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How 33-Year-Olds, the Peak Millennials, Are Shaping the U.S. Economy

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I have covered economics for 11 years now, and in that time, I have come to the realization that I am a statistic. Every time I make a major life choice, I promptly watch it become the thing that everyone is doing that year.I started college in 2009, in the era of all-time-high matriculation rates. When I moved to a big coastal city after graduation, so did a huge crowd of people: It was the age of millennial urbanization. When I lived in a walk-in closet so that I could pay off my student loans (“The yellow paint makes it cheerful!”, Craigslist promised), student debt had recently overtaken auto loans and credit cards as the biggest source of borrowing outside of housing in America.My partner and I bought a house in 2021, along with (seemingly and actually) a huge chunk of the rest of the country. We married in 2022, the year of many, many weddings. The list goes on.I am no simple crowd follower. What I am is 32, about to be 33 in a few weeks.And there are so many of us.If demographics are destiny, the demographic born in 1990 and 1991 was destined to compete for housing, jobs and other resources. Those two birth years, the people set to turn 33 and 34 in 2024, make up the peak of America’s population.As the biggest part of the biggest generation, this hyper-specific age group — call us what you will, but I like “peak millennials” — has moved through the economy like a person squeezing into a too-small sweater. At every life stage, it has stretched a system that was often too small to accommodate it, leaving it somewhat flabby and misshapen in its wake. My cohort has an outsized amount of economic power, but that has sometimes made life harder for us.Early 30-Somethings Are EverywhereIn 2022, America had 4.75 million 32-year-olds and 4.74 million 31-year-olds, the largest two ages by population.

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    How Engagement Rings Explain What’s Happening in the Economy

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    A major jeweler claims the pandemic may have prevented people from meeting their future fiancés, cutting demand for engagement rings. Inflation and anxiety among shoppers haven’t helped.Aftershocks from the coronavirus pandemic continue to rumble across the U.S. economy, and Signet Jewelers shared a surprising one this week: The company is selling fewer engagement rings this year because, it says, singles who were stuck at home during lockdowns failed to meet their would-be fiancés in 2020.“As we predicted, there were fewer engagements in the quarter resulting from Covid’s disruption of dating three years ago,” Virginia C. Drosos, the chief executive at Signet, which owns Kay Jewelers and Zales, told investors on Thursday. Shares of Signet, the largest jewelry retailer in the United States, tumbled after the company cut its forecasts for sales and profit for the rest of the year.In a way, the engagement ring has become a sparkly microcosm of the American economy. The bridal jewelry business is being buffeted by the delayed effects of the pandemic, rapid inflation that is squeezing consumers and a growing sense of nervousness among shoppers.Some of the volatility is owed purely to the pandemic. Weddings were canceled in droves during 2020 lockdowns, but bounced back starting in late 2021 and throughout 2022, and were expected to level off over the coming years as more typical patterns returned. Wedding-related activity does appear to show some early signs of slowing in 2023, but it is unclear whether that’s the result of a 2020 dating dry spell, per Signet, or simply a return to the longstanding shift toward later and fewer marriages.What is clear? Wedding trends are also tied to broader, and potentially longer-lasting, economic forces. Signet may be selling less because fewer people are getting down on one knee, but also because ring shoppers are becoming more cautious and spending less amid rapid inflation and rising uncertainty about the direction of the economy. Both the volume and value of jewelry sold by Signet last quarter declined.Ms. Drosos said that the company had “expected the low-double-digit decline in engagements that we saw this quarter,” but that other factors were also at play. “Recent consumer confidence, lower tax refunds, economic concerns triggered by regional bank failures and continued inflation led to a weakening trend in spending across the jewelry industry,” she added.Consumers are contending with big challenges this year. Prices have climbed about 15 percent cumulatively over the past three years, as measured by the Personal Consumption Expenditures index. Inflation has slowed in recent months, but many workers are finding that their wages are falling behind.The Federal Reserve has been raising interest rates to try to cool the economy and fight the stubborn price increases. Besides making it more expensive for consumers to shop on credit or take out loans, the rate moves have increased the chance that the economy might tip into a recession. As many households watch their savings dwindle and worry about their job security, they may be less willing to spend on big-ticket items like fancy diamond rings and bespoke wedding dresses.David’s Bridal, the wedding dress retailer, suggested in a bankruptcy filing this year that some brides had become increasingly budget-conscious.An “increasing number of brides are opting for less-traditional wedding attire, including thrift wedding dresses,” James Marcum, the company’s chief executive, said in a court filing.Like much of the economy, the wedding industry has shown signs of a split, as higher earners find that they are able to reach into their savings and keep spending, and lower-income families that spend a bigger share of their earnings on necessities like food begin to crack under the weight of inflation.LVMH, the luxury retail group that owns jewelers including Tiffany, reported continued growth in early 2023, including solid sales of jewelry.“Everybody was expecting 2023 to be a horrendous year for luxury in the U.S.,” Jean-Jacques Guiony, LVMH’s chief financial officer, told investors in April, explaining that a collapse had not materialized. “It’s normalizing, but it’s not bad, either.”But at more mass-market brands like Kay and Zales, shoppers may be starting to pull back.“We began to see softening at higher price points, which previously had been relatively insulated, and lower price points remained under pressure,” Joan Hilson, Signet’s finance chief, said during Thursday’s call.Signet is hoping wedding-ring demand will bounce back: It is predicting 500,000 more engagements from 2024 to 2026 than the prepandemic trend would suggest, as dating delayed by the lockdowns leads to matches. But analysts at Bank of America “worry that some of that rebound will be offset” by a “pinched consumer” spending less on jewelry, they wrote.Shane McMurray, founder of the Wedding Report, is skeptical of a big gap year in engagements. He expects weddings to fall 20 percent in 2023 from 2022 levels as trends return to normal. And Lyman Stone, director of research at the consulting firm Demographic Intelligence, agreed that the current slowdown in weddings might reflect a return to previous trends rather than a one-off weakening.“It does look like 2023 is going to be a low year,” he said. “I do think that placing the blame for that on lockdowns in 2020 is a little bit strained.” More

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    What TikTok Told Us About the Economy in 2022

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    From Barbiecore to revenge travel, social media trends gave us a clear picture of the forces reshaping the economy.The unemployment rate has hovered at 3.7 percent for months. But it is the TikTok-famous “quiet quitting” and live-tweeted resignations that really explained what was going on in America’s job market in 2022, a moment of renewed worker power and remarkable upheaval.While government data can tell us that the world is rapidly changing three years into the pandemic, internet trends — the ones that took off and the apps we’ve come to rely on — illustrate how people are responding to a new and evolving normal.Negroni sbagliatos catapulted into fame and onto cocktail menus, underlining the fact that people were ready to get back to spending on fancy happy hours. Instagram feeds filled with beach and mountain pictures as “revenge travel” took flight. We collectively learned what “vibe shift” means just as we realized that the economy was experiencing one.Below is a rundown of a few of the year’s more colorful memes and moments — and what they herald for 2023.Break My SoulBeyoncé imprinted the moment with her instant hit titled “Break My Soul.”Chris Pizzello/Invision, via Associated PressBetween high inflation and years of workplace flux — including pandemic firings, work-from-home burnout and most recently a plodding return to office — the economic status quo seemed like an increasingly bad deal to many Americans in 2022. Beyoncé imprinted the discontent on your favorite music app, releasing an instant hit titled “Break My Soul.” Its lyrics included “And I just quit my job, I’m gonna find new drive,” inspiring the internet to ask whether Queen B was encouraging everyone to join the Great Resignation.In fact, people felt so conflicted about work this year that they needed new words to describe it. The TikTok discourse gave us “quiet quitting,” a trend in which workers do the bare minimum. Then came “career cushioning,” discreetly lining up a backup plan while in your current job. At the same time, employers reported “worker hoarding,” in which they avoided firing people after getting burned by long months in which open jobs far outnumbered applicants. The jobs data made it clear that the labor market was out of balance, but it was social discussion that showed just how much.Money Printer Go ‘Brrrr-oke’The Federal Reserve reversed two years of rock-bottom rates this year, raising borrowing costs at the fastest pace in decades in a bid to control rapid inflation. Actual prices have been slow to react, but Reddit wasn’t. Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, formerly featured in memes that sported the tagline “money printer go brrrr” and showed him cranking out cheap and easy cash. In 2022, the memes got an update — to Shrek. Today’s memes compare Mr. Powell to the 2001 movie character Lord Farquaad, who famously declared, “Some of you may die, but that is a sacrifice I’m willing to make.”The crankiness on the Reddit discussion boards came as the Fed’s actions cost many investors money. Prominent cryptocurrencies tanked, and asset prices in general swooned, with stocks down about 20 percent from the start of the year. Financial markets are likely to remain on edge into 2023: Inflation is slowing but remains high, and the Fed is poised to raise rates at least slightly more to control it. The memes, in short, are likely to remain grim.Butter BoardsTikTok spent part of this year going crazy for butter boards. Sizie Cornell, via Associated PressTikTok spent part of this year going crazy for butter boards: slabs of the spread covered in flowers, fancy salt, honey or other flavorings. Was this a delayed reaction to the low-fat, no-fat fads of decades past? Evidence that influencers can make us do anything? One thing we can say for sure: It was expensive.That’s because prices for food — and especially for dairy products — have jumped sharply this year. Butter and margarine costs were 34 percent higher in November than 12 months before. Food overall was up 10.6 percent.But as the butter board’s enduring popularity underscored, people buy food even when it is getting costlier. In fact, while retailers reported that some lower-income consumers began pulling back on discretionary purchases and giving priority to necessities, spending in general has been fairly resilient despite a year and a half of rapid price increases and months of Fed rate moves.So far, inflation also remains heady, and it extends well beyond the dairy aisle. A popular price index is still 7.1 percent above its level a year ago, far faster than the typical 2 percent annual pace.BarbiecoreActor Margo Robbie in character in the film “Barbie.”Jaap Buitendijk/Warner Bros. Pictures, via Associated PressAmericans continued to shop in 2022, but what they are buying has been undergoing a quiet change. Americans had been snapping up goods like couches and clothing early in the pandemic, but they are now slowly shifting their purchases back toward services.Social media popularized over-the-top fashions in 2022, including “Barbiecore” (very pink, named for the doll and upcoming movie) and “avant apocalypse,” which paid sartorial homage to the coming end days. But another big trend of the year — buying used clothes, #thrifted — may have more accurately captured the year’s changing economic energy. Clothing store sales are slowing down, official data show, and falling outright if you subtract out apparel inflation.Have a Reservation?As the world reopened and Americans returned to spending on experiences, restaurant tables, in particular, became a hot commodity. Walk-in tables were down 14 percent compared with 2019, while tables with online reservations increased by 24 percent, according to data from the table booking app OpenTable. The figures confirmed what denizens of New York and other cities could tell you (and did, in various media dissections): It was a battle to get a table in 2022 as waitstaff shortages collided with hot diner demand.OpenTable’s data show that happy hour especially surged in 2022. People are dining earlier, and, after years of missed work drinks, this is the overpriced cocktail’s comeback tour. It’s one added reason that Negronis made with Prosecco, popularized by a promotional video for the show “House of the Dragon” on HBO’s TikTok account, are having a moment.Negroni cocktails where popularized by a promotional video for the show “House of the Dragon.”Leah Nash for The New York TimesNo Room at the InnIt turns out people missed the beach just as much as they missed that 5 o’clock martini. Cue the “revenge travel.”Vacationers made up for pandemic-delayed trips en masse in 2022, and as they splurged on big adventures, air traffic rebounded sharply, getting close to its 2019 levels. Hotel revenues fully recovered. At the same time, some travel-related sectors skated by on extremely thin staffing. Employment in accommodation stands at just 83 percent of its February 2020 level. Air transport employment overall is up, but industry groups have complained of worker shortages in key areas like air traffic control.As hotels, motels and airlines struggled to operate at full capacity, room rates and fares rocketed higher and major disruptions became commonplace. Air travel service complaints were more than 380 percent above their 2019 level as of September, according to the Department of Transportation. The mismatch underscored that key parts of the American economy are struggling to reach a new equilibrium after pandemic-induced tumult, even if people want to be in #vacationmode.Peak WeddingIn some instances, pandemic trends are colliding with demographic trends — and nothing showed that more clearly than the many wedding photos that filled up Instagram feeds this year. After years of historically few ceremonies leading up to the pandemic, this was probably the biggest year for weddings since 1997, based on data and forecasts compiled by the Wedding Report, a trade publication.Always, Always, Always a BridesmaidYou might have noticed a lot of wedding invitations in 2022. It was probably the biggest year for tying the knot since 1997.

    Note: Future data represent forecastsSource: The Wedding ReportBy The New York TimesThe pop, the combined result of pandemic-delayed nuptials and a big group of marriage-age millennials, translated into booked-up venues and vendors. It has also raised questions about the economic ripple effects: Will those couples have children, sending up birth data, which already ticked up slightly in 2021? Will they buy houses? We could start to find out in 2023.GrandmillennialTikTok sensation Tariq, known for his love of corn.OK McCausland for The New York TimesAmerica’s younger generations are doing more than getting married. They have been forming their own households and buying houses in greater numbers since the start of the pandemic. In the process, they have helped to fuel strong demand for houses and popularized interior decorating trends — including “grandmillennial,” also affectionately called “granny chic” on Pinterest, in which the young-ish repurpose floral wallpaper and old-style lamps for a cozy but updated look.But many millennials, who are roughly ages 26 to 41 and in their peak home-buying years, may be losing their shot at becoming real estate influencers. As the Fed lifted interest rates to stifle rapid inflation this year, a wave of would-be homeowners began to find that the combination of heftier mortgage costs and high home prices meant they could not afford to buy. New home sales have declined notably. Fed rates are expected to continue climbing in 2023, which could make for a tough road ahead for a generation struggling to make the leap in homeownership. And after a year of serious economic changes and major policy adjustments, it’s uncertain what is coming next: A recession? A benign inflation cool-down?On the bright side, we will have social trends to help us interpret the data, and occasionally to help us find its lighter side. To quote corn kid, a precocious vegetable lover who ascended to TikTok royalty in 2022: “I can’t imagine a more beautiful thing.”Reporting was contributed by More

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    The Wedding Business Is Booming, a Short-Term Jolt to the Economy

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    Meg Van Dyke, who runs a Pittsburgh wedding planning company, spent a recent weeknight frantically calling photographers for a May 2022 wedding. All eight who fit her couple’s criteria were fully booked.“I’ve never had a problem finding vendors before,” she said. “It’s absolutely booming.”Weddings are roaring back after a pandemic-induced slump, leading to booked-up venues, a dearth of photographers and rising prices on catered dinners. As demand picks up, it’s providing an additional jolt of spending to the U.S. economy.The race to the aisle is payback after a lost year of ceremonies. As lockdowns swept the nation, weddings slowed abruptly at the onset of the pandemic. Shane McMurray, founder of The Wedding Report, estimates that 1.3 million marriages took place in the United States last year, compared with the typical 2.1 million. Those were often “micro-weddings,” according to industry insiders, with just a handful of guests, if any were present at all.That’s turning around sharply. Weddings have not quite returned to normal for 2021, but they are quickly rebounding, and Mr. McMurray forecasts that next year they will jump to the highest level since the 1980s as engaged couples who have waited out a global pandemic finally tie the knot.Weddings Are Picking Up After a Pandemic SlumpThey are expected to jump sharply in 2022, to levels last seen nearly 40 years ago.

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    Weddings in the United States by Year
    Source: The Wedding ReportBy The New York TimesOnce that pent-up demand plays out, he expects that long-running trends like cohabitation without marriage will come to dominate.Many economists agree. “My instinct, immediately, is: This is not a marriage boom; this is a wedding boom,” said Jessamyn Schaller, an economist at Claremont McKenna College. She added that even with the short-term pop, there were likely to be fewer marriages than there would have been had the pandemic never happened.In other words, the wedding boom is probably a blip.Marriage rates have been dropping for decades, and hit a record low of 6.1 per 1,000 people in 2019, down from 8.2 in 2000. The decline has come alongside a drop in fertility, which also hit a new low before the onset of the coronavirus.What the wedding rebound could do is lay the groundwork for a brief post-pandemic baby bump, since couples often wait to exchange vows before they have children.Lyman Stone, a research fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, tracks fertility intentions in surveys and keeps a close eye on state-level birth data. A baby bust that took hold after the pandemic started already appears to be turning around, much faster than expected.“It is a rapid return to normal,” Mr. Stone said. The nascent wedding rush “probably means that we have a couple of years here where we have somewhat more positive fertility than was previously expected.”Workers erecting a tent for the wedding of Ariana Papier and Andrew Jenzer in Richmond, Mass., a town in the Berkshires.Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York TimesMagdalena Mieczkowska, a wedding planner, has seen demand take off for events in 2022.Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York TimesMike Moreno, a sous chef, preparing chickens for Ms. Papier’s wedding this month, which had been postponed from June 2020.Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York TimesVendors are charging more for catered meals and cutlery rentals.Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York TimesLest onlookers get too excited, Mr. Stone points out that what was expected was a slow decline in births..And Melissa Kearney, an economist at the University of Maryland, cautioned that the early signs of a fertility rebound playing out now could be a false signal, since the pandemic is still playing out and it will take time to see how birth trends shape up.But Adam Ozimek, chief economist at the freelance job site Upwork, thinks that many economists might be taking too dim of a view of the pandemic’s ability to put America on a different social trajectory. He hasn’t penciled in a big increase in marriage, but he does think that younger adults may change their ways in the wake of the crisis.People have saved a lot of money during the pandemic, thanks to long months at home, a rising stock market and repeated checks from the government. Remote work and the shift toward more work from home have introduced new geographic flexibility for many young adults.Millennials who had been delaying home buying, for instance, may now have an opening.“That’s a pretty good recipe for stronger household formation,” Mr. Ozimek said, referring to what happens when adults move out on their own or in with partners rather than parents or, in some cases, roommates. “You can afford to buy your own house, start your own family.”If that was to play out on any substantial scale, it would have big implications for the economy. Millennials are the nation’s largest generation. Any change in homeownership, marriage or fertility rates among this group would fuel spending on everything from outdoor grills and washing machines to day care.But it will take years to see whether the pandemic marked some sort of turning point for American family life.What is clear now is that it pushed back ceremonies, making for a short-term spending boost on cakes, china, dresses, hair, makeup and photographers — a source of bottlenecks, but also a welcome recovery for some vendors who saw business drop precipitously amid lockdowns.Ms. Van Dyke in Pittsburgh said brides with their hearts set on prized venues — like the downtown Omni William Penn Hotel — are setting their ceremony dates in 2023 as they compete for dates. In Washington, D.C., the sweet shop Baked & Wired went from selling tiny six-inch cakes during the pandemic to receiving more orders than it can accept for Razmanian Devil wedding cakes: tiered layers of lemon cake filled with raspberry jam and topped with buttercream.“It’s Tuesday, and they’re like, ‘Hey, can I get a wedding cake for Saturday?’” said Teresa Velazquez, the shop’s owner. “We’ve waited this long — let’s throw it together and get married.”Township Four Foristry & Home in Pittsfield, Mass., has temporarily closed its retail store to focus on a surge in wedding customers.Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York TimesNathan Hanford, a co-owner of Township Four, assembling bouquets for a wedding.Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York TimesThis season has been a welcome rebound for vendors whose business dropped during lockdowns.Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York TimesJacquelyn Potter had been booked as the photographer for Ms. Papier’s postponed 2020 wedding. Now, surging demand is leading to booked-up venues, a dearth of photographers and rising prices.Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York TimesMarvin Alexander, a makeup artist in New York City who decided to shift from the fashion industry to bridal during the depths of the pandemic, is also seeing lots of last-minute bookings, including from rescheduled weddings. The events are often more modest affairs, with smaller wedding parties and guest lists, in a nod to virus risks.“I’m starting to see a few people being more comfortable about 2022, even with the Delta variant strong on our heels,” Mr. Alexander said.On the other end of the spectrum, Magdalena Mieczkowska, a wedding planner, has seen demand in the Hudson Valley and Berkshires take off for big events in 2022. And clients are willing to spend: Her average was typically $100,000 per event, but now she’s seeing some weekends come in at $200,000 or more.“People were postponing, and now they have more savings,” she said. Plus, vendors are charging more for catered meals and cutlery rentals. “Everyone is trying to make up for their financial losses from the 2020 season.”Wedding industry experts said they expected demand to remain robust into 2023 before tapering back to normal, as new bookings vie for resources with delayed weddings like the one Ariana Papier, 31, and Andrew Jenzer, 32, held last weekend in Richmond, Mass., a town in the Berkshires.The couple had to cancel their original June 6, 2020, date, opting to elope instead, but rescheduled the event to Aug. 7, complete with signature cocktails (a bush berry paloma and an Earl Grey blueberry old-fashioned), a dance floor and s’mores.“We’re calling it a vow renewal and celebration,” Ms. Papier said just ahead of the ceremony, adding it was the couple’s third attempted venue, thanks to pandemic hiccups.“Third and best,” she said. “We are so excited.” More