The Daily - It Sucks to Be 33

Episode Date: March 14, 2024

Jeanna Smialek, who covers the U.S. economy for The Times, will be 33 in a few weeks; she is part of a cohort born in 1990 and 1991 that makes up the peak of America’s population.At every life stage, that microgeneration has stretched a system that was often too small to accommodate it, leaving its members — so-called peak millennials — with outsize economic power but also a fight to get ahead.Guest: Jeanna Smialek, a U.S. economy correspondent for The New York Times.Background reading: When millennials gripe that they get blamed for everything, the accusers might actually be onto something.Millennials have the children, but boomers have the houses.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, a massive micro-generation of babies born in the early 1990s have ended up in a lifelong competition for everything that is shaping both their lives and the entire U.S. economy. that is shaping both their lives and the entire U.S. economy. For better or worse, my colleague Gina Smilak is one of them. It's Thursday, March 14th. So, we usually come to you to talk about the biggest trends in the U.S. economy.

We talk to you about what the Federal Reserve is up to, interest rates being raised, interest rates being lowered, the state of inflation. But today is different, as I'm hinting at. This is going to be a conversation focused on you and people like you. Oh, man. Makes me sound like a narcissist, which I guess is somewhat appropriate. Well, so just tell us how you came to this. Yeah. So I am an economics reporter, and I've always been interested in demographics. And because I've been covering economics for, you know, over a decade at this point, one thing that I've consistently noticed is that every time I make a really big life decision,

noticed is that every time I make a really big life decision, it seems like a huge portion of the U.S. economy has been making that decision right along with me, basically at the exact same time. So for a couple of concrete examples here, the year I bought a house, the housing market just went absolutely crazy. When I rented my first apartment, rental prices in the city that I was living in were going up very sharply. When I got married, the wedding industry was having this incredible year, like the strongest year in a generation. Isn't that pretty normal? Because when you're in a certain stage of life, lots of people are doing the exact same thing. I mean, isn't that very typical?

No. So what I'm talking about here is something a little bit different. I'm not talking about within my friend group, it seemed like everyone was doing the same thing. I'm talking about in the actual statistics, everyone was doing the same thing. You know, I was looking at the entire economy and realizing that I was kind of being like the statistical agent, like I was the normal person in the economy as I went through it. And I realized that that's actually because I'm part of this really important cohort of people born in 1990 and 1991 who are turning 33 or 34 this year. And we actually represent the biggest part of the biggest generation in the United States. Just say that one more time.

I mean, that feels like a genuinely new piece of information. I just want you to repeat so I can absorb it. Yes. So we are the biggest part of the biggest living generation in America. The people who were born in 1990 and 1991 are the two biggest population years in the country. If you look at it on a chart, you get a little peak right over 1990 and 1991. And that means that the millennial generation is sort of skewed towards people who are now in their early 30s. This population group, if you add 1990 and 1991 together,

is about 9.5 million people. So a pretty large group of Americans. Fascinating. And what was it about 1990 and 1991 that explains what was in the water, so to speak? These were two really big birth years. A lot of babies were born in 1990 and 1991 in the United States, partially because some of these folks are the children of the big years of the baby boom. It was also more than just birth. We had quite a bit of immigration that added to this generation, you know, both in the 1990s and the 2000s. I think some of the sort of the Dream Act kids and then also some young adults

in the time since, have really added to this generation. And so that combination of immigrants and natural population growth has contributed to make these two years really the biggest population years at the moment. So Gina, when you had that sensation that when you zigged, everyone around you was zigging, and when you zagged, everyone around you was zagging, zigged, everyone around you was zigging, and when you zagged, everyone around you was zagging. It's because, to a certain degree, it's true. This huge part of the population was mimicking what you were doing because there are so many of you. Right. Okay, so stepping back, what does it mean for you and for the economy that this cohort is so large?

Well, economics is all about demand and supply, right? And so what this has meant for the cohort, which I call peak millennials, you can use whichever word you prefer, is that at every stage of our economic lives, we've created a lot of demand, which the economy has then had to try to keep up with. The metaphor that I use,

which our colleague and your frequent guest, Ben Castleman, helped me come up with, is that this group of people, you know, my generation, have moved through the economy sort of like a person squeezing into a too-small sweater. Hmm. And what does it look like to try as a cohort to squeeze into a sweater that is too small?

It means that, you know, right at the outset, it's a little bit uncomfortable because you're kind of stretching the sweater out as you get it on. And then it means that eventually you leave the sweater a little bit stretched out, a little bit flabby. And so the reason that I got interested in this as it relates to millennials is that we're sort of at this critical juncture in squeezing the sweater on. These folks are now in the age range where they're making really big economic decisions, whether that's buying a house or having kids.

Right. And that's really important for the peak millennials, obviously. But because they're such a big generation or such a big sub-generation, it's also potentially pretty influential for the broader United States economy. So I think to really understand what you're talking about, it would help us to understand what the impact on the economy has been so far as peak millennials have tried to fit into this metaphorical sweater. So where, Gina, do you think we should start? You know, I think there

are probably three areas where we can see this most clearly. I think the first one and a good place to start is college. The second is the labor market. And then the third is housing. So let's start with peak millennials entering college. So when my cohort went off to college, we really stretched the existing system. So rewind, this is 2008 and 2009. The Great Recession has just hit, so unemployment is shooting up. And we're seeing even older people shelter in colleges and universities to sort of wait out that recession. At the same time, these peak millennials are coming in, and we're this huge generation of people. And so between all of that population

and the fact that people are enrolling in college anyway, enrollment just shoots up. Institutions that had previously been able to welcome anybody needed to start turning applicants away. You get stories about colleges expanding in this period. And so just in general, the system is really sort of trying to accept all of these very many applicants. Then this generation graduates.

And in recent years, you've actually seen schools starting to close or merge because they're no longer serving this massive cohort. In some places, that's because there's been this cultural shift away from college. But in many places, it's also about demographics. But in many places, it's also about demographics. So peak millennials are such an enormous force in higher education in this period that higher education literally expands in some cases and then contracts when peak millennials finish moving through them. They absolutely contribute to that trend. And then they also have this really interesting impact when it comes to student debt. So again, rewind to 2008,

2009, the job market's not great. People are going back to school or staying in school longer. And this is also the era of for-profit colleges, which took in a lot of students and left them with sort of sometimes dubious credentials, but a lot of student loans. And what all of this means taken together is that a very big number of people in this very big age group end up taking out student debt. And student debt actually surpasses credit card debt as the biggest source of debt outside of mortgages during the years that this micro generation is in college. So a refuge from a bad economy doesn't feel like a refuge for a lot of peak millennials because they're accumulating so much debt. And what I guess you're about to tell me is that because they're entering the economy in the middle of the Great Recession, the job market is also pretty tricky. Right. So the people who don't finish college enter into a very difficult labor market, sort of in the depths of the Great Recession. The people who do finish college and graduate in, say, 2012 or 2013 or somewhere in that neighborhood are still graduating into a

pretty historically weak labor market because, as you that neighborhood, are still graduating into a pretty historically weak labor market because, as you probably remember, Michael, it was a very long, drawn-out recovery from that very deep recession. And so what we get is the era of baristas with bachelor degrees. You know, everybody is talking about the fact that employers sort of have their pick of the litter when it comes to entry-level employees. Which they do, based on the scale of peak millennials, right? Yeah, there are a ton of them, and the job market is weak.

And so there really is a very tough entry into the labor market for these people, one that is probably at least at the margin exacerbated by just how big the cohort of people is. And so what we see when we look back on this era is that some millennials, and particularly those who hadn't finished their college degrees, found that they were earning less than previous groups had at the same age right when they entered the labor market. We also see that because student debt had shot up so much, that student debt to starting salary as sort of a ratio really shot up during this period, which meant that it could be harder for these folks to build wealth. which meant that it could be harder for these folks to build wealth. Right. They're earning less. They owe more. Thus, their ability to do big financial things is just going to suffer,

which I think, of course, brings us to housing. Right. So we've been steadily seeing this uptick in the age at which people start to get into the housing market. To cite a statistic that I think illustrates this, the median age of first-time homebuyers has climbed from something like 31 in 2013 to about 35 in 2023. So it's just really been moving up over this period. Four years. That's a big leap in what should be an average that is very hard to move. Yes. And part of this is, again, bad timing. A lot of these peak millennials were coming into our 30s sort of in the wake of the pandemic, you know, at a time when housing prices climbed really, really rapidly. And then interest rates starting in 2022 began to really take off. And so that combination of much higher interest rates and very high home prices has meant

that affordability has just been really difficult at the exact moment that the peak of the millennial generation began to look to buy. Okay, so in short, the story that you are telling here about this cohort, your cohort, is that at the exact moment where they need or want something in this economy, a college degree, a first job, a house, and when it, financially speaking, should make sense for them to want it and get it, the sheer scale of the cohort, combined with some very powerful external economic forces like the Great Recession or a housing crunch, high interest rates, means that demand becomes so great that the thing this cohort wants becomes incredibly hard to get. That is the unique burden of being

part of this peak millennial group. You all are essentially crowding each other out. Yes. So a lot of this is timing, obviously, but it does seem that at least on the margin, it can be that we eat each other's economic lunch. And what that means is we've seen these big delays among this cohort and making big decisions as compared to generations that came before. And so when people joke that we millennials complain a lot... Who would joke that? People do. People do, Michael. And the reality is that the complaining reflects something real. So many people in this age group feel that at every turn of our economic lives, our generation has been behind.

And now we're playing catch up. We'll be right back. So, Gina, I want to understand the long-term implications of this demographic reality that you have been describing. What is it going to mean for peak millennials and for the rest of the economy that your cohort is in the middle of this fierce battle for resources and have been so delayed in so many economic areas of life. So I think there are a few ways to think about this. But I actually, over the course of my reporting, met this man who is in a stage group. He's 33. And I think he's kind of this perfect encapsulation of some of the trends that we're talking about here and some of the consequences that result from them. Okay. So his name is Thomas Stiller. He grew up in Erie, Pennsylvania,

in a pretty middle-class family. His dad was a teacher and his mom was a nurse. And as he's moved through adulthood, he struggled to achieve that middle-class lifestyle himself. He's got a master's degree in medical social work, but he also has student loans as a result of that, and that's left him sort of struggling financially to pay that off and save money. So he currently works two jobs. And at one point, he even took on a third at a Wendy's drive-thru. And still, you know, he and his wife are struggling to buy up a house. They're struggling to move somewhere before they start a family. And so they've really had to push back the timeline a little bit. And it's meant that their dreams of, you know, buying a house and then eventually having kids are basically on hold for

now. Which is a very vivid consequence and a very vivid long-term consequence of these delays. How typical is that of peak millennials, that this set of economic delays you have been describing lead to a decision not to have a family? Yeah, what we have very clearly seen is that fertility trends have been very low for the generation. You know, we have not had a lot of childbearing among millennial women and sort of the age at first childbirth has been going steadily up. And so I think there's a question of whether that's going to change. But for now, what we've seen is not a lot of childbearing among this group. And talk to us about why that is going to matter in the broader economy. So it matters for a whole bunch of reasons. You know, when there are fewer children,

there are fewer people in the economy, which obviously affects the size of the economy just in a very mathematical way. You know, kids involve the size of the economy just in a very mathematical way. You know, kids involve a lot of spending. People in general involve a lot of spending. They add to growth. And then I think later on, there are really serious potential consequences because this will impact what the retirement system looks like for all of us. Fewer kids today means fewer adults in a few decades paying into the social security system, which means that we are obviously going to have a lot of peak millennials who are retiring at a time when there are fewer people to sort of pay the system that will fund that retirement.

Right. So the reality of peak millennials delaying having kids is a genuine financial strain on the government, especially its cherished safety net for retirees. Absolutely. Okay, so how else should we be thinking about the long-term impacts of all of this? So there is research from back when the baby boomers were the biggest generation into how being such a large generation can affect long-term economic health. So we know from the late boomers, so the people who were born in the late 1950s and early 1960s, that really big sub-generation, that people who entered the labor market in that generation, who joined sort of a weak job market and then had a lot of competition, experienced

some pretty bad long-term consequences from that. We saw them have a lot of financial strain. We saw them having elevated levels of homelessness. And those problems really followed them for a number of years after they entered the job market. And I asked a lot of economists about this. I said, you know, are these baby boomers, are these late boomers the prototype for millennials? And I think this is the one place in this story where we actually run into a silver lining, which is that economists and demographers told me that the millennials are probably better off than those late baby boomers. Because while the generations are actually kind of similar in size, millennials are actually a little bit bigger. What you see is that those boomers represented a huge jump in size relative to the generation that had come just before, whereas millennials represent a jump in size relative to the generation just before, but not as big of a jump. And so it's that differential that matters. It's how much the sweater has to stretch relative to how big it is.

You know, in the boomers case, it went from being an extra small fitting onto a giant. And in the millennials case, it went from being an extra large and had to fit onto a giant. And so I think that that size differential has been really, really important. And so what economists will tell you is that there are some reasons to hope that while millennials are clearly doing things later, while there has obviously been financial strain caused by sort of timing, also potentially generational size, millennials might end up okay in the end. You know, we are seeing these folks manage to build wealth. You know, it's taken them a while, but in recent years, we've seen them really start to amass wealth in stocks, wealth in retirement accounts.

We're seeing them have very low unemployment rates. You know, there are signs that these folks are finally finding their footing in the labor market and in the economy as a whole. So I think, you know, again, it bears reiterating that this generation has been very delayed in a lot of economic developments, but delayed is not necessarily entirely derailed. Right. But in the meantime, this cohort will still be delayed in marching through the economy, and as it uncomfortably stretches out the sweater, the metaphor we've been beating to death in this episode. And I wonder what that's going to mean for the rest of us, those of us not in peak millennial or perhaps even at all millennial generation. You know, in some ways, there are positives here. In the labor market, for example,

the latter part of Gen Z may actually benefit from having such a comparatively small graduating class. So when they get to the point that they're replacing these millennials, this very big generation, they'll actually be coming into a situation where the sweater is a little bit roomier than it previously was. And so they could actually benefit in the labor market from that. The people coming up behind peak millennials are going to have more opportunity because peak millennials were so big. A couple of economists suggested that to me, yeah. I think there's also another really big negative one for that demographic, though, which is that they're going to be competing with millennials in the housing market. So just given the sheer

generational numbers, we know that these folks, these millennials in particular, the peak millennials, are going to be competing for entry-level homes for pretty much years to come. And so I think what we see from analyses from economists and from the government is the demand for entry-level single-family homes is likely to remain really high for basically the rest of the decade as a result. So a lot of competition in the housing market. And then, you know, as with all things, I think there's probably a political dimension to this. You know, I think that I talked to a lot of people anecdotally for this story. It wasn't just a data reporting project.

And when you talk to people in this generation, you will often hear that they feel a little bit disillusioned by how this has played out. You know, they don't feel great about the fact that they are struggling to hit some of those sort of financial and economic milestones that people in our parents' generation, for example, hit at much earlier stages or earlier years. And so, you know, to return to the man that I quoted earlier, Thomas Stiller from Pennsylvania, you know, he was telling me that he just feels like something has kind of gone wrong. And he actually told me that he blames capitalism. He feels like we're in this system where wealth and the means of obtaining it have become really concentrated in few hands. And he was telling me that he's actually always been a Democrat, but he just doesn't even know that he can vote for anyone in this election. And there's this real sense of disillusionment. And so I think there's, you know, both the practical consequences, but then also sort of these like less economic but more sociological potential points of fallout from the size of this generation.

but more sociological potential points of fallout from the size of this generation. Right. What you just said very much jives with polling we've seen over the past few months from The Times and elsewhere showing that younger Americans are drifting away, especially from President Biden, because they don't think the system is working. And it seems like this fellow you talked to very much reinforces that through his own very frustrating experiences in the economy. Yeah, I think that's the case. And I think it was really interesting to me while reporting this story to hear some of those frustrations echoed over and over again. So Gina, this of course all started with you wanting to better understand your own demographic you are peak millennial so now that you've done all this reporting talk to all these people how are you thinking about what it means to be a member of this group do you feel like you better understand yourself now? And what is that understanding? You know, I think growing up in this generation, you read so many think pieces about the many

things that millennials were accused of killing. And I think you watched a lot of TV segments about how we weren't buying houses because we were busy eating avocado toast. And I think a lot of the tone was that there was maybe something wrong with us, you know, that we had somehow gone awry or made some bad choices and that that was having an after effect in our economic lives. And I think that sort of all of that fierce attention and all of that focus on this generation happened because of our sheer size and also the timing with which we hit

these really important junctures in the economy where we sort of exacerbated some challenges that already existed. And so put very simply, I think we kind of are the problem, but it's not our fault. Well, Gina, thank you very much. We appreciate it. Thank you for having me. We'll be right back.

Here's what else you need to know today. This week, John Barnett, a former quality manager at Boeing who accused the company of engaging in unsafe manufacturing practices on its passenger planes, was found dead with what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound. We talked with Barnett, who went by the nickname Swampy, in 2019. Boeing was the place. I mean, they were the place to work, you know. Speaking to my colleague, Natalie Kitchoff, Barnett recounted how his original pride at being a Boeing worker had turned into disillusionment.

And oh my God, it was amazing when I put that Boeing shirt on. My chest puffed out. You know, I'd walk into the store around here and they're like, oh, you work for Bowling Night, it's awesome. And thank y'all so much. And you just mean so much to this area, you know. Wow.

And it was just awesome. And it's just... We don't have that anymore here. Barnett said he felt obligated to become a whistleblower after witnessing what he described as rushed and shoddy work at the Boeing factory in Charleston, South Carolina, where he worked. Claims that Boeing disputes. I just think it's critically important that the activities going on within Boeing are made aware to the people whose lives could be affected.

You know, as a quality manager at Boeing, you're the last line of defense before a defect makes it out to the flying public. That's a huge responsibility. To many, Barnett's accusations, which began in 2017, now seem prescient. Safety problems have plagued Boeing ever since, including the crash of two Boeing 737s in 2018 and 2019, and the blowout of a fuselage panel on an Alaska Airlines flight two months ago. Barnett died in Charleston on Saturday. He was scheduled to finish a deposition that day for a lawsuit in which he accused Boeing

of retaliating against him for becoming a whistleblower. Today's episode was produced by Will Reed and Aastha Chaturvedi with help from Kate Lopresti. It was edited by Mark George, with help from Patricia Willans. Contains original music by Alicia Baetube, Marion Lozano, Rowan Emisto, Corey Schreppel, and Dan Powell. And was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.