UPSIDE

Upside, Profiting from the Profound Demographic Shifts Ahead, by Kenneth W. Gronbach, AMACOM 2017

For a refreshing departure from Fake News and posturing politicians, UPSIDE offers a look at the numbers - many many numbers - that will drive demographic shifts.  Starting with the demand, or revenue side of the picture, we hear more than the basic definitions of six generations, starting with the surviving 2.3M G.I.s (1905-1924), their 28.6M offspring, the Silents (1925-1944), the 78M Baby Boomers (1925-1964), 82.9M Generation X (1965-1984), 86.6M Generation Y (1985-2004), and 40.9 Generation Z (2005-2024). The current US population stands at 320M.  Gronbach is not just defining and describing the revenue and social habits of the six generations, he is offering a gambler's smart bet on when to jump in to generate maximum market share - during the upsides of a growing population shift that he calls a tsunami -  and when to run from the downside of a shrinking population, a sinkhole.

Who will care most about these fluctuating demographic moves?  Any business that knows its current audience should be able to identify its main customers - politicians, first of all, should understand their voter base.  But in terms of legitimate businesses, Gronbach notes retailers, manufacturers, real estate developers, funeral directors, insurance agents, educators, students, midlife career changers, small business owners, CEOs, investors.

For the imminent future, consumption continues to be dominated by work, lifestyle and consumer behavior of the three middle generations - Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Generation Y, for a total of 247.5M buyers.   But within these groups and the others there are additional demographic shifts.  For example, Gronbach advises us to watch the US' South, a region that is, in contrast to other de-industrialized areas, rising.  In fact, Gronbach says that for young professionals no state is better than North Carolina, whose population has nearly doubled since 1990, with median age declining to 36.

"The greying of America" is unfortunately now an everyday fact, as it forecasts what Grnbach identifies as 'bog box" death care.  How awful --- and how expensive.  Spreadsheets, kitchen table discussions, phone calls, web searches.  Bah!  Give me a cabin down by the river.

If you are an investor watching the stock market, you'll find Gronbach's predictions on which retail and service sectors will flourish.  If you are a manufacturing person, Gronbach is on our side, but he realistically states that not all offshored manufacturing is coming home to an intact industrial base populated with human workers.  Instead, his phrase "the jobless recovery", as illustrated by Foxconn's robotic manufacturing plant going up in Pennsylvania, delivers the grim truth.