NEWSWIRE

  • Millennial men are spearheading the push for “Shorts Friday” in the office. Citing excessive heat and promising to keep it classy (no T-shirts allowed), Millennials give practical reasons for the continued casualization of the workplace. (The New York Times)
    • NH: Caj with class. No one's talking about pushing the ragged edge here. The goal to strive for is a bit closer to the celebrated "Bermuda rig."
  • Steven Spielberg was at Comic-Con last weekend to release the trailer for his upcoming sci-fi flick, Ready Player One. A dark, dystopian story with copious references to ‘80s pop culture, the movie—which is based on the novel of the same name by Xer Ernest Cline—checks all the boxes for Xer moviegoers. (USA Today)
    • NH: This film will be a hit for any Xer movie maven whose favorite song is "1985." (Or whose favorite group had a name like Bowling for Soup.) Imagine a Homelander teen in the year 2044, born about a decade from now, playing a VR game for keeps with the entire future of the world hanging in the balance. To win, the teen needs to know every last bit of 1980s pop-culture trivia--that is, every single trashy factoid, from Pac-Man and Zork to Rush and Dungeons and Dragons. This is a teen that would make any Xer proud.
  • College tuition has risen just 1.9% so far this year (roughly in line with inflation), the slowest pace in decades. With a smaller pool of potential enrollees thanks to declining birthrates and a steadily improving job market, higher ed appears to finally be running into demand constraints. (The Wall Street Journal)
    • NH: The biggest force pushing down the demand is demographic: falling numbers of new 18 year olds among late-wave Millennials due to a falling fertility rate and shrinking net immigration numbers. Add to that, over the last year, a big slump in incoming foreign students--apparently due to anxiety about hospitality during a Trump presidency. (The incoming stream of college students from abroad has recently been exploding, nearly tripling over the past six years.) Yes, and then there's the federal cap on total student loan amounts and the hotter youth labor market, which is persuading young adults to choose employment over education.
  • Boomer op-ed columnist Marilyn Suzanne Miller says that her generation is in a “bad mood” because it doesn’t want to give up the spotlight. Even as she acknowledges her generation’s unprecedented cultural reach, Miller complains that Boomers are “snubbed by the movie industry, TV, jeans designers, the music business, everything.” (The New York Times)
    • NH: This whiney piece exemplifies rather than explains the Boomer funk. Because of this generation's relative affluence, luxury brands still slave to please the 50+ set. As for music and cinema, the last time I looked, most rock concerts were still dominated by these aging hippies (the ticket buyers' average age climbs alongside them) and a whole new genre of movies is catering to their foibles, their mannerisms, and their whole long strange life trip. (See our piece, "The Silver-Haired Screen.") Never has America's popular culture given a generation entering elderhood such obsessive and respectful attention. But that's not enough, Boomers, is it?
  • The average U.S. household has 2.3 TV sets—down from 2.6 in 2009. While Americans are spending more time consuming content than ever before, the rise of streaming means that fewer are doing so on actual TV sets. (Quartz)
  • History professor Andrew Hartman argues that today’s “Millennial left” more closely resembles the 1930s “Old Left” than the 1970s “New Left.” He’s right: The ‘70s movement was led by Boomers who rebelled against cultural oppression and the Vietnam War, while the ‘30s movement was led by G.I.s who, coming out of the Great Depression, “sought a genuine alternative to capitalism.” (The Washington Post)
    • NH: This is a fine piece pointing directly to the ideological dimension of the Hero archetype as we laid it out in our book, The Fourth Turning. The original Old Left generation was the G.I.s. The New Left generation was Boomers. Now come the Millennials, focusing--like their grandparents--on mobilizing their activist peers less around a cultural, individualist agenda than around economic and collectivist goals.
  • Wall Street regulators have agreed to rewrite the Volcker Rule, which sets limits on how banks can invest their own capital. The move highlights the Trump administration’s efforts to achieve desired (if limited) financial reform through agencies instead of relying on a gridlocked Congress. (Bloomberg Business)
  • A viral piece of slam poetry by Millennial Jackie Thakkar discusses the complications of Millennial romance. Many of his digs hit home: “Our egos are the size of blue whales/And attachments are only meant for emails/And who even needs Mr. Right/When you can just swipe right?” (Scroll.in)
    • NH: This just in: Most Millennials use Tinder not so much to date as to assess where they stand in the social hierarchy. Not surprisingly, regular Tinder users report lower-than-average levels of self-esteem, a higher degree of body shame, and more "negative moods." To a milder degree, similar results have been found for obsessive Facebook users. 
  • Last November marked the first time that voters born 1 were outnumbered by voters born 1965 and later. While these data may give the impression that Millennials have finally arrived as impactful voters, the truth is that the surge in younger voters was fueled by record Gen-X participation. (Pew Research Center)
    • NH: What's more surprising was that 2016 was the first time that Millennials and Xers together (defined as everyone born after 1964) voted more than all older people. Really. Up until now, Americans age 52 and over had always outvoted all younger Americans. So what took younger Americans so long to catch up? Attribute this not just to the rising longevity of Americans and the large size of the Boomer generation--but also to the greater propensity to vote among the elderly. In 2018, an off-year election in which the voting rate of older adults declines less than that of younger adults, Boomers-on-up will again (at least one more time) regain the upper hand.
  • Bank of America Merrill Lynch product manager Gary DiMaio credits auto-enrollment for Millennials’ high participation rates in retirement savings plans. While auto-enrollment certainly boosts savings rates, he fails to acknowledge that this risk-averse generation has vivid memories of the Great Recession and never wants to be caught financially unprepared. (Time)
    • NH: Yes, the advent of auto-enrollment (given a safe harbor to employers by Congress with the Pension Protection Act of 2006) has boosted Millennial savings rates. But we have abundant other evidence (see our piece: "Once Again, A Nation of Savers"), of the greater Millennial desire to save as young adults than Xers or Boomers at the same age.

    DID YOU KNOW?

    Show Me the Money. We've written before that blue-collar firms are struggling to attract young talent. (See: “The Spread of the Pink-Collar Economy.”) One company, 84 Lumber, believes it has the answer: ads focused on earning potential. The company spends millions of dollars annually to advertise its generous pay scale: Manager trainees start out earning $40,000 per year, which can balloon to seven figures (including bonuses) for top performers. Other blue-collar firms are stepping up their game as well—like Minnesota-based Carpentry Contractors, which recently released a viral recruiting video that has garnered a quarter-million YouTube views. At a time when consumers are questioning the value of a college degree (see: “How to Control the Exploding Price of Higher Ed”), many Millennials are buying in. According to 24-year-old Sebastian Kleis, an 84 Lumber trainee, “You can go to college and learn the theology of the Roman Empire...and when you get out, what are you applying that to? I know how to frame a house.”