Boomers and the Jobs Report - Both Parties, Most Pundits Still Getting It Wrong

by Dr. Ellen Brandt


The vaunted Death of the Middle Class and Rise of the Newly-Poor has pretty much nothing to do with the usual culprits: Young people with student loans, discrimination against so-called minorities, nor women impeded from breaking the corporate glass ceiling.


Youth are supposed to be at the bottom of the economic ladder, until they gain the education, skills, and experience to climb it. We are now a country where everyone is a member of one or, more likely, several minorities, and pitting ethnic groups against one another economically is both a distraction and a mistake. Women have been integrated into the workforce for decades now, and those working for large corporations have been making good progress and will continue to make more.


By all means, every constituency - women, men, individual ethnic groups, youth - have a perfect right to lobby for their peers and try to ensure they are not lagging behind other constituencies.


But these "usual culprit" groups are not the key problem now, in terms of our fighting economic stagnation and promoting far better long-term growth, while preserving the National Social Contract which binds all Americans into a civilized society, with an overriding common interest and a desire to protect and foster one another.


So let's all - economists, demographers, politicians, journalists - start telling the naked truth for a change, even if that truth doesn't jibe with what you believe your Party's or your favorite constituency's best interests might or might not be:


***** Those who used to be part of a healthy "middle class," but are no longer part of it, overwhelmingly come from just one major constituency: People Over Age 50.


***** Those who used to be above - often well-above - the poverty line, but are now the Newly Poor, overwhelmingly come from just one constituency: People Over Age 50.


***** People who used to be homeowners, but no longer can afford to own their homes, overwhelmingly come from just one constituency: People Over Age 50.


***** People who spent most of their lifetimes not needing transfer payments, including food stamps, nor other forms of entitlements, but who desperately need them now, overwhelmingly come from just one constituency: People Over Age 50.


***** People included in the "long-term unemployed" or "under-employed" categories, or who have slipped through the statistical cracks and do not appear in any economic category other than "not in the labor force" - i.e. those responsible for that historically dismal U.S. labor participation rate - overwhelmingly come from just one constituency: People Over Age 50.


And some other facts every American needs to recognize, memorize, and take to heart - especially politicians, business and media leaders, and others who wield influence over their fellow Americans and help form public opinion:


***** "Gray" Americans age 50 and over already make up 43 percent of the U.S. population - or more than 2 in 5 Americans. Since people age 0-17 cannot vote, Gray Americans will account for close to 50 percent - or 1 in 2 - American voters in the next four presidential elections cycles - 2016, 2020, 2024, and 2028.


***** The largest generation among current Gray Americans, the Baby Boomers, are age 52-70 in 2016. Boomers still make up over 25 percent of the U.S. population, or more than 1 in 4 Americans. There are about 1.1 billion Baby Boomers worldwide, concentrated in the Developed World plus China.


***** Boomers are the best-educated generation in American history, with the largest percentages of college graduates, lawyers, doctors, engineers, nurses, and holders of Ph.D. and M.B.A. degrees, as well as large percentages of skilled manufacturing workers in every category.


***** But Boomers' "older siblings," the unsung generation born in the Great Depression and during World War 2, which includes people currently in the 71-88 age range (utilizing the current norm of 18-year generations), tended to be well-educated and highly-skilled as well. Meanwhile, the demographically fortunate Gen-X generation (fortunate because there were relatively fewer of them, between the huge Boomer and Millennial generations) started to turn 50 last year.


***** And all four generations now in the Gray population: Gen-Xers, Boomers, Depression-WW2 Babies, and the remnants of the "Greatest" Generation, Boomers' parents, now age 89-plus, are benefiting from immense strides in U.S. longevity. There are more American centenarians every year. And we may soon see people living until age 110 or more.


All of the above provides both an extraordinary challenge and an extraordinary opportunity for the United States, the rest of the Devloped World, and China - all those parts of the world with similar increasingly Gray demographic profiles.


No government can be satisfied or sanguine or say we have "nearly full employment," if those productively employed do not include the more than 2 in 5 Americans over age 50.


This is especially - dramatically - true, if many of those American Grays are likely to be alive another 30 or 40 or 50 years.


Our entire national attitude towards mature Americans and employment has to change now - not 10 years from now, not 5 years from now, but right now.


A House-of-Cards economy, like the one we currently have, in which we are not growing the economic pie, but simply camouflaging stagnant or negative growth by taking jobs - and assets and wealth - from people over 50, mostly totally against their will, and redistributing it to younger and less-educated and less-experienced people creates a tattered National Social Contract and a citizenry up in (Populist) arms.


Which, indeed, is what we are now experiencing.