Latest / Trumponomics / Episode 4: The Millennials Go Rogue

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Episode 4: The Millennials Go Rogue · Trumponomics

0:00
Speaker 1: Well, I don't know about the one night stand thing.
0:03
Speaker 1: I have not seen anything about that in the economic literature.
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Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Bloomberg Benchmark podcast. I'm your host,
0:15
Speaker 1: Tory Stillwell and economics reporter in DC for Bloomberg News,
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Speaker 1: and I'm joined by my co host Akiko in San Francisco.
0:23
Speaker 1: Hey Hockey, Hey Toorn. It's just you and me. This week,
0:27
Speaker 1: Dan's visiting his parents. Is that right in Australia? Yeah?
0:31
Speaker 1: Do you think he's gonna bring us back a koala?
0:35
Speaker 1: I hope so. Koalas are great, platypus is platypie, whatever
0:39
Speaker 1: they're calling are great. So hopefully we'll get some sort
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Speaker 1: of like treats, like when dad brings back a gift
0:44
Speaker 1: from UM. This is the first time you're tuning in.
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Speaker 1: Benchmark is the world most captivating podcast about the global
0:53
Speaker 1: economy and how all of its twists and turns affect you.
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Speaker 1: This week, we're going to be talking about the economics
1:00
Speaker 1: of millennials. Tour. You and I are the perfect people
1:03
Speaker 1: to be talking about this, since both you and I
1:06
Speaker 1: are actual millennials ourselves. I'm twenty eight and a half
1:12
Speaker 1: and tore you just turned twenty one that's not true.
1:16
Speaker 1: I'm but yeah, I think this should be really fun
1:19
Speaker 1: since we have a lot a lot to talk about,
1:22
Speaker 1: a lot of ground to cover. What's start with the
1:24
Speaker 1: definitions first? What actually is a millennial? What's the age range? Here?
1:29
Speaker 1: Different people define it different ways. Generations are kind of
1:32
Speaker 1: a weird construct, but they are useful in kind of
1:36
Speaker 1: categorizing different groups of Americans. So what I like to
1:39
Speaker 1: use is Pew Research Center's definition, and they define it
1:43
Speaker 1: as people born after nineteen eighty and for general purposes,
1:48
Speaker 1: they look at age range eighteen to thirty four. So
1:51
Speaker 1: if you're born after, you probably not a millennial, although
1:56
Speaker 1: that's still up from the debate. What are they called
1:59
Speaker 1: people who are younger? I think they're calling them Generation
2:02
Speaker 1: z um, but who knows, that could totally change. So
2:07
Speaker 1: we've officially run out of the alphabet. Yeah, dance, not
2:11
Speaker 1: a millennial, right, he's got to be older than it's
2:14
Speaker 1: definitely not a millennial. Well, this week the Millennials go
2:19
Speaker 1: Rogue On the Bloomberg Venture podcast, Tori, you and I
2:23
Speaker 1: brainstormed a bunch of myths about millennials, where you are,
2:27
Speaker 1: incidentally Bloomberg's premier expert on this topic. You're an expert
2:32
Speaker 1: on demographics in general, so you can navigate us through
2:35
Speaker 1: the actual numbers and tell us if each statement is
2:38
Speaker 1: actually a real thing or if it's gross misconception. That's right,
2:42
Speaker 1: And I'm probably not an expert, but I definitely love demographics,
2:45
Speaker 1: so it should be a lot of fun awesome. Let's
2:47
Speaker 1: get to it. So millennial myths Number one. Millennials were
2:51
Speaker 1: the hardest hit generation in the recession. For false, I
2:56
Speaker 1: would say mostly true. It's sort of a for debate
3:00
Speaker 1: just because the generation right before the Millennials, generation X,
3:05
Speaker 1: was also super hardenedly hit. But let's talk about what
3:08
Speaker 1: happened to millennials first. A lot of them were either
3:11
Speaker 1: just graduated from college or were in college um when
3:15
Speaker 1: the recession hit, so they probably definitely actually had a
3:19
Speaker 1: really hard time finding jobs. They may have been taking
3:23
Speaker 1: jobs that were below them in terms of education level.
3:26
Speaker 1: You know, you hear about the person who has a
3:29
Speaker 1: degree in marketing or whatever it was, and they took
3:33
Speaker 1: a job making coffee at Starbucks because that's how they
3:35
Speaker 1: could find. That comes with an income hit for many
3:38
Speaker 1: many years afterwards. So they did get that. The generation
3:42
Speaker 1: right above them, generation X, they had homes, they had
3:47
Speaker 1: um money in stocks, definitely to a greater extent than
3:51
Speaker 1: millennials did. Millenials was so pretty young at that point,
3:54
Speaker 1: so they got hit pretty hard too. It's kind of
3:57
Speaker 1: a point to us. Well, I can fly at a
4:00
Speaker 1: to this because you know, I graduated from college in
4:02
Speaker 1: two thousand nine, so that means I was looking for
4:06
Speaker 1: a job in my senior year, which started in the
4:08
Speaker 1: fall of two thousand eight when everything was collapsing. Yeah,
4:12
Speaker 1: I was a nightmare. I was looking enough to get
4:14
Speaker 1: this internship with Bloomberg and our took your office. But
4:17
Speaker 1: that was really my only lead, and if I didn't
4:20
Speaker 1: get it, I don't know what I would have done. Um.
4:22
Speaker 1: Tons of my friends didn't have jobs right out of college,
4:26
Speaker 1: and they did things here and there until they eventually
4:31
Speaker 1: found a job when the economy got better, or you know,
4:34
Speaker 1: they ended up going into grad school. So you know,
4:37
Speaker 1: that makes a lot of sense to me. Yeah, it's crazy.
4:39
Speaker 1: I wasn't graduating twelves and things I've gotten slightly better,
4:42
Speaker 1: but people still having a hard time finding something that
4:46
Speaker 1: they wanted to do, you know, yeah, definitely, all right, Well,
4:49
Speaker 1: I guess that connects to our secondness, um, millennials are
4:53
Speaker 1: forever doomed as a result. Hopefully not speaking as a millennial,
4:59
Speaker 1: but like we just said, there comes with an income
5:03
Speaker 1: hit when you take a job that's at a lower
5:05
Speaker 1: salary active at the beginning of your career. You know,
5:08
Speaker 1: those first few years of your career are the most
5:11
Speaker 1: important in terms of making headway in your income. If
5:15
Speaker 1: you take a job that's five thousand or ten thousand
5:17
Speaker 1: dollars below what you could have gotten in optimal circumstances,
5:20
Speaker 1: that effect can last and it's gonna take you a
5:23
Speaker 1: long time to catch up with that. So at least
5:26
Speaker 1: with their income, they're going to be hurt by that
5:28
Speaker 1: for a few years. Right, So you're saying, like, even
5:32
Speaker 1: though I got a job straight out of college and
5:35
Speaker 1: continued to be employed since then, it's been six years
5:38
Speaker 1: for me since I graduated, I may have started with
5:42
Speaker 1: a lower salary than I otherwise would have had I
5:45
Speaker 1: graduated into a better economy, And so today I could
5:48
Speaker 1: be earning Even today, I could be earning less than
5:52
Speaker 1: I would have had the economy been better when I
5:55
Speaker 1: graduated from college. Precisely, that's exactly the point. Yeah, well,
5:59
Speaker 1: that's the saying, UM, I hope my managers are listening
6:02
Speaker 1: to this. Let's move on to the next one. Millennials
6:09
Speaker 1: are the most over educated generation in the history of
6:13
Speaker 1: the US. So I don't know about over educated, but
6:16
Speaker 1: millennials are definitely very, very highly educated, more educated than
6:22
Speaker 1: you know, Americans ever have been. So as the numbers
6:25
Speaker 1: here in, seven percent of people who are twenty five
6:30
Speaker 1: to thirty four had some kind of post secondary degree.
6:34
Speaker 1: So this is you know, a two year degree, a
6:37
Speaker 1: four year degree, or maybe a graduate degree. So almost
6:40
Speaker 1: half of the population of these young people had this
6:45
Speaker 1: kind of degree after high school. But that's pretty impressive. Um.
6:49
Speaker 1: This number was at about thirty percent back in the
6:53
Speaker 1: early nine nineties. So just over the past gosh, fifteen years,
6:58
Speaker 1: this number has is in um a lot. Do you
7:02
Speaker 1: think it has anything to do with the recession? Like
7:04
Speaker 1: I said, so, a lot of my friends to re
7:06
Speaker 1: graduated if they couldn't find a job. Instead of just
7:08
Speaker 1: waiting around and not doing anything, a lot of them
7:11
Speaker 1: decided to go back to school. You know, they got
7:14
Speaker 1: additional degrees, like they went into master's programs or maybe
7:17
Speaker 1: PhD programs, and and a lot of people did this.
7:21
Speaker 1: So you definitely see a big bump after the recession
7:25
Speaker 1: in terms of the ratio of people who have post
7:28
Speaker 1: secondary degrees. Interesting, moving on to the next one, Millennials
7:34
Speaker 1: are incapable of the laying gratification and they are not
7:38
Speaker 1: saving for retirement. This is probably my favorite thing to
7:42
Speaker 1: talk about. I love thinking about retirement. Don't know what
7:47
Speaker 1: that means, even though it's at least forty years exactly
7:53
Speaker 1: exactly already planning it out in my head. But I
7:56
Speaker 1: think that this is a really interesting topic just because
7:59
Speaker 1: retire it and and social security is a huge topic
8:02
Speaker 1: for everyone in the US, um you know, presidential candidates
8:06
Speaker 1: are bringing it up, and in my personal experience, I
8:09
Speaker 1: found that millennials have kind of strong opinions about this.
8:13
Speaker 1: So let's let's break it up. Part about saving for retirement,
8:16
Speaker 1: you probably need to have a job to do that.
8:19
Speaker 1: And what we know is that the job market for
8:22
Speaker 1: millennials has gotten much better. You know, if we look
8:25
Speaker 1: at the unemployment rate for people who are twenty five
8:28
Speaker 1: to thirty four years old, you know, so out of college,
8:31
Speaker 1: have been in the labor market for a couple of
8:33
Speaker 1: years now, hopefully it's at five point three percent. So
8:37
Speaker 1: that's a little bit higher than the overall level, which
8:40
Speaker 1: is five point one percent, but still pretty good. So
8:43
Speaker 1: they have jobs. And what we're finding is that the
8:46
Speaker 1: ones who have access to jobs where their employers offer
8:50
Speaker 1: for oh one K plans, they are taking those, so
8:53
Speaker 1: they're actually contributing into their for one case exactly exactly.
8:58
Speaker 1: So there's this there's a study last year from the
9:02
Speaker 1: Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies. They actually found that seventy
9:08
Speaker 1: one percent of millennials who were offered for a one
9:11
Speaker 1: case or similar plans took part and contributed a median
9:15
Speaker 1: eight percent of their salaries. And it sounds it sounds,
9:18
Speaker 1: it sounded like a lot to me. It was really
9:20
Speaker 1: surprising to me. But a lot of it has to
9:21
Speaker 1: do with for one case no longer being you have
9:24
Speaker 1: to opt into it. People are being automatically enrolled these days, right,
9:28
Speaker 1: so they are actually saving for retirement, and it might
9:31
Speaker 1: be because they just don't think social Security will be
9:34
Speaker 1: there for them at all. You know, half of millennials
9:37
Speaker 1: don't think that there will be any money for them
9:40
Speaker 1: in the Social Security system by the time they were
9:42
Speaker 1: ready to retire. That number is coming from Pew gosh,
9:45
Speaker 1: that's that's really pessimistic. I don't know. I mean, I
9:49
Speaker 1: think I think social security will be around by the
9:51
Speaker 1: time we retire, even if it's kind of in a
9:53
Speaker 1: different form than it is today. Yeah, you're in this
9:56
Speaker 1: second bucket that it's it's about say that the system
10:01
Speaker 1: will only be able to provide them with benefits at
10:04
Speaker 1: reduced levels, and then six percent think that they're going
10:08
Speaker 1: to get the level enjoyed by current retirees, which I
10:11
Speaker 1: think is extremely optimistic. Well, okay, so it is a
10:15
Speaker 1: growth misconception to think that millennials are just blowing all
10:18
Speaker 1: their money on the next fancy Nike sneakers or something
10:23
Speaker 1: they actually are saving for retirement. Let's get on to
10:27
Speaker 1: the next myth. Millennials are not in the stock market. Um,
10:31
Speaker 1: they've shout away from the stock market, and whatever mean
10:34
Speaker 1: receivings they have, they've kept it in cash. Well, I
10:38
Speaker 1: think this connects to what we were just talking about
10:41
Speaker 1: really well, because if if they are participating in these
10:44
Speaker 1: four oh one k plans, the chances are they have
10:47
Speaker 1: some equity in there. Hopefully it's not all bonds, so
10:52
Speaker 1: they probably are in the stock market in some sort
10:55
Speaker 1: of way. Do. We do have evidence. There are several
10:58
Speaker 1: studies that show that millennials say their risk of overse
11:01
Speaker 1: and if they don't want to be in the stock market,
11:03
Speaker 1: but if they're participating in four one k plans, and
11:05
Speaker 1: they probably are. So if we're looking at like, you know,
11:07
Speaker 1: directly manage stocks, probably to a lesser extent. Yeah, so
11:12
Speaker 1: it's better to just kind of keep it out of
11:14
Speaker 1: their own control if possible. Exactly. I'm okay with that,
11:20
Speaker 1: leave it to the pros. Okay, let's get onto the
11:22
Speaker 1: next one. Um. Millennials shy away from credit, they don't
11:27
Speaker 1: take on loans. Yes, so definitely after immediately after the recession,
11:33
Speaker 1: there was a ton of evidence that should this. You know,
11:35
Speaker 1: they were plastic shy. I remember even a story trying
11:39
Speaker 1: to figure out what would happen with millennials credit reports
11:43
Speaker 1: because they didn't have a lot of it. They didn't
11:45
Speaker 1: have credit cards. There's just no way. But there there
11:48
Speaker 1: has been evidence that they are gradually taking on more
11:53
Speaker 1: they're gradually using credit cards or taking on more debt,
11:55
Speaker 1: but they're not being super irresponsible about it. You know,
12:00
Speaker 1: We've seen research that shows that they have student loans
12:04
Speaker 1: and they're not if they have a ton of student debt,
12:07
Speaker 1: they're probably not out buying a house and acquiring housing debt.
12:11
Speaker 1: I think what's interesting about the millennials is they definitely
12:14
Speaker 1: have different kinds of debt than probably our predecessors did.
12:17
Speaker 1: They have student loans alba wazoo. But they're not being
12:22
Speaker 1: completely grossly irresponsible in general with credit card debt, and
12:27
Speaker 1: they're probably not hopping into the housing market before they
12:30
Speaker 1: should be. Huh So, in some ways, millennials are more
12:34
Speaker 1: responsible than their predecessors, I would say, In some ways, yeah,
12:39
Speaker 1: I take that old people. Well, let's get on to
12:44
Speaker 1: the next one. Millennials don't want to buy their own
12:47
Speaker 1: homes and they will only rent them, right. I think
12:50
Speaker 1: this is really this has huge implications for the housing market,
12:54
Speaker 1: which is a pretty big pillar of the economy. You know,
12:57
Speaker 1: if we have people that never want to own homes,
13:01
Speaker 1: then they're probably not gonna spend a ton of money
13:04
Speaker 1: outfitting those homes with all the things that you would need,
13:07
Speaker 1: you know, buying washers and dryers and stoves and like
13:10
Speaker 1: all the furniture that you would need to fill a
13:12
Speaker 1: house versus my tiny eight hundred and fifty square foot
13:15
Speaker 1: apartment in d C. But what we've seen in the
13:19
Speaker 1: surveys is that millenials do want to own a home.
13:22
Speaker 1: You know, I've seen estimates ranging from like sixty to
13:25
Speaker 1: eighty percent saying that they would like to at at
13:29
Speaker 1: some point own a home. And you know, they definitely
13:31
Speaker 1: have been behind the curve in terms of doing that
13:35
Speaker 1: putting those those desires into action compared to other generations.
13:40
Speaker 1: But also, like we said, they were hit pretty hard
13:42
Speaker 1: by the recession. They don't have a lot of just
13:44
Speaker 1: extra money laying around, uh for a down payment. So
13:48
Speaker 1: the thinking goes that as the labor market improves, as
13:52
Speaker 1: they get more you know, we get more of them
13:54
Speaker 1: in jobs, they get higher incomes, etcetera, they'll be able
13:57
Speaker 1: to save about money for that down payment and to
14:00
Speaker 1: you buy a home. And we are seeing the household
14:03
Speaker 1: formation numbers slowly start to creep up, and that has
14:06
Speaker 1: great implications for the housing market. Do you think I'll
14:10
Speaker 1: ever be able to buy a home here in San Francisco? UM,
14:14
Speaker 1: I don't know the answer to that might depress you.
14:18
Speaker 1: I might need to move about to the East day
14:20
Speaker 1: or something. This is a good one. So we are
14:25
Speaker 1: the Tinder generation and millennials only have one night stands
14:30
Speaker 1: and are consequently delaying marriage and babies, and all they
14:34
Speaker 1: care about is hooking up, and the economy is never
14:37
Speaker 1: going to benefit from the fruits of having a family. Well,
14:41
Speaker 1: I don't know about the one night stand thing. I
14:43
Speaker 1: have not seen anything about that in the economic literature. Uh,
14:51
Speaker 1: millennials are certainly delaying um when they're getting married and
14:56
Speaker 1: when they have their first child. That age has been
15:00
Speaker 1: creeping up more and more and more. And you know,
15:03
Speaker 1: the longer you wait to have your first child, the
15:05
Speaker 1: fewer children you're likely to have too, So that means
15:08
Speaker 1: eventually a lower birth rate. You know, when you have
15:11
Speaker 1: fewer children, you end up spending. Your children are really expensive,
15:15
Speaker 1: so like that means like less spending. Uh. It also
15:19
Speaker 1: means that over time, the demographic composition of the country shifts,
15:24
Speaker 1: so there are fewer working age people to support retirees,
15:29
Speaker 1: which for you and I, we are eventually going to
15:31
Speaker 1: retire and we eventually will really depend on our grandchildren
15:37
Speaker 1: to support us. So this definitely does have economic consequences. Yeah,
15:42
Speaker 1: so I see. The mean age of mothers having their
15:46
Speaker 1: first child was twenty five point eight years in twelve
15:51
Speaker 1: and that's up from twenty one point four years in
15:54
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies. So, like you said, it's been a wide,
15:57
Speaker 1: slow climb up, but it's definitely there. And the interesting
16:02
Speaker 1: thing is, you know whether this is going to reverse
16:04
Speaker 1: at all, because I know a lot of demographers that
16:06
Speaker 1: I talked to chalked some of this up to the recession.
16:10
Speaker 1: And you know, your people are going to be less
16:12
Speaker 1: likely to have children if they don't think that they
16:15
Speaker 1: can pay for them. You know, there's some speculation that
16:18
Speaker 1: as the economy recovers, so too will fertility, and the
16:23
Speaker 1: fertility rate actually does increase for the first time since
16:26
Speaker 1: two thousand and seven, so maybe there is some credibility
16:30
Speaker 1: to that, but we'll have to wait to see if
16:32
Speaker 1: more years bear that out. All right, this is a
16:35
Speaker 1: good one. Millennials are slackers in the office and they
16:39
Speaker 1: just can't commit to a single job, so they end
16:41
Speaker 1: up job popping. I think it's interesting because it's a myth,
16:44
Speaker 1: and I think a lot of people know friends who
16:46
Speaker 1: who job hop. A lot, you know, only stay a
16:49
Speaker 1: year or two. I personally know people like that, But
16:51
Speaker 1: it's not super been born out in the data. Is
16:55
Speaker 1: the only thing you know, across the US tenure ten years,
17:00
Speaker 1: so you know, the number of years that you're spending
17:02
Speaker 1: at a at a place has been tacking up slowly, slowly, slowly,
17:06
Speaker 1: just by small increments as well, and that may have
17:09
Speaker 1: something to do with the aging of the population. But
17:14
Speaker 1: even when you break it out at age groups and
17:16
Speaker 1: you look to to the age range that includes millennials,
17:20
Speaker 1: they're not Their tenure isn't shrinking by a ton, it's
17:23
Speaker 1: it's basically flat. So there seems to be something a
17:27
Speaker 1: foot because I guess maybe all these anecdotes you here
17:30
Speaker 1: in the media and among friends and stuff can't aren't
17:33
Speaker 1: necessarily wrong, but it just hasn't started to show up
17:36
Speaker 1: in the data yet. I don't know. I think the
17:38
Speaker 1: jury is still out on that one. Well, tour, you
17:40
Speaker 1: and I have been with Bloomberg the whole time since
17:44
Speaker 1: we've graduated from college, so you know, it's been six
17:47
Speaker 1: years for me, how long has it been for you?
17:50
Speaker 1: Three years? Three years, three years for you? And I
17:54
Speaker 1: think I know one other person who's had the same
17:57
Speaker 1: job since we graduated in my class, but everyone else
18:01
Speaker 1: has switch jobs a lot. But that could more be
18:04
Speaker 1: about the specific local economy. I'm in in San Francisco,
18:08
Speaker 1: Like the job market is just so hot for technical
18:11
Speaker 1: talent that it might just mean that, you know, people
18:14
Speaker 1: are switching for newer, better opportunities more often. Yeah, and
18:19
Speaker 1: we definitely. I mean, you can't argue that there's more.
18:22
Speaker 1: There's a greater ability to switch jobs more often if
18:25
Speaker 1: you want, you know, with LinkedIn and all other sorts
18:29
Speaker 1: of job search platforms. Indeed, is another one that comes
18:33
Speaker 1: to mind. So if people want a job hop more,
18:36
Speaker 1: it's they're definitely able to. Well, I guess I've been
18:39
Speaker 1: happy with Bloomberg. So fun last one here, Millennials are amazing.
18:46
Speaker 1: You know, it's really funny because I don't think millennials
18:49
Speaker 1: themselves think that they're amazing. I read really we really.
18:53
Speaker 1: I thought we were supposed to be like the ME generation.
18:57
Speaker 1: I read a really depressing report p that came out
19:01
Speaker 1: this month, and millennials, it finds, are far more likely
19:06
Speaker 1: than older generations to say that the terms self absorbed, wasteful,
19:12
Speaker 1: and greedy apply to people in their h cohort um.
19:17
Speaker 1: They're like the self exactly. They so fifty say that
19:25
Speaker 1: the term self absorbed describes their generation, compared with among
19:30
Speaker 1: Gen xers of boomers. Wow, well here's a hypothesis. Maybe
19:35
Speaker 1: they're just more self aware, I mean, and that's not
19:39
Speaker 1: a bad thing. They p has also found that millennials
19:42
Speaker 1: are more accepting of homosexuality, interracial marriage, and hold more
19:46
Speaker 1: positive views of immigrants. So they're very multifaceted. Um, but
19:51
Speaker 1: I think self living is not an inaccurate way to
19:54
Speaker 1: describe them. And that's it for us today. Thanks again
19:59
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20:02
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