DETROIT — OK, Boomer.
Your time is over; your day in the sun, done …
Or is it? For decades, everything in the United States from music to fashion trends to politics was dominated by the “Baby Boomers,” that enormous generation born in the years 1946 to 1964.
There were so many of them — 78 million, at their peak — in part because their parents had delayed having children because of the Great Depression and World War II.
When they did arrive, many parents lavished on them things they never themselves had. The Cold War, easy scholarships, and the roaring economy made it possible for more Boomers than any other generation to go to college and have successful careers.
Now, however, they have been finally surpassed in numbers by the Millennials, those born between 1981 and 1996. According to Statista, a numbers-crunching firm that analyzes and supplies statistics to corporate America, the United States had 72.1 Millennials in 2019, and only 69.6 million surviving Boomers.
There were also 65.2 million members of the much-ignored Generation X, those born between 1965 and 1980 — almost as many as either of the other groups.
But when it comes to political power, the Boomers still rule, big-time, and in terms of economics, the balance is even more one-sided: Boomers have more clout than all the other generations combined.
This is still, in many ways, the Baby Boomers’ world, and those even older than them, the so-called Silent Generation (born 1928-1945) still have more power than their dwindling numbers would suggest.
Visual Capitalist, a Canadian-based online publisher, collected data to starkly illustrate that fact. When it comes to political power, it is no contest. More than two-thirds of the U.S. Senate — 68 out of 100 — are boomers, including all four from Michigan and Ohio.
Gen X accounts for 20 members; the Silent Generation still has 11 senators, and there is only one Millennial — Democrat Jon Ossoff, who narrowly won that famous Georgia runoff in January.
What about the U.S. House of Representatives? Not much different. Boomers have a solid majority, with 230 members to 144 for Generation X, 31 Millennials and 27 from the Silent Generation.
There are, by the way, not quite 21 million members of the Silent Generation still alive, and a mere 1.5 million from the so-called Greatest Generation, the men and women born before 1928 who endured the Great Depression and won World War II.
While there are still a handful of Greatest Generation federal judges, Michigan’s late John Dingell was the last to have served in Congress when he retired in 2015.
Interestingly, when it comes to state and local governments, which are often a springboard to federal office, Generation Xers are far more dominant. In Michigan, every one of the four top state positions — governor, secretary of state, attorney general, and chief justice of the state supreme court— is held by a Gen X woman.
When it comes to economic clout, the Boomers dominate even more completely — and Millennials, as you might suspect, have reason to be irritated.
Boomers, who are barely a fifth of the total population, own 53 percent of all the household wealth in this country. They have, the study concluded, “more economic influence than Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z combined.”
A majority of business leaders are Boomers, and they are most of the billionaires — with members of the Silent Generation next.
The poor Millennials, many of whom entered the work force at the time of the Great Recession and who are saddled with massive student debt, “have nearly 50 percent less wealth than other generations [did] at a comparable age.
There is, however, one area in which Boomers do not dominate: Culture. There, Generation X is the main force, especially, in the press and news media, with more than half of all media company CEOs and a majority of prominent news personalities Gen Xers.
Boomers do still dominate in two cultural spheres — books and especially the arts. But Millennials are the major force when it comes to social media and digital platforms, with Generation Z, the 67 million folks born between 1997 and 2012, coming up fast.
Naturally, this survey is just a snapshot in time, and power rankings in all spheres are constantly changing. Though Boomers dominate politically, that is bound to fade relatively soon.
Incidentally, the most powerful position in government — President of the United States — is held, not by a Boomer, but by a member of the Silent Generation, surely the last of his generation ever to live in the White House.
There have been four Boomer presidents — three born in 1946, the first year of the Baby Boom, and one, President Obama, born in 1961.
Could we have had our last Boomer president?
There are now slightly more registered voters who are Millennials and Xers, and that is bound to accelerate as, to put it bluntly, we Boomers die off at an accelerating rate.
Financial power may be slower to fade; cultural power may change even more rapidly.
In two decades, the remaining Boomers will certainly have no more than a shadow of their former clout.
Millennials will likely dominate everything — and every generation will be in the process of being forced to move over for Generations Z and then Alpha, the children born in the last decade.
For once, that dreadful cliché, “only time will tell,” seems exactly right.
Jack Lessenberry is a former Blade national editor. He can be reached by email at omblade@aol.com.
First Published May 22, 2021, 4:00 a.m.
