The Inside Economics podcast welcomes Jason Dorsey to talk about the generations that characterize the American population. The conversation takes up what event(s) define each generation, from 9/11 for the Millennials to COVID for Gen Z, and then turns to each generation’s traits and behaviors. The podcast was generationally well-balanced, with Mark the aging Boomer, Marisa and Cris the skeptical Xers, and Jason the creative Millennial.
The Inside Economics podcast welcomes Jason Dorsey to talk about the generations that characterize the American population. The conversation takes up what event(s) define each generation, from 9/11 for the Millennials to COVID for Gen Z, and then turns to each generation’s traits and behaviors. The podcast was generationally well-balanced, with Mark the aging Boomer, Marisa and Cris the skeptical Xers, and Jason the creative Millennial.
Guest: Jason Dorsey - President of Cener for Generational Kinetics
For more on Jason Dorsey:
LinkedIn: @JasonDorsey
Instagram: @Jason_Dorsey
The Center for Generational Kinetics
Hosts: Mark Zandi – Chief Economist, Moody’s Analytics, Cris deRitis – Deputy Chief Economist, Moody’s Analytics, and Marisa DiNatale – Senior Director - Head of Global Forecasting, Moody’s Analytics
Follow Mark Zandi on 'X' @MarkZandi, Cris deRitis on LinkedIn, and Marisa DiNatale on LinkedIn
Mark Zandi: Welcome to Inside Economics. I'm Mark Zandi, the chief economist of Moody's Analytics, and I'm being joined by my two trustee co-hosts, Cris deRitis and Marisa DiNatale. Hi, guys.
Cris deRitis: Hey, Mark.
Marisa DiNatale: Good morning, Mark. Happy Friday.
Mark Zandi: Thank you so much. It's a nice Friday here in the suburban Philly. But Cris, where are you? Are you still in Italy?
Cris deRitis: I'm in Italy at my mother-in-law's house.
Mark Zandi: Are you in Tuscany? Where are you exactly?
Cris deRitis: No, no. In Abruzzo, a little further south and I guess it would be east. Across from Rome is what we usually say, on the opposite coast.
Mark Zandi: Oh yeah, right, across from Rome. How are things there in Italy?
Cris deRitis: Going well, yeah. Nice weather, yeah.
Mark Zandi: Nice weather.
Cris deRitis: Can't complain, yeah. I've been doing very important economic field research though, so I'm happy to give you a little insight in what's going on.
Mark Zandi: Yeah, far away. What have you learned?
Cris deRitis: Tourism is strong. American tourism is through the roof here. I've never seen it this strong. Asian tourism is down though by my assessment here.
Mark Zandi: Is that because the dollar is strong and the yuan is cheap? Is that what's going on?
Cris deRitis: That's my take is that it's currency related.
Mark Zandi: The yen is on the floor, right?
Cris deRitis: Yeah. It's not going anywhere.
Mark Zandi: Right.
Cris deRitis: Yeah. I think just the economics are there. It's just a cheaper place to go for Americans.
Mark Zandi: You see a lot of Americans milling about.
Cris deRitis: I did in the tourist spots. Where I'm now, it's a remote village. There's nobody here, but-
Marisa DiNatale: You managed to get away from them.
Cris deRitis: But in the hotspots, they're really hot. No slow down.
Mark Zandi: That's good. That's very good. Well, I'm thinking about going to Tuscany in early November.
Cris deRitis: Oh, it's a beautiful time of year.
Mark Zandi: Yeah. You go hunting for truffles, apparently.
Cris deRitis: Is that your thing? I didn't know.
Mark Zandi: Well, I now have a new son-in-law who's European, he's from Germany. He's telling me about the truffle hunting in Tuscany in late October and early November. Does that sound right to you?
Cris deRitis: Yeah, it sounds right. But you have to have either a good dog or a good pig.
Marisa DiNatale: You don't shoot them, Mark.
Mark Zandi: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Well, hopefully he finds both. I think we're going to do that and hopefully the dollar remains strong against the euro.
Cris deRitis: There you go. There you go.
Mark Zandi: The very least. Yeah, anyway.
Cris deRitis: Yeah.
Mark Zandi: We have a guest, Jason Dorsey. Jason, good to see you and hear you.
Jason Dorsey: Good to see you as well. Glad to be here. I'm already learning things just joining right now, so thank you.
Mark Zandi: That's what we do on Inside Economics. We educate.
Jason Dorsey: Yeah, yeah. I've got truffles, pigs, and dogs covered so far, so this is great. Heavy content.
Mark Zandi: Jason and I met at a, I guess you'd call it a convention, the Consumer Bankers Association. Do you remember that convention, Jason, because I know you do a lot of speaking?
Jason Dorsey: Oh, yeah. That was a great one. It was in the DC area and had a huge audience, and it was fun. I got to follow you, which was fun because I don't hear many funny economists, and you were quite entertaining, made fun of your own clothes, which was really strong, and you got to follow a regulator.
Mark Zandi: Oh, yeah.
Jason Dorsey: It doesn't get better than that. This is really exciting. So yeah, it was a wonderful day. I enjoyed it.
Mark Zandi: That's right. I spoke right after the director of CFPB who really brought the hammer down on the audience I thought. I think wasn't he saying, and actually he's got a point although the folks at the Bankers Association didn't think so, that lending rates are awfully high. If you look at credit card interest rates, they're very, very high. Now they obviously have risen a lot because of what the Federal Reserve has done over the last couple of years. But even abstracting from that, the rates are high relative to any other interest rate, the Federal Funds Rate or other interest rate. Is that right, Cris? Am I right about that? That the credit card rates are just unusually high, the spreads are awfully high relative to the risk-free rate?
Cris deRitis: I haven't looked recently, but I think that is the case or at least it was not too long ago.
Mark Zandi: Jason, wasn't he hammering the group for that? I think he was. I think that was one of the many things he was hammering the group for.
Jason Dorsey: Yeah. He had a lot of points that he was trying to make, I think. I don't know the details of that, that's above my pay grade. But I know that he is definitely on a mission to try to create some change and the industries are trying to figure out how to deal with that and navigate through it. I was really glad to follow him after following you. There was a nice buffer before I went on, which I really appreciated. At least for me, because I talk about generations and behavioral research, the CBA audience was all over it. Now, maybe they were just excited for a different topic, I don't know. But they were definitely very excited during my talk. You set me up, which I appreciate, so thank you for that.
Mark Zandi: Now that you mentioned, I forgot completely about it. It was like you were supposed to wear jeans or something like that, I think.
Jason Dorsey: Yeah. And you still showed up in, I think, khakis and a jacket, so you really represent it well. It's good. It's a very strong statement. You were on brand.
Mark Zandi: Well, this maybe goes to the generational thing. I'm definitely a boomer, but I don't think I own a pair of jeans.
Marisa DiNatale: What?
Mark Zandi: Right.
Marisa DiNatale: Stop the podcast.
Cris deRitis: No, come on.
Mark Zandi: That's generational.
Marisa DiNatale: No.
Mark Zandi: No, I don't think I own a pair of jeans. Maybe somewhere in my closet. I'll have to go dig. Take a look.
Marisa DiNatale: Please do, and get back to us.
Mark Zandi: Jason, do you own jeans?
Jason Dorsey: There's so much to talk about.
Cris deRitis: You're saying boomers don't wear jeans?
Mark Zandi: Do boomers wear jeans? I don't know.
Marisa DiNatale: They do.
Cris deRitis: Zandi. They do wear jeans.
Jason Dorsey: They do. They do. You're a special one. You're very special.
Mark Zandi: I'm a special boomer.
Jason Dorsey: Yeah. You are a khakis only kind of person. So yes, you were on brand-
Mark Zandi: Were you wearing jeans?
Jason Dorsey: I was wearing jeans, yeah.
Mark Zandi: You were.
Jason Dorsey: They said it was business casual. So yeah, I got the message. It's great. It was great. But you looked very stylish in the khaki pants, which you then talked about, so it was great. It's good times.
Mark Zandi: That's right. That's right. Jason and I met at this convention. Conference doesn't seem to be the right word, because it was massive. I mean, there were a lot of people there. It felt like a whole convention. You gave a speech. You're the president of Generational Kinetic. Is it Generational Kinetics? Is that the way you-
Jason Dorsey: Yeah, it's The Center for Generational Kinetics.
Mark Zandi: Center for Generational Kinetics, yeah. You speak widely on issues with regard to how generations behave and tie that back into, of course, for the folks at this conference or convention about banking issues, but more broadly about how people are spending their money across generations. That's sort of what you're focus ... I know I'm butchering this. Blame it on the COVID. I've got COVID brain.
Jason Dorsey: No worries.
Mark Zandi: But do I have that roughly right?
Jason Dorsey: Yeah, sort of. Yeah. I mean, what we do is primary research to try to understand why different generations do the things they do or don't. How they view the world, why they're interacting in certain ways, different work styles, for example, in addition to things like spending, even attitudes towards credit cards, like what you've referred to a little bit. All of those tend to vary sometimes dramatically by generation. We try to figure out why that's going on, and is it true? Because a lot of things that are said about generations are not true. And so being able to separate myth from truth I think is really valuable for leaders. At least at that event, they're thinking about it through the lens of the banks that they lead. So not only on the lending side, but their team members, various generations of customers that they serve.
Banks, in particular, banking and finance is our largest industry, banking, healthcare, and technology. But banking is interesting because they serve pretty much every generation at the same time. And that puts them in a challenging situation because they tend to represent the generation they're in, much like you in your wonderful presentation with tons of PowerPoints and charts. It was amazing, that sort of thing. If you can help people create a little perspective around that with some healthy data or at least just some stories that are grounded in data, it seems to create more trust and connection and influence, which is really what we try to help people do. So yeah, we think every generation's important.
Mark Zandi: You have your firm, own business, and I know you work with your wife. Can you just tell us a little bit about your story? How did you get to where you are and what you're doing?
Jason Dorsey: Yeah, sure. The slightly extended version, which will make the rest, make it more understandable is I wrote my first book when I was 18, and I really wanted to help my generation and decided that was what I was going to do. I dropped out of college as a junior and said, "I'm going to write a book and I'm going to help my generation, my people," and my parents basically disowned me and I ended up sleeping on the floor for two years. I borrowed money from everybody I could.
I turned 19, I was $50,000 in debt, sleeping on a floor of a garage, a tiny garage apartment, had no furniture, no anything, just 5,000 books that I'd printed. And then, a local newspaper wrote a story about me and said, "This 18-year-old kid writes this book called Graduate to Your Perfect Job, hasn't graduated, doesn't have a job." All of a sudden, I started getting invited to speak and then for whatever reason, people seemed to like it. And then they would buy the books, and then they invite me to speak. That book ended up becoming a big bestseller and I ended up on the Today Show and The View, and all these different TV shows.
Mark Zandi: Oh, cool.
Jason Dorsey: I've been on just over 200 television shows now, 60 Minutes, you name it. Out of that, what led to the research was I was speaking all over the world at arenas and executive retreats and board meetings, and all this sort of stuff. I ended up in DC not far from where you and I spoke, and I was speaking to this big public company to their board of directors, and they were just bashing millennials. I'd been on 60 Minutes and after the 60 Minutes segment, all these companies called all these execs. They're like, "Your people, they're driving us crazy, their pants are falling off, their mom's here, they won't work on their birthday. What is going on? Can you help?"
So I showed up to start speaking to these companies. This one in DC, it was for their board and some executives, and the CEO was just really bashing millennials. This was peak bash millennials time, and I didn't know any better. This was like 2006 or '07, somewhere in there, maybe '08. I just asked him, I said, "Well, can I see your data?" What do I know? I'm still basically a kid. "Can I see your data? Maybe it'll help me to understand what's going on." He sent me their data or their team did, and I was back in the little condo where I lived, and my wife walks in, her name's Denise. She's like, "What are you doing?" I'm like, "Oh, I'm looking at this data. It doesn't make any sense." She's like, "Well, why not?"
I said, "Well, the CEO told me that his millennial engineers are just not great, and yet the data from his own workforce system doesn't match what he said in front of the board of directors and all these executives." I was like, "I don't know what to do about this." Denise, my wife has a PhD, she says, "Well, we should start a research firm because if the CEO of the big fancy company can't read his own data, imagine if we gave him data he could actually use." That's how we started. Everybody thinks it's me because I'm on TV all the time and write all the books. But it actually was her idea because she's a researcher by training. So we started the firm initially just to do studies to separate myth from truth about generations, like what's really going on. But every time we release a study sort of like in your world, we get all this media coverage all the time.
I had three media interviews this morning, by requests. The more we did that, the more companies started hiring us and saying, "Hey, can you do our studies for us?" Or "Can you figure out what's really going on with our customers? Like what you talked about with CBA," or "What's really going on? Do millennials actually want to buy houses," or is this some other thing? Because most of the data in the world, including in economics, which is fun to get to hear Cristian talk about this, most of the data in the world is what we consider tracking data. It's particularly true in economics, but it's true for most of our clients. They're tracking, does something go up, something go down? Did it stay the same? Did it start? Did it stop? All really important things to know. We make decisions based on this all the time.
We run AI models against it, all this stuff. But the challenge with tracking data by definition is generally speaking, it's already happened. That's how it was tracked. It tells us a lot about what happened, but it doesn't tell us why. If we can do studies to figure out why people are doing things or why they're thinking about the world in a certain way, then we can add some layers that don't normally show up. That's what we're really good at. For example, people say all the time, "Younger generations don't want to buy houses." That's total nonsense. Every study we've ever led, they've said they wanted to buy houses, vast majority of them. But they just say they're not ready yet. They don't have the downpayment. They can't afford the monthly payment. They owe student loan debt. We come up with a whole bunch of things, but the headline thing says, "Look, millennials aren't buying houses, therefore the housing market's in trouble." And that's just not true. We try to challenge a lot of those myths-
Mark Zandi: Those myths.
Jason Dorsey: ... yeah, and bring some truth to it. Yeah, and it's fun. I get to speak every day all around the world.
Mark Zandi: That's a very cool story. I didn't realize that. Well, let me ask you this. It has always perplexed me, what defines a generation? I mean, we've got the boomers, we've got Generation X. Then we've got the millennials, then Generation Z. How do these groups of people get combined together? What defines a generation?
Jason Dorsey: Yeah. It's a really hot topic, a debate, but I'll give you my take on it, which is, historically, the way that we looked at generations was actually through death. If you look at mortality rates, so people were looking at originally was how long were people living. They started tracking this. This was kind of interesting. Nobody tracked it before. But all of a sudden a while back, people started looking at how long are you living and all this sort of stuff. Ultimately, what came out of that is people started to think about this concept of a group of people born around the same time. Forever, we've always talked about young people. If you could go read any of the ancient Greek or whatever stuff like, "All these young people are terrible." We've always said that. But that tends to be more life stage and not generational.
What we're really interested in are these generational cohorts. Ultimately, what happened is people probably the mid-1950s, 1960s, 1970s, you started seeing a lot of conversation around generations. Usually, it was tied after events, maybe after World War I, World War II, different things that grouped people through a unifying experience that then they became more similar in certain ways. Baby boomers were a result of all these people coming back from the war. Many times they didn't have jobs, they had skills that were misaligned with what was going on, and they wanted to go make babies. So we had this massive baby boom, which by the way, Gen Z and millennials don't know that baby boomers were actually named for a baby boom.
Mark Zandi: Oh, really?
Jason Dorsey: That's pretty funny, right?
Mark Zandi: Yeah, it is.
Jason Dorsey: Y'all are like, "Of course, baby boomers."
Mark Zandi: I just take it for granted, yeah.
Jason Dorsey: Yeah, like everybody knows what that is. No, that's totally a generational assignment of the name. You started having this conversation, and a bunch of people pioneered the space and talked about who you are is where you were when, and a lot of themes around that. Where it got off track is people started to use generations to divide us. It's happened a lot during the '60s and the '70s. You can even see some of my, well, there's my Life Magazine, this side right there.
Mark Zandi: There you go.
Jason Dorsey: It says the Generation Gap, and that is from 1966. If you look really closely at the cover of that Life Magazine, it's an older guy and a younger guy yelling at each other, and the younger person has long hair. The older guy's like, "What's wrong with these young people?" This is not a new conversation, right?
Mark Zandi: Right, right.
Jason Dorsey: But what then became this common accepted definition is a generations every 20 years, which is total garbage. It's completely made up, but everybody likes it because we like round numbers. We're like, "Oh, 20 years. That makes sense." It doesn't mean anything. What we try to look at at CGK is what we call predictability by scenario, which is when is a group of people born about the same time raised in about the same place start to behave differently than the group before or after them. You don't actually know, for example, we don't know when a generation starts and stops until enough time has passed where you can look back and go, "Oh ,look. It stopped back there. We had something that happened. So for example, an easy one. In the US, 9/11 was a defining event for millennials, people like me. That was our like, "Where were you at that period of time? Who were you with? How did you feel?" All of those things.
Typically, you create fear of the unknown and it challenges your beliefs or your views of the future. You're like, "Oh my gosh, the future. I don't know what's going to happen." That's what causes us to stop on our tracks. It looks different in different places around the world. 9/11 in other parts of the world means something totally different. I want to go speak there, it's a totally different experience or no experience like Brexit and other places, tsunamis, wars. We can talk about all that. But the idea is that if you took 9/11, which happened in 2001, what people historically would do, including a bunch of big famous research firms is they would say, "Well, the generation ended in 2001." That's total nonsense because you have to be old enough to remember the experience, to create fear of the unknown, to contextualize it in some way and to assign a value to it.
You actually have to back up. We were the ones who came out and said millennials actually in around 1996. Because if born after that, you probably don't remember 9/11. It wasn't a shared experience. You assign no cultural or other values to it. It's like you just don't remember it. The generation went in before the date of the actual experience. Sometimes, you have really clear events that happen. We call them generation-defining moments, and you're like, "Oh, this happened," and we're going to back up and we're going to know when this mattered. Challenger explosion in the US, many of you all know the challenger tragedy. It skews younger than normal because there was a teacher on board. Because there was a teacher on board, they showed it during school when the tragedy happened. If a teacher hadn't been on board, it wouldn't have impacted kids so young because it would've made the evening news. Does that make sense?
All these sorts of things play into it. When we look at this predictability by scenario, you start to get these broader trends. Our whole belief is, and this is what I talk about in all my speeches is that generations are clues and not a box. Everybody wants to put us in boxes based on our birth year and it never works. But what they are is they're clues that if we understand the clues through research and data, they help us to better connect and build trust and have influence. They give us a headstart, and that's the end of it. There's no, "Oh, you're born in '72. You're all these things." If we can begin to process it that way, then you see them as clues and out of box, then we start to look at what unifies them. Ironically or interestingly for y'all, the top unifier is geography.
Mark Zandi: Geography.
Jason Dorsey: Yeah. If I speak outside the US and you want to talk about generations, they can be vastly different than a generation in the US. But people don't ever talk about that. They're like, "Oh, we're just going to pick up this construct and drop it somewhere else." And it doesn't work. Like Cristian, you're in Italy, very different events shaped Italy. At the same time, totally different relationship with government and politics in Italy. Lots going on there. Totally different history.
Mark Zandi: Here in the US, the generations are, at least in my mind, the boomer then the Generation X that followed, which was a smaller generation. Then the Generation Y, which is the millennials. That's you. Cris and Marisa, what do you characterize yourself? Xers or ...
Cris deRitis: I'm an Xer.
Mark Zandi: You're an Xer. Marisa, are you an Xer?
Marisa DiNatale: Yeah.
Mark Zandi: You're an Xer.
Marisa DiNatale: Yeah.
Mark Zandi: Then we have Generation Z, and then I guess now we've got Generation Alpha that's starting to develop, at least that's in my mind the way ... Is that how you think about generations here in the US? Is that roughly right?
Jason Dorsey: Yes, roughly. We actually think baby boomers are two generations and not one. They've just been misgrouped because older boomers and younger boomers had very different formative events.
Mark Zandi: Totally agree with that. Totally agree. Am I an older or a younger boomer? Just looking at me, what do you think, Jason?
Jason Dorsey: I don't know because I see-
Marisa DiNatale: And remember, he doesn't own a pair of jeans, so take that into-
Jason Dorsey: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he's strongly unique.
Mark Zandi: I'm my own generation.
Jason Dorsey: There you go.
Mark Zandi: There you go.
Jason Dorsey: That totally true.
Mark Zandi: Yeah, yeah.
Jason Dorsey: Yeah, but the way you just responded to that is how roomfuls of executives respond. Because for the last 50 years, they've been told they're one generation and you're like, no. You're talking about a group that was more '50s or '60s kids versus '70s, very different experiences like technology, parenting style, what was going on in the world and so forth.
Mark Zandi: Right.
Jason Dorsey: Yeah, boomers like you said, Gen X, which you referred to our Gen Xers on here, Gen X are the most questioning and skeptical.
Mark Zandi: Oh, is that right?
Jason Dorsey: They always ask the most questions. Oh yeah, for sure.
Mark Zandi: Huh.
Jason Dorsey: Yeah, yeah. They really are [inaudible 00:21:20].
Mark Zandi: That's definitely Marisa. She's very questioning, yeah.
Jason Dorsey: Yeah. Well, she's had to bite her tongue like four times she's wanted to ask a question.
Mark Zandi: Yeah.
Jason Dorsey: While Gen X appears shorter, when most people share the birth years, it's actually not true because if you think about boomers really being two generations, not one, it's a little bit more similar to Gen X.
Mark Zandi: I see.
Jason Dorsey: From millennials, which are Gen Y and then they switch the name, same generation, we think millennials are going to break apart as well. We're definitely starting to see that. But what we always try to separate is life stage from generation. Because everybody thinks that you're like, "If you're 25, you're a millennial." No, there's no millennials who are 25 anymore.
Mark Zandi: Right.
Jason Dorsey: Or 40 something. That's a whole huge generation. So you have that. And then Gen Z, like you said, I predict, which is unfortunate because my book is called Zconomy over there, Gen Z, their name will be changed eventually because Gen Z was a filler name just like Gen Y. It was a continuation of Gen X. It's a lazy name. Then Gen Alpha, which is this emerging generation, we don't know what their name will ultimately be, but what we've been studying is that they will not remember COVID. We know for a fact that the COVID experience is not a part of their experience. So done deal, they don't remember it.
What we don't know is when Gen Z ends and Gen Alpha or whatever you want to call them begins because they're too young to do our type of studies, because we have to have parental consent and you have to watch them and all this sort of stuff. We also don't know if Gen Z is going to break apart as well, because older Gen Zs had a very different COVID experience than younger Gen Zers. If you think about that, you were maybe in college or starting out in the world, and all of a sudden everything turns upside down. Maybe you go back in with your parents, you suddenly have remote work, which all of a sudden is normal for your career trajectory and a whole nother conversation. All of these things happen. Government sends you money. This is all new and it's all they know.
Where the younger part of the same generation had a very different experience. My daughter's 13 and during COVID, she suddenly went to remote school. She goes, at that time went to a Spanish school. So she's doing fully remote school in Spanish over Zoom at home. That's a very different experience than somebody who was much older and had a friend group or other things. Texas had a very different experience than for example, New York. All of these things play into that. So yes, that's a sequence of the generations. The birth years will vary by the way around the world because it's not exactly the same. You have to always be careful like when I speak a lot outside the US, you want to try to make it as appropriate as you can for the geography that's represented.
Mark Zandi: Can I ask, do people in the rest of the world think about generations the same way we do? I understand what you're saying is that the generations are different because their experiences are different. But do they think about the world in terms of generations? It feels like here in the US, when we talk about demographics, we think about generations. That's the natural way we frame the conversation in the way we think. Is that the way the rest of the world thinks about things as well?
Jason Dorsey: Not in the way that we do in the states.
Mark Zandi: Oh, okay.
Jason Dorsey: For example, in other parts of the world, they have different relationships with people that are elders, for example. If you have a different relationship with how you think about people aging like historically, maybe they moved in with you when they got older versus what we do here in the US, that started changes the idea. You always have a pretty consistent older versus younger conversation because that does play out pretty much everywhere in all the ways you can think of.
Where we see the most conversation is around Gen Z and millennials, and the reason is, they are the trend drivers. And so people like to talk about them. They also tend to be more different than previous generations, and people want to talk about that and they want to understand that. I do a ton of work outside the US, but they really want to hear about millennials and Gen Z, and what are the trends that they're bringing and how do we think about them more so than understanding boomers who they tend to be in the room or Gen X. They're like, "We got us. What about this other group?" Those are really hot conversations outside the US. We do a ton of work and studies outside the US, too.
Mark Zandi: Okay. Coming back to the US, I'd like to talk a little bit about each generation and maybe the way to do this is what is your favorite generation? I mean, I don't know if that's a fair question. But that's most interesting, that's just a little weird or a little off. You define it the way you want to define it, but what generation do you find the most interesting, that you like the most to focus on?
Jason Dorsey: Yeah. I'm going to answer your question. What happens a lot of times is people only want me to talk about one generation like just talk about Gen Z. But that generation, if they're watching feels picked on and everybody else is going, "What about me?" What we're actually trying to create is generational context, which is how are they similar and different so we can build bridges? But the one I like to study the most is Gen Z.
Mark Zandi: Gen Z.
Jason Dorsey: And that's because they're very different than advertised. And I love that. We're constantly shocked by our findings and we're like, "Wow, this is amazing," because you think you know something and then you do the research. I'm sure all of y'all, this is your space and you're like, "Wow, I had no idea that that's true." And then it just leads to all these other things. I'll give you one that's like a hot potato, for example because I know you all data here. In our study, we do a state of Gen Z study every year. In our last study we did, we found that 70% of Generation Z, so they're all the way up into like 26, 27-ish, 70% of Gen Z believes in universal basic income.
Mark Zandi: Say that again. How many? What percent?
Jason Dorsey: 70. 7-0.
Mark Zandi: Oh, wow. That is interesting.
Jason Dorsey: I'm watching all three of your faces. It's so fascinating because all of us go, well, is that a good thing or is that a bad thing? How do I feel about that and what does that mean to my own family? How does this impact retirement? What do you think-
Mark Zandi: For folks out there, universal basic income is the government provides a certain level of income regardless of anything. You just get this income and you can use it however you want to use it, and everyone gets it. Everyone gets it.
Jason Dorsey: Yeah, basic living wage provided by the government to pretty much everybody that's over adult and then adult age. It's wild. We've been doing this for years and that number keeps going up. It jumped up dramatically after COVID because of what happened during COVID.
Mark Zandi: Right, I remember that.
Jason Dorsey: The government sent stimulus pay.
Mark Zandi: Yep, exactly,
Jason Dorsey: Exactly. Now all of a sudden, something nobody thought was possible is suddenly what? Possible. And you can't put the genie back in the bottle. But when I share that stat as an example, half of a room is like, "We are totally in trouble. The world is ending." The other half is like, "Finally they got it."
Mark Zandi: Speaking as a boomer though, I'll have to tell you, my mind has changed. I think my mind is changing on this. I was of the traditional view, "Really? You want to do what exactly?" I mean, aren't people just going to stop working? I mean, what's going to happen to the world? Now I'm going, "Oh, well maybe that makes some sense." There are some experiments around the country. We actually had a nice conversation with someone who is operating universal basic income program in Denver, and the results are really quite interesting. I mean, really things are turning out much better than I would've anticipated. It's giving people options and choices, and making their lives better and everyone else's lives better. So speaking as a boomer or maybe I'm that weird boomer again, my mind is changing on this one.
Jason Dorsey: Yeah. In our studies, because of cross generation, the older you are, the less you support it. It's really clear.
Mark Zandi: Yeah, okay.
Jason Dorsey: I just shared that because we don't have to assign a value to it. To me it's not, is it good or bad? That's everybody else's personal choice. But if I bring that and people go, "Oh, okay," and then we talk about the fact that Gen Z doesn't believe they'll ever be able to afford to retire. Okay, that's really interesting. Now, if you don't think you'll be able to afford to retire, and in our studies what we see is Gen Z doesn't believe social security will exist, not in any meaningful way. So now all of a sudden, and this is how we help leaders think about this, you have a generation that's, I don't know, 25 years old, and they think that they're going to have to work forever.
The government is not going to be able to support them. They're probably going to have to end up supporting their own parents. And they're already starting to figure this out because seeing these things play out. Then you go to them, this happens to me at events all the time, they come be like, "Jason, I know you are all positive about Gen Z, but they're just lazy." I'm like, "Well, okay, maybe. Why do you think they're lazy?" They're like, "Well, we offer unlimited paid overtime, as much paid overtime as you want and they never take it." I'm like, "Okay. Well, are you open to another perspective? You don't have to agree with it like it or anything." They're like, [inaudible 00:30:29]. I'm like, "Okay. Well, if you're 25 years old-
Mark Zandi: That sounds like Cris, by the way. Do you want to do that again? Cris, this sounds like you.
Jason Dorsey: [inaudible 00:30:38].
Mark Zandi: There you go. That's definitely Cris, really.
Jason Dorsey: But if you're 25 years old and you think you're going to work for the next 70 years, you truly believe this, do you want to work on Saturdays? Do you want to work overtime at night? No. There's tons of behavioral reasons. It's not that they're lazy. They're going, "I got to work for 70 more years. Why be in a rush?"
Mark Zandi: Are you sure about that, Jason, though? Are you sure that's the way they're thinking?
Jason Dorsey: Well, in our studies, they consistently tell us that work-life balance is dramatically more important to them, that they don't think they should be in a hurry, that they're going to be working forever, all of these things. If you start to add it together, it's not a huge leap to go, "Well, there are probably good reasons behind the choices they're making," which is really what we're trying to get people to see. We're not saying it's the right choice. We're just saying-
Mark Zandi: It's not that you're lazy. You're just saying they've got a different worldview because they've got different circumstances, at least in their thinking about how things are going to play out, they've got a different worldview.
Jason Dorsey: That's what we're trying to get people to see. It's like, we don't need people to agree with each other. That's not our goal. We're not trying to create consensus. But if I can get somebody to go, "Oh, there are real reasons behind their thinking. It's not just that they're lazy, then maybe we can have a better conversation and get to know what they really want or figure out some other way to shift recruitment." I'll give you an example. We have to solve workforce problems for companies all the time. Everybody thinks all these jobs are hybrid in the world or remote. The majority of the jobs in the US are still not hybrid or remote. You got to show up and do stuff. If you're in manufacturing, you got to show up every day. We have to solve the problem of, how do you recruit and retain people that maybe you don't think about work the same way you do?
For example, one of the solutions we found with our clients is if you can shift your start or stop hours by one hour, so if you let people show up, let's pretend it was 8:00 to 5:00 just for simple, and you let them show up at 9:00 and stay until 6:00 or show up at 7:00 and leave at 4:00, you can drive really significant recruiting and retention outcomes without having to pay people more money. All of a sudden the manufacturers go, "Oh, it's not that they're lazy, they're trying to fit this into their lifestyle. And if we can just be flexible a little bit, we can achieve our goals and they can achieve their goals." All of a sudden, now you've got people rolling this out and it's really working. Those are the sort of solutions we can ultimately get to if we don't start from the place of, "Well, they're just lazy." But it takes a while to get people to understand that and once they do, it's like the whole world changes. It's amazing.
Mark Zandi: Gen Z is the generation you like the most? The most interesting, the most interesting to ...
Jason Dorsey: I think they're the least understood just because of their age.
Mark Zandi: Least understood, okay.
Jason Dorsey: And they're still forming a lot of their beliefs and opinions. I mean, if you think about it, they've entered the workforce later than any previous generation that we've studied. They are getting their driver's license if they're getting it later than ever before. We could go through this whole long list of things that are dramatically different, including their communications profile. So yeah, they're causing all kinds of challenges and we see them as opportunities. So that's really interesting. The generation we most focus on retaining for clients is actually Gen X because Marisa and Cristian, or Cris, Gen X in our research is deciding over the next three years, do they stay where they are and finish out their career or do they go somewhere else?
All of a sudden, Gen X becomes the most important generation to retain, not Gen Z or millennials. Now, we've got to work with these companies to go, "Okay. Well, what's your Gen X retention strategy?" We may not call it that, but just this idea of people that are in these roles are being poached and they're deciding, do they make one more move or not? And they have the experience, they have the relationships, they have all of these things, so they're really sought after. But if we focus all our attention on Gen Z, we actually miss the people with experience that we need to keep. That's why the conversation becomes very layered and for me, really fun.
Mark Zandi: Gen Z, are they the generation defined by 9/11? That's kind of the event ... No?
Jason Dorsey: They don't remember 9/11 which is our big discovery.
Mark Zandi: They don't remember 9/11.
Jason Dorsey: Yeah. They're the generation after 9/11. Mm-hmm.
Marisa DiNatale: What were the birth years, Jason? Just to level set.
Jason Dorsey: Yeah. Everybody has their own birth years that they use. That's even a hot topic like who names what generation, all of these sorts of things. We think of them as clues and not a box. They're a guide. If you're born around any of the birth years, usually within two or three years, you're a cusper, anyway, which is a huge advantage because it makes you empathetic to both. You're a natural bridge and in our work, you're more likely to be in a leadership role because cuspers tend to move up, because they've had to be a bridge. It's really fascinating. I spoke at two different events this week and we had all the cuspers in the room raised their hands, and it was way more than it should statistically have, because naturally had to be a bridge, which is really fascinating.
For Gen Z for example, we usually start around 1996, 1997 as the oldest, their beginning birth years. We're not exactly sure when Gen Z ends because of all the things I talked about. They're minors. So there's only so much research that you can do to really see their behavioral differences, but we know there's a generation born after them. If we had to guess, it might be like 2012-ish might be the end of them, something like that, but somewhere in that range. Millennials are a huge generation. If you were born anywhere from 1980-ish, slightly before that to slightly after, depending on who you ask, up to about 1995, '96. Massive generation, 80-ish million in the United States. Everybody thinks we're not working. We're the largest generation in the workforce.
Mark Zandi: And that's the generation-
Jason Dorsey: [inaudible 00:36:06] we will get it.
Mark Zandi: That's the generation that's influenced by 9/1, I guess. That would be the one.
Jason Dorsey: You got it, yeah.
Mark Zandi: Okay. So what's generation Z? What's the event that defines Generation Z or events? Is there one?
Jason Dorsey: COVID.
Mark Zandi: Oh, COVID. Okay, sure. Absolutely, yeah.
Jason Dorsey: It wasn't an event. This is the thing where you really get into the weeds in our work. 9/11 was an event. It was something that happened, and then depending on where you were, you were connected to it in different ways. COVID, in our work is really important because it was a true global event, and it wasn't just a day or a week or a month. I was doing virtual events all around the world for that whole period of time, and we would have Gen Zers on one of the events from one of the big companies you would know, so we would have them from Singapore, we would have them from all across the Middle East. We have them in all these different places and in many ways, they were having some of the same experiences. Now, did it vary? Sure. But a lot of what they were feeling and sharing with us was very similar. It's a true global event in ways that we've not had global events, which is really wild.
It became very unifying in terms of a generational identity. Right or wrong, it doesn't matter. Just it's something that they experienced. And because it happened over such a long period of time, it created all kinds of side effects and outcomes that we're still dealing with. Massive mental health issues being one of the most important that's not talked about enough. There's so much there that this generation went through all around the world. Gen Z, interestingly in our work continues to be the most consistent generation in the world. Whenever we do these global studies for all these big brands, Gen Z is more similar than any other generation due to cheap mobile technology, social media, and COVID, they tend to be much more similar. The older you go, the more they're from different planets. Boomers in different parts of the world are all over the place.
Mark Zandi: Really? Really?
Jason Dorsey: Yeah.
Mark Zandi: Interesting. Because COVID-
Jason Dorsey: [inaudible 00:37:54]
Mark Zandi: Since COVID was such a global event and everyone had the shared experience, that defined that generation and it's very consistent across the globe.
Jason Dorsey: It was a consistent influence, yeah. Consistency and being the same are different. They're not the same everywhere. But they had this one big shared experience. What happened was, and I'm always careful about the word, shared. They went through an experience at the same time. Their experience could still be very different, but a lot of the emotions and things that they felt, their parents not knowing how to help them, which was a big theme, being one, two, three people away from somebody who died, all of these hit at a really critical life stage in terms of their maturation and had this huge impact all around the world. When I talk about in different places, people really respond to it, particularly Gen Z because this was such a formative experience that they went through. But if you look back and you try to name one, y'all are all economists, what's the last time that there was an event or experience that people went through all around the same time, all around the world, across socioeconomics? Across all of these things.
Mark Zandi: Yeah. Yeah. Good point. Okay. So that's Generation Z. It talked a little bit about the millennials. What's the defining event for Generation X? What would define Generation X?
Jason Dorsey: Yeah, also hotly debated. When we look at Gen X, remember you talked about that they were these shorter birth years. Depending on how you look at it, it tends to be around 1965-ish to anywhere from '76 to '78-ish. That's the group that they have there. This is where the Challenger explosion. We think the Challenger explosion was very big deal for Gen X. You can also see in the US, oil embargoes. "I'm not a crook," all sorts of stuff that you can talk about. Big ones for us in our work though are things like, this is kind of interesting, most people won't guess this, women entering the workforce. Massive impact on Gen X. Divorce straight through the roof. Massive impact on Gen X. What do you end up with? Latchkey kids? What are latchkey kids really, really good at? Being self-reliant and skeptical. I mean, even things which is funny like the microwave had a huge impact and nobody talks about it. It's so funny. But, yeah.
Mark Zandi: What do you mean? How so?
Jason Dorsey: The microwave was a big deal. People were able to go home and make their own food and not have their mom cook it for them, that was a big deal.
Mark Zandi: Oh, I see. I see.
Jason Dorsey: It was made quickly, which was a big deal. Latchkey kids could do it. Microwaves were expensive. If you bought a house, microwave didn't convey with it initially, these are big things that we overlook because they're not big to us. If I talk about the microwave because I talk about technology a lot, younger people are dying laughing like, "Who cares? It's a freaking microwave." I'm like, "No. This was a breakthrough through."
Mark Zandi: Yeah, yeah.
Jason Dorsey: It's all generational context.
Mark Zandi: Marisa and Cris, you're Xers. Does that resonate with you? It does?
Marisa DiNatale: It does to me, yeah. The microwave and the latchkey kid thing goes hand in hand. I could heat up Hot Pockets every day when I got home from school and I was alone babysitting a seven-year-old when I was 10. Yeah, yeah. My mom going back to work and us being alone every day for a few hours, it was definitely a defining part of my childhood.
Mark Zandi: Interesting.
Marisa DiNatale: The space shuttle Challenger, I remember everything about that experience in that day. I remember them wheeling a television into the classroom for us to all watch it. I think I was in second grade when it, second or something like that. But certainly [inaudible 00:41:41] kid.
Jason Dorsey: Gen X also was in the eye of the AIDS epidemic. I mean, there's so many things that happened during that period of time. That's where it's interesting. You dive into late '70s, early to mid-'80s, and you come up with all kinds of things. And people attach that to millennials. But you got to remember, millennials are too ... That's why you always have to think about what was the formative age when they were going through this. I mean, in some places we'll talk about hip hop. All of these things are important and that's why it's clues and not a box, and geography has a massive role. Even in the US, you see trends earlier in urban areas, and so they would take longer to ripple out. Same thing if you're affluent, you would see trends sooner. There's all kinds of interesting stuff around that. Gen X is caught between these two big generations. They're never talked about, they're always overlooked. Their theme is trust but verify. They always want to see my data. I mean, I love them. It's amazing. That sort of stuff is just really fun for what we do.
Mark Zandi: Cris, that doesn't resonate with you though, huh?
Cris deRitis: I hesitate to speak, though, because I'm skeptical. I'm skeptical.
Jason Dorsey: The number one attribute of the whole thing.
Cris deRitis: I'm not skeptical of the whole generational construct, but, yeah. I certainly remember the challenge. I remember I was in Health class and the TV being wheeled in and watching the launch, and then all of a sudden the horror. But I think it's more, I would identify perhaps more on the different technology, like the Walkman. That's a big deal. Or Star Wars coming out. PCs, computers. I would identify more with those, but I don't know. I am a bit skeptical the whole generational construct here, to your point. And you make all the points about it varies so much by geography, so how can we really say these cohorts are similar? The more I speak, the more I emphasize my Generation X-[inaudible 00:43:37] through the point.
Jason Dorsey: The irony.
Cris deRitis: The irony, yeah.
Jason Dorsey: It's funny because when I'm talking about Gen X. We spend most of the time talking about their healthy skepticism. And some people take it as cynicism, and that's applying a judgment to it. What's interesting is Gen X is the most loyal generation, which is really fascinating, because once they buy into something and believe it, they're by far the most loyal, which is really wild. They'll follow bosses different places they go, but they get a boss they don't like, then they're going to go to another place. It's really fascinating. There's a lot there that we could dig into. But Gen X is really important and we think people don't talk about them enough. I actually spoke at an event not long ago, and people change title.
My talk is Crossing the Generational Divide, and it's all these hidden insights and data, and it's stories, and it's hilarious. It's really funny. And then we share a bunch of strategies that we've tested that work across the industry or the situation we're trying to solve for them. But this one client, they changed the name of my talk, which happens all the time. They said, "A Conversation About Generations: Gen Z, Millennials and Boomers Getting to the Heart of It." I'm like, "Again?" They left out Gen X right out of the title. It was so funny. They just never get talked about. They're actually the glue in the workforce, which is really fun. So most skeptical of the generation conversation, by the way.
Mark Zandi: Cris, is there anything else you wanted to say about why you're skeptical about this whole generational concept or should we just move on?
Cris deRitis: We can move on. I mean, even just the birth years, for example, there are different definitions. Forgive me, it seems a bit like a horoscope where you can see yourself in any definition that you give me. I could see those positive attributes of a Gen X. But if you hid the name and describe Gen Z, I'd probably see positive attributes of myself in that same description.
Jason Dorsey: Yeah. Well, and you're right on, Cris, that everybody's a mix of these. The way I view them as clues and not a box, we've built 140 studies now, a massive consistency in terms of the answers. We can even predict what a lot of them are based on the generation. At one level, they're pretty highly predictive. And then at another level, we're all still people. We're all still unique. We also have the experiences we have in the world. I always believe, and this way we teach leaders, is like, this is one of many lens to understand people better. If we just add that to every other thing that you're learning about others, it's just another way to be hopefully a little more empathetic and understanding, and remove the us versus them, which is how a lot of these conversations become.
We really want to make it positive and constructive like how do we bring people together? Because for our clients who are trying to grow their business, they're solving a workforce problem or a sales problem, they need to have better understanding to drive deeper connection in whatever that situation is. If we can make it a little bit better for you to be skeptical of me to go, "Ah, it's fine. Cristian's skeptical. Of course, he's skeptical. He want to go download the studies and see what they say. It's totally fine." To not take that person like this is amazing. We can have a deeper conversation. But we'll have, for example, millennials we work with, and they'll be like, "Oh, Cristian started questioning me. He doesn't like me." We have to teach millennials, "No. It's not that Cristian doesn't like you. It's that he doesn't believe you." If you know that, then you will know how to work really well with him. And that's what we teach. And this happens every day.
Mark Zandi: That's better. That's better.
Cris deRitis: That's better.
Mark Zandi: That's better.
Jason Dorsey: Yeah. We can deal with that.
Cris deRitis: That's got nothing to do with [inaudible 00:46:59].
Mark Zandi: He loves you, but he doesn't believe you. Yeah.
Jason Dorsey: Yeah, which is totally workable.
Cris deRitis: It's workable.
Jason Dorsey: It's funny, but it's totally true. That's why I love this stuff. Yeah, it's fun.
Mark Zandi: I want to come back and talk about the boomers. Personally, my favorite generation just saying. But before we do that, let's play this stats game because that could be a lot of fun in the context of this conversation, and that is we each put forward a statistic. The rest of the group tries to figure that out with clues, questions, deductive reasoning. We want a stat that's not so hard that we'll never get it. One that's not so easy, we get it right away. If it's apropos to the topic at hand, that would be great. I've got a really good stat, but I generally go last. So I'll stick to that. Maybe we'll go with the tradition is to have Marisa go first. Marisa, you want to go first?
Marisa DiNatale: Sure. And it's not germane to the conversation, so apologies on that.
Mark Zandi: It's not germane to the conversation?
Marisa DiNatale: No.
Mark Zandi: You're not going first, then.
Marisa DiNatale: All right.
Mark Zandi: No, no, go ahead. Go ahead. Fire away.
Marisa DiNatale: It's an economic indicator that came out last week. I was trying to look for something age related, but I gave up.
Mark Zandi: Okay, go ahead.
Marisa DiNatale: So minus 0.5% in May.
Mark Zandi: And this was? Oh, gosh.
Cris deRitis: Leading economic indicators.
Marisa DiNatale: Yep. There you go.
Mark Zandi: Oh, and you're on vacation.
Cris deRitis: There you go.
Mark Zandi: Holy macaroni!
Cris deRitis: [inaudible 00:48:28] indicators.
Mark Zandi: Okay, so explain. Why'd you pick that?
Marisa DiNatale: This is the conference board's index of leading economic indicators. We look at this every month. It has 10 different economic indicators in it and historically, it's been pretty good at predicting a recession when this has been deeply negative for a period of time. It's been in negative territory for about two years, and it fell again in May. Actually, we got a listener question about this specific piece of data recently, which is why I picked it because I thought we could talk about it a little bit. It's touted as having really good predictive power on recessions. It's been basically predicting a recession though for quite a long time, and we haven't had that. Some of the things that go into it are other things that typically predict recessions, like the yield curve is one of the indicators that is part of this leading indicator. Consumer confidence is in this as well and has been dragging this lower, and we've talked a lot about consumer confidence and how it's at odds with the economic data. It's-
Mark Zandi: Minus 0.5. That sounds pretty negative.
Marisa DiNatale: Yeah, it's just-
Mark Zandi: Leaning into it or it's been wrong for two years, it's just still wrong?
Marisa DiNatale: Exactly. It's been negative every single month, it has fallen for two years, right?
Mark Zandi: Yeah.
Marisa DiNatale: At what point do you say, this is no longer predicting a recession?
Mark Zandi: I said that a year ago. It's no longer ... I said that 10 years ago.
Marisa DiNatale: But there are many people that say, well, it just hasn't happened yet. It can't predict the timing of a recession.
Mark Zandi: Well, there will be a recession at some point.
Marisa DiNatale: Exactly. At what point is it just lapping itself, right?
Mark Zandi: Yeah.
Marisa DiNatale: The person who asked this question of us pointed to it and said, many economists look at this and say that it's never been wrong. Is this yet another economic indicator that's wrong in predicting a recession? And I would say, it's probably time to give it up on that. Like I said, the yield curve is one of the indicators that is in this, that is also not-
Mark Zandi: Is the University of Michigan survey in there, too? I think it is, isn't it? This consumer sentiment from the University of Michigan?
Marisa DiNatale: Well, the conference board's consumer confidence survey is in it. I don't know about University of Michigan.
Mark Zandi: That's right. It's a conference board. You're right.
Marisa DiNatale: This is the conference board.
Mark Zandi: Okay.
Marisa DiNatale: I doubt Michigan is in it.
Mark Zandi: No, probably not. Probably not.
Marisa DiNatale: Yeah.
Mark Zandi: No, I would expect not. I guess my thought was that most recessions are led by the declines in interest rate sensitive manufacturing and construction sectors. Those two sectors of the economy have held up admirably well for lots of idiosyncratic reasons. They've gone flat, essentially, but they're not declining. Therefore, the leading indicators just aren't as useful because they're really focused on those two sectors. And those two sectors just have not led the way down [inaudible 00:51:53].
Marisa DiNatale: Yeah, that's true. I mean, it's very focused on the manufacturing sector and not so much on services.
Mark Zandi: Right, right.
Marisa DiNatale: It's got all these financial metrics in it. That's right. So it could be over-weighting how manufacturing and goods producers are doing.
Mark Zandi: But that was pretty impressive, Cris. Holy cow. When you're on vacation, you're just like, boom. I was getting settled in to ask a bunch of questions and you nailed it right away. That's pretty-
Cris deRitis: I'm waiting for that recession.
Mark Zandi: Jason, do you see how this is done? Do you want to play?
Jason Dorsey: I think I think so.
Mark Zandi: Yeah, okay. Do you want to do one more with Cris and then we'll come to you?
Jason Dorsey: Yeah, sure. Let's give it a shot.
Mark Zandi: Let's do one with Cris. Cris, it's [inaudible 00:52:25].
Cris deRitis: Mine is, it's more germane to me. It's all about me than the topic.
Mark Zandi: Oh, it's all about you. That's also, that's an extra thing, isn't it?
Marisa DiNatale: How very Gen X of you.
Mark Zandi: It's all about me, me, me, me. If you want it, I'll give it to you, but otherwise we can move on. Go ahead. Fire away.
Cris deRitis: You want it? Okay. Let's see.
Mark Zandi: I want it, definitely.
Cris deRitis: This'll be impressive. Two numbers, 5% and 33%. And I kind of alluded to it at the top of the hour.
Mark Zandi: Oh, boy. I don't remember the top of the hour at all. I can barely remember five minutes ago.
Marisa DiNatale: Does it have something to do with Italian tourism?
Cris deRitis: Yes.
Mark Zandi: Oh! Currency. Currency [inaudible 00:53:08].
Cris deRitis: Not just Italian tourism, but European tourism. I should give it to you.
Mark Zandi: What are the two numbers again? 5% ...
Cris deRitis: 5% and 33%.
Mark Zandi: 5%. And you're saying it's related to tourism?
Cris deRitis: Yes. European tourism.
Marisa DiNatale: Is it the makeup of tourists? You were talking about-
Cris deRitis: You're so close.
Marisa DiNatale: What?
Cris deRitis: I'm going to give it to you. You're so close. 5%-
Mark Zandi: US tourists are up 33%? Overall tourists 5%?
Cris deRitis: No.
Mark Zandi: No. Okay.
Cris deRitis: They're both shares. If you want to keep going.
Mark Zandi: Oh, oh.
Marisa DiNatale: Is it Americans and Chinese tourists?
Mark Zandi: Japanese?
Cris deRitis: Nope. Nope. Let me just give it to you.
Mark Zandi: Give it to us.
Cris deRitis: 5% is the population, the share of the global population in the EU, in the European Union.
Mark Zandi: Okay.
Marisa DiNatale: Okay.
Cris deRitis: 33% is the share of international tourist dollars in the European Union.
Mark Zandi: Oh, okay.
Cris deRitis: Just to show the displacement here. So $500 trillion of, I'm sorry. $500 billion of tourist dollars are spent in the EU every year. So just to show that-
Marisa DiNatale: 33% of tourist dollars are spent in the EU.
Cris deRitis: Correct. Of all international tourism-
Marisa DiNatale: Yep, yep. Wow.
Cris deRitis: ... you gets a third, even though it only has 5% of the population.
Mark Zandi: That is all about me, me, me, me.
Cris deRitis: Yeah, yeah. Exactly.
Mark Zandi: All right. Jason, you want to go next?
Jason Dorsey: All right, I'll give it a shot. I've changed mine since I got to hear y'all's, too. The number's 45%. Do y'all guess now? How does it work? Or should I give you something else?
Mark Zandi: Oh, yeah, yeah. Is it related to generational dynamics?
Jason Dorsey: It's related to generations, money, and food.
Mark Zandi: Generations, money, and food, 45%. It's a share of something? No?
Jason Dorsey: No [inaudible 00:55:07].
Mark Zandi: It a growth rate? Is it a growth rate?
Jason Dorsey: It's a percentage that have done or not done something in the last three months.
Marisa DiNatale: Oh, eaten out in a restaurant.
Jason Dorsey: Now you're getting closer, yeah.
Mark Zandi: You know what I read? I'm just going to throw it out there that 45% of people have worked in jobs where they got tips. I think it's actually 43% maybe. But that's not what you had in mind.
Jason Dorsey: Nope. But we're circling it.
Cris deRitis: You're saying ever, ever worked in a job.
Mark Zandi: Ever. Ever worked at a ...
Cris deRitis: Yeah, a job where you got a tip.
Mark Zandi: At a job where they've gotten a tip, 43% of American.
Jason Dorsey: This is not a workforce stat or work related stat.
Mark Zandi: That's in the context of President Trump proposing not taxing tips. That's where I learned that stat. With that said, 45% of Americans, it says generational and money, 45% ...
Jason Dorsey: It's Gen Z, so I'll make it even more specific.
Mark Zandi: Okay. 45% of Gen Z ...
Jason Dorsey: I have the other generations here, too, but yeah.
Marisa DiNatale: Have not cooked at home in the last three months or something like that?
Jason Dorsey: Oh, that's a good guess. I like that.
Cris deRitis: Use a microwave on a daily basis.
Mark Zandi: I use the microwave continually all day long. When I have a cup of coffee, it has to be the same temperature. So every time it comes down to degree, I stick it into the microwave. All morning long, I'm doing the, excuse me, the microwave, doing the microwave.
Jason Dorsey: You know, that's a solved problem. They have these wonderful services.
Mark Zandi: I know, I know.
Jason Dorsey: On your phone, you can actually set the temperature, and it'll stay there all day.
Mark Zandi: But Jason, I like this certain mug. I have to have this mug. That's my problem. That's my problem.
Jason Dorsey: I have a mug right here.
Mark Zandi: There you go. If you could solve that problem-
Cris deRitis: That's definitely boomer behavior.
Mark Zandi: It's boomer behavior.
Marisa DiNatale: Microwaving something over and over again for hours.
Jason Dorsey: Yeah, that is not happening over here. We have the electric mug.
Mark Zandi: 45% of Gen Zs have something regarding saving, some savings?
Jason Dorsey: All right. I'm going to tell y'all. Is that okay?
Mark Zandi: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jason Dorsey: I was trying to find an economic one that would be interesting for y'all and generational and relevant to our conversation today. In this new study that we have, it hasn't yet been released, 45% of Gen Z in the last three months have skipped at least one meal because they needed to save money, which was nine points higher than the other generations on average.
Mark Zandi: Oh, my gosh. That is something.
Jason Dorsey: Yeah, I'm looking at the chart right now. It's pretty wild.
Mark Zandi: Wow. That's scary, actually.
Jason Dorsey: Well, there's a lot going on with ... But yeah, and it's dramatically different than the other one. Way outside the margin of error.
Mark Zandi: 45% of Gen Z respondents say they have skipped a meal in the past three months to save money.
Jason Dorsey: Mm-hmm. By the way, these are only employed Gen Z.
Mark Zandi: Employed.
Cris deRitis: Employed.
Marisa DiNatale: Employed.
Jason Dorsey: Yeah. Part-time or full-time.
Mark Zandi: Wow. That shows, what, how stressed these folks are.
Marisa DiNatale: Actually how stressed they are.
Jason Dorsey: Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's what this whole study was looking at around employed generation, the employed workforce today in the US, and how they're thinking about payday and making money less until then and how they're spending their money and so forth. I thought that was sort of a wow, interesting stat that we could all interpret differently and have a whole nother hour conversation on.
Mark Zandi: You said something like nine percentage points more than any other generation, is that what you said?
Jason Dorsey: Yep.
Mark Zandi: Okay. I guess that makes some sense because they're younger.
Jason Dorsey: Mm-hmm.
Mark Zandi: Huh. Wow.
Jason Dorsey: It how you want to think about it?
Mark Zandi: Do you have a time series of that? Do you know how that's changed over time? No?
Jason Dorsey: Yes. In that one, I don't have the follow-up to it, but I know it's grown since the last time we did this, which was two years ago. I know it's increased. I just don't have that slide next here on that I can look at. But yeah, it has gone up because in this study that we led with this really fascinating company, all of the financial pressures increased since we asked the same benchmark questions in 2022.
Mark Zandi: Fascinating. All right. I got a stat. It's apropos like it should be. Apropos to the topic at hand, I'm just saying. 1.62. 1.62. It is demographically-
Cris deRitis: Is the dependency ratio?
Mark Zandi: Not the dependency ratio.
Marisa DiNatale: Replacement rate ratio?
Mark Zandi: The replacement rate's 2.1, right, so what's 1.62? The replacement ratio is kind of the fertility rate where at which ...
Jason Dorsey: Oh, yeah. You're saying that's the birth rate, right?
Mark Zandi: It's birth rate 1.62 in 2023. Lowest on record.
Jason Dorsey: That's what I meant.
Mark Zandi: Oh, yeah. So you got it, Jason. You got it. Yeah. Lowest on record in 2023.
Marisa DiNatale: In the US or globally?
Mark Zandi: This is US.
Marisa DiNatale: Okay.
Mark Zandi: US. US. A lot of debate as to what's going on, but one thing that I found, one explanation that I found very interesting in the context of the conversation is that people of that age, I guess this is now, would this be now Generation Z, wouldn't it be that are in their 20s at this point, they're very worried about the future and what that holds, and therefore much more reluctant to have children, which I find interesting.
Jason Dorsey: Yeah.
Mark Zandi: Does that resonate?
Jason Dorsey: Yes. Yes, and the trick with the birth rates, particularly when we look at the average age where people have their first child, which is split by gender, male and females, it's the way we look at in the US, the age of which you've become a parent for the first time, all of those numbers have been increasing, so they're going up. If you look at it on a waiting basis, a lot of that is due to millennials, not Gen Z. The millennials have delayed kids, they've delayed marriage, they've delayed all this stuff. What we're waiting to see is, and we're starting to see this, so this is what we're really interested in, the 36 to 44 age group and their rate of having kids now. We're ending up with a lot of older parents because what the millennials told us was, "I want to have a kid, I'm just not ready yet."
So now they're also crashing into the biological wall of, can they have a kid? So now you have these sort of, I don't like the term geriatric pregnancy, but that's what happened to us in our family, with Denise and I. You have this sort of situation where you have a lot of much older first time parents even, which is really interesting. Gen Zs, as you said, delaying it. They have a lot of anxiety about the future, a lot of anxiety in general. But you're also getting pulled up because you're seeing people now start to have kids later who might've traditionally had it earlier. Same with first marriage, buying a house, all those things.
Mark Zandi: Yeah, and it's exactly the other explanation that has been put forward, and also the technology. There's now technology that allows women to have children later. Like freezing eggs for example it's become much more commonplace among millennials, and they're just waiting longer to have their children.
Jason Dorsey: Yeah, and there's tons of good reasons. I mean, right? They're drowning in student loan debt, cost of housing, many of them have put off some of these relationship things.
Mark Zandi: Or careers. Some of them people want to have careers and just get that going, and then have children after they get started.
Jason Dorsey: Tons of reasons, yep.
Mark Zandi: Tons of reasons.
Jason Dorsey: That's the fun part of this.
Mark Zandi: Yep. Okay, let's come back to the boomers. What do you think? What do you say about the boomers, Jason? What's your [inaudible 01:03:07]?
Jason Dorsey: Did you see that? He's so excited. Did y'all see that face like, "I'm really calm and patient now. Tell me. Yeah, tell me."
Mark Zandi: Yeah, tell me. What do you think, really? What do you really think?
Jason Dorsey: No, I love boomers. We always say, they've got the work experience and life experience. No. For us, when we talk about them a lot, it's just the fact that they have all the money.
Mark Zandi: They got all the money. That's right.
Jason Dorsey: They got the money, the houses. They're really strange. They actually vote. They know state capitals. It's amazing. But the way we like to think about boomers is that-
Mark Zandi: I do. I know every capital in the country. I could tell you. Go ahead. Just [inaudible 01:03:40].
Jason Dorsey: I know you. I'm sure you probably have cash, an emergency check. You're amazing.
Mark Zandi: Thank you. That's exactly what I wanted to hear. So thank you.
Jason Dorsey: What we think the interesting part is that younger generations don't value boomers enough is actually what we find interesting. The whole, okay, boomer and a lot of this sort of thing, because boomers do have the experience, they have the relationships. We work in highly regulated industries. And so in regulated industries, they're really important because of the relationships and the understanding that they have and the experience that they bring. So there's a lot there. I was speaking at this event and this young guy is like, "Jason, why are you talking about boomers? They're so great. They don't even know technology." And I was like, "Seriously? They invented the phone you're using."
Mark Zandi: Good point. That's a good point.
Jason Dorsey: But a lot of what the criticism on both sides is really around work style. Boomers have a very clear definition of work ethic, but what we try to reposition that as is actually work style. It's not work ethic. That's one of the things we're frequently trying to bridge with them. They obviously over index for senior leadership roles because they've been working the most. And now what we see in our work is they're often trying to decide, do they exit the workforce? How long can they stay? Many of them are think they're going to have to keep working a lot longer than they thought they would for a variety of reasons.
Their identity is more connected to work, we find than other generations. If you ask a boomer, for example, "Where are you from?" They tend to tell you the name of their employer. If you ask a Gen Z, they tend to tell you the place they live. So that sort of stuff is really helpful because if you have a group that tends to identify and have a lot of their identity tied to what they do versus another group that tends to have their identity tied to other things outside of work, then you can see where there's this natural conflict that we've got to bridge.
Mark Zandi: You know, that's totally right. I always ask my kids, my kids are millennials. I'm a boomer. My kids are millennials and they're talking about their friend or an acquaintance or somebody, "Oh, what do they do?" "I have no idea what they do." My kids don't know. They don't even ask what they do. I find that so bizarre because at least my world, that's how we defined ourselves is, what do we do. What do we do? And that's not how they think about it at all, which I find really interesting.
Cris deRitis: That's Americans and Europeans, too, though, right? it's cultural-
Mark Zandi: Is that right?
Jason Dorsey: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. 100%, yeah. That's [inaudible 01:06:08].
Cris deRitis: It's not even polite to ask an Italian, "What do you do for a living," right?
Mark Zandi: What do you do for a living?
Cris deRitis: You have to be close friends to get to that point.
Mark Zandi: To get to that point.
Cris deRitis: Yeah.
Jason Dorsey: Well, and in the European side too, living with your parents longer, even living with your parents when they're married, all these on the board of a European company have been for years, very different views. That's why I always go back to this clues not a box, and geography is really important because there's just differences. I mean, I don't know about you, Mark, but what we saw is people, "Oh, you're boomer, you're 18, you're out of the house." In other places they're like, "No, you're not out of the house."
Mark Zandi: Yeah, you're still a baby.
Jason Dorsey: "Why would you leave? You don't love me?"
Mark Zandi: We're here forever. Yeah, yeah. It's so fascinating. Maybe we can have one last question because I know we're running short on time here. Try to connect it back to the economy. Is there one thing from your generational prism or perspective that says something about the economy that you find particularly un-intuitive or just something you wouldn't expect?
Jason Dorsey: Yeah. Through that lens, what I find most interesting is in our work with Gen Z, they frequently have emergency accounts, which is highly unusual given how young they are. But they've come up through this period of instability, so they'll have money set aside in one of their accounts, usually digital. It's occasionally cash, but not so much. But they'll have this money set aside for emergency because they just assume things are going to go wrong.
If you look at their savings rate, because you are all economists, people notice the savings rates are decreasing and all this stuff, so you hear people say all the time, "Oh, well this generation doesn't want to save." It's actually not true. They have these emergency counts and they have had them for a long time. I like to joke about like the 17-year-old. They have a birthday party, they get 50 bucks. They take 50 bucks, they put it away, then they go back to you and they say, "Hey, can I have 50 bucks? I want to go buy something." They really define it as their money versus your money. I think that distinction over time could be interesting to dig more into. That's one of my favorites.
Mark Zandi: Fascinating. A really fascinating conversation, very interesting, and I really appreciate you taking the time.
Jason Dorsey: No, it's been an honor to be here.
Mark Zandi: You wrote your first book when you were 18, and it sounds like you've written a couple more. How many books have you written?
Jason Dorsey: Five. Five.
Mark Zandi: Five books. Oh, my goodness.
Jason Dorsey: Yeah.
Mark Zandi: Congratulations.
Jason Dorsey: The most recent one is the Zconomy one. Yeah, that's what we're excited about. Those are the different translations. I was on a Zoom the other day and they're like, "Jason, you realize one of them is upside down." I was like, "Well, I don't actually read that language. So thank you for that."
Mark Zandi: Well, congratulations on all your success, and I can see why. You make this subject very interesting, fascinating, and fun to digest. Thank you for that. I really appreciate you taking the time. Cris, Marisa, anything else before we call it a podcast? Oh, I did want to say, just before we leave, changing the subject a little bit, Jason. I'm actually getting a little nervous about the economy, to tell you the truth. It feels increasingly soft to me. The retail sales, the housing starts, the unemployment insurance claims, our tracking estimates for GDP, it looks like growth for the first half of the year is going to be 1.5%-ish. It just feels like things are turning soft. I'm going to raise my odds of recession. Yes.
Jason Dorsey: Oh, yep.
Mark Zandi: I am. It was at 20%. Now I'm going to put it up. For the coming year, I'm going to push it up to 25%. I think the fed's waiting too long here and risks are rising. I just wanted to throw that out there. Get it out there before we call the podcast.
Cris deRitis: The lead economic indicator is negative.
Mark Zandi: Yeah.
Jason Dorsey: Oh, wow. I just want to say that when I showed up to the event at that CBA, the big event where I met Mark, y'all should know this because Cris, you and Marisa might not know this, I saw him and I was like, "That's Mark Z. Mark is here." I was so excited and I went up, and I was like, "I can't believe I'm getting to meet you. Can I sign a book for you?" Which just tells you that I'm a total dork and I completely own it. I was so excited to get my picture there with him. I just want y'all to know, people love the work that you do.
Mark Zandi: Oh, man. You can come on anytime. I really, yeah. Geez, I'll take that.
Jason Dorsey: You're like, "You know who I am?" I'm like, "Of course, I know who you're." It was really excited. I wanted to say thank you all to all three of you to have me on the day and the work you do. It's really important and people do pay attention. So thank you for that.
Mark Zandi: Well, it was a pleasure having you and hope to have you back.
Cris deRitis: Yeah, thank you.
Mark Zandi: And go boomers! That's all I have to say.
Jason Dorsey: [inaudible 01:11:07] with enthusiasm.
Cris deRitis: The water section, too. We never got to that.
Jason Dorsey: Good point, good point. And with that, dear listener, we're going to call this a podcast. We'll talk to you next week. Take care now.