Demographics: The Population Hourglass

The hourglass phenomenon will shape not only where you work but whom you work with--and how you get along with them. Some boomers, upon turning 65, will disappear in a puff of RV smoke, retiring to a never-ending suck-the-marrow-from-life experiential party that ends only at death. Others will find themselves fully and happily employed by companies desperate to keep them. Still others, due to lamentably low savings rates and the erosion of social services, will enter a purgatorial nether-retirement and serve as an object lesson for their children.

This great boomer tri-furcation will in turn create a paradox for the gen-Xers coming up behind them. Some Xers will find themselves in the midst of an enormous job boom created by the vacating boomers, who will leave open far more jobs than there are qualified Xers to fill them. (And there will be much rejoicing.) At the same time, some Xers will find themselves trapped behind a new glass ceiling--the boomer "ass ceiling" if you will--blocked from their next career step because an all-too-healthy or all-too-indebted precursor just can't or won't retire.

Making all of this intergenerational jockeying even more complex, the millennials will soon begin showing up in the workforce en masse, carting along a heady mix of ravenous careerism, natural social networking and IT skills, a thirst for learning, and a rather presumptuous expectation of direct contact with senior management. How this perky generation, which is more like the boomers than any generation in between, will get along with the perennially annoyed Xers will be the fodder for beloved sitcoms in 2013.

Color Shift

Even as America goes gray (and promptly dyes its hair), its skin will become more polychrome. Buoyed by higher birth rates among minorities and increasing immigration from Latin America and Asia, parts of the United States will become as diverse as a New York subway car. Minorities will make up one-third of the U.S. population in 2016; in the decades to come, Hispanics, now one of every seven Americans, will be one in four. As Hispanic influence grows, it will be transformed from the undifferentiated "niche market" many Americans consider it to be today into a mass market in its own right, segmented by nationality, cultural experience, and other characteristics.

The cultural influx won't only be Hispanic, though. High schools will soon routinely offer Hindi and Mandarin as Asians become a still more influential slice of the populace. MTV is already launching new channels, MTV Desi, MTV Chi, and MTV K aimed at South Asian, Chinese, and Korean immigrant teens. We can expect a proliferation of culture not only pitched to Asians, but by them.

The rise of these new blocs will change American diets, tastes, and cultural references--but it will also redefine the notion of race itself, perhaps permanently. The distinction between black and white will become an anachronism: Get ready for the politics of brown. But this burst of diversity and immigration will affect regions of the country differently. Almost one-half (46%) of U.S. population growth in the next decade will come from three states: California, Texas, and Florida, which by 2016 will have overtaken New York as the third-largest in the country. The giant sucking sound you'll hear will be the national center of gravity shifting south and west. By 2016, where you compete may matter much more than how.

It won't be just the age and color of the workforce that change in the years ahead--its gender will change, too. Though it has been widely underreported, women make up approximately 58% of the undergraduate college population, and that figure is rising. Within 10 years, at least 3 million more women than men could be attending college, and because educational and economic achievement are so strongly correlated, those gains will inevitably translate into cultural influence, purchasing power, and corporate leadership. That trend will only accelerate through the 2010s.

Women's economic achievement is already seeding the clouds for a deluge of development.

Women's economic achievement is already seeding the clouds for a deluge of distaff marketing and product development. According to the National Association of Realtors, the percentage of single female home buyers in the past 20 years has nearly doubled, placing them second only to married couples. And the number of women buying high-end consumer electronics like plasma televisions is growing faster than the number of men (a reality yet to sink in at the big-box stores).