Changing Demography and Your Future

Demographically Speaking

The Winners and Losers for 2007

Many people seem to enjoy the following exercise. Please be mindful that demographers can forecast with reasonable accuracy, they cannot predict absolutely. My source of information is The National Center for Health Statistics regarding live births in the United States starting in 1905 to the present. All of my forecasts are VERY big picture/macro observations.

The Republican Party will continue to be a big loser. Remember Bush and Kerry essentially split the nation in two in 2004. Bush took half the Boomers (age forty to sixty) and everyone older. Kerry took half the Boomers and everyone younger. Bush won by a three million vote margin. Problem was Kerry’s half included millions that were not old enough to vote. That’s always a problem at the polls. In 2008 there will be sixteen million more new young liberal voters as compared to 2004. The Conservatives will have lost eight million voters to natural causes as about two million people die each year in the United States and most of them are elderly. The Conservatives are cooked. I think that’s why Cheney was chosen as VP and not another Republican that could be a candidate for president in 2008. I think Karl Rove, an expert demographer, knew that it is demographically impossible for a conservative to win in 2008 or really anytime in the next twenty years.

The African-American culture will be a big winner because prominent Black leaders are beginning to say enough! Let’s fix the problem not the blame. Demographically the Afro-American culture will find the liberal leaders more sympathetic and accommodating to real change. Also, as I say in my book, the bigoted GI Generation (born 1905 to 1924) will be almost dead. We could have an African-American president sooner than you think. Say goodbye to the glass ceiling also.

The US housing market will be a big loser because once the Boomers have sent the last of their kids off to college they will not need the six thousand square foot “starter castle” they just built. They will put it on the market but it won’t sell. Why? Because there weren’t enough buyers born between 1965 and 1984 to buy them. Thanks again Generation X.

Retailers that sell products exclusively to buyers twenty five and under will be enormous winners. Why? Because we made a lot of them (one hundred million by 2010) and they are consuming at a rate of 500% more than their Boomer parents in adjusted dollars age for age. Strong categories are entertainment, food, sporting goods, clothing, electronics and transportation. Generation Y will be the first generation in United States history that will routinely have brand new cars in high school.

Detroit will be a catastrophic loser because they are still trying to sell the US consumer more SUV’s when kids under twenty-five don’t buy them. Once the Boomer completely exits Detroit’s sweet spot of buyers in their early forties, it’s over. Toyota will dominate because they make cars that don’t break and kids love.

Public and private technical schools will be very big winners. They will be filled to overflowing with the highest caliber students they have seen in twenty-five years. The paradigm has shifted. Plumbers and electricians will financially out perform doctors and lawyers owing to enormous demand created by Generation X’s rejection of the technical fields.

Employers of entry level labor will be winners because the largest home grown labor force in the history of the United States is now under twenty. MacDonald’s is seeing applications from high school kids for the first time in twenty years. This will also bode well for the armed forces who will have NO problem recruiting.

Urban society will suffer big loses as crime increases geometrically because of double digit unemployment among the most prone to crime, men fifteen to thirty years old. Lock your doors.

Assisted living facilities will be big losers because the highly publicized and eagerly anticipated wave of elderly Baby Boomers won’t happen for another twenty years. What were they thinking? Thank-you for the myth AARP!

I could write much, much more. But then you wouldn’t read it. Get my book “Common Census” available at www.amazon.com . It’s easy reading about heavy stuff.