The best generation ever!

You’ve heard the story, right? There’s this amazing generation of young people coming on the scene now – Millennials! As we call them. They’re enormous, they’re the biggest generation ever, they’re something to behold! In fact, they might even be more amazing as Baby Boomers! BTW, weren’t there a few people born between the two? Generation what? Oh, who cares – they are so small as to be irrelevant. After all- Millennials!

Since I sat through yet another presentation telling me this last week, and a whole series of conference sessions focused on Millennials!  I thought I’d go back and check the numbers, as I have done before. Oh, those pesky numbers – always getting in the way of a good story.

Here is the actual state of age cohorts (by decade) in America, using 2016 Census estimates:

10's41.7 Million

20's44.9 Million

30's43.3 Million

40's40.5 Million    (I'm here!)

50's43.3 Million

60's38.2 Million

70's20.1 Million

OR, by another measure.

15-24        43.9 Million

25-34        42.8 Million

35-44        40.6 Million

45-54        43.8 Million (I'm here!)

55-64        39.4 Million

65-74        25.1 Million

75-84        13.5 Million

Hmm – something appears to be amiss. There doesn’t appear to be the big drop in population between these two famous, media-hungry generations: Baby Boomers and Millennials! In fact, since I was born in 1969, my 45-54 cohort is essentially the same size as the 15-24 group. My fellow 40-somethings are only 9% smaller than 20-somethings, which is quite something since a few in my age group are no longer with us.

How could this be? After all- Millennials! They are huge – enormous, and a force to be reckoned with. They simply dwarf everyone else. I swear that I’ve read that, somewhere, maybe once or twice. Could I be mistaken?