Mark is here. And I was so excited. And I went up and I was like, I can't believe I'm getting to meet you. Can I sign a book for you? Which just tells you like that, that, you know, I'm a total dork and I completely own it. And I was so excited to get my picture there with him. So, I just want you all to know people love the work that you do. You can come on any time. I really, yeah. Jeez. You're like, you know who I am?

I'm like, of course I know who you are. So it was really excited. So I just, I wanted to say, thank you all to all three of you to have me on the day and the work you do. It's really important. And people do pay attention. So thank you for that. Well, it was a pleasure having you and hope to have you back. Yeah.

And go boomers. That's all I have to say. It would be. It would have one or section two. We never got. to that good point good point um and with that dear listener we're going to call this a podcast we'll talk to you next week take care now