The simple fact is that jobs safe guard the demand levels for a home. Take away jobs and the demand falls. Supply is already increasing. Note active listings in toronto. Note the massive layoff for the auto industry. What is that? 1 in 7 jobs in Canada? Take Canadian depedency on US economy…and global economy via resources. The numbers support lower home prices a year from now, and years after.

I’ll blog about it too. I’m not afraid to make predictions either and to stick to that call.

We are clearly not disadvantaged. My comment was principally tongue-in-cheek.

I re-read Bust, Bust and Echo a couple of years ago but consciously used the perspective of a 30-something.
When you have a cohort like the Boomers and their offspring (a group roughly ~75% the size), it is easy to be “forgotten”. As my mom refers to it, “it is like being a middle child” (she is a middle child herself).

Because we are a much smaller demographic, there is much less incentive to court us as a whole. At the same time, opportunities are rife for catering to those both older and younger than us.

Having discussed the “issue” at length with others, finally one HR consultant I know chimed in with an interesting piece of demography:

“Many companies in Canada have a hidden resource problem. HR spends inordinate amounts of time catering to Boomers and their wants and needs, in addition to trying to figure out how to ‘talk’ to the 20-somethings. In the meantime, the sweet spot of the employee base is the 30-something. They have a fair amount of experience, are still relatively cheap on the payroll, and are in line to be the next group of managers and executives. People with 7 to 15 years professional experience are the hardest to locate and recruit, if only because there aren’t a lot of them, period. So there is a visible age gap in many organizations, but few do anything about it because it isn’t even recognized.”

I’ve talked with a couple of retired executives in their late 60′s to early 70′s. Generally-speaking, they feel that today’s 30-somethings are “them” but half a lifetime ago. Most admit that the growth of their companies (mostly private; sold in the last 5 years after ~30 yrs in business) had some degree of “catering to the Boomers and their sheer economic force”. Their advice was to mimic those same decisions but to target the Echo.

But like I said, I’m extremely bullish on “our” long-term prospects. I am fortunate enough to work with a number of others like “us” and literally every day we ferret out new innovative-yet-pragmatic opportunities. I firmly believe that this is partially due to the fact that we are not firmly ensconced in the cohorts to our left and to our right.

Flying below the radar can be a significant strategic and tactical advantage…

I feel your pain. Sort of… Born 1971. Not really seeing how we are disadvantaged, but looking for an excuse

“Clowns to the left of me,
Jokers to the right, here I am,
Stuck in the middle with you.”

Of course, I’m really talking to myself because, macroscopically, my cohort is comparatively miniscule.

Happy Halloween!

I forgive you! — Garth