Generation X, Y or Boomer?

So what’s in a name? It is a common practice to give things or people names. It’s a form of shorthand. Saves us having to spell out what we mean in full every time we want to refer to something in speech or writing. When we use one of these ‘shortcuts’ we expect our audience to know immediately what or who we are talking about. So it was with a newspaper article that caught my eye the other day when it covered a report from the Journal of Management on  Generation Y. Who?

Well, I did have a notion to what group of people the report referred , but it helped a little to be reminded that the so-called ‘Generation Y’ covered a three decade period and comprised those who were born in the late 1980s. The report according to the Daily Mail concluded that people born in this period were rather shy of hard work but believed they were deserving of big salaries,status and plenty of leisure time without putting in long hours to earn this reward. Then,there were the  Generation X citizens whose mantra was ‘work hard,play hard’,and they were born in the 1970s and were often dubbed ‘Thatcher’s children’. They lived through the times of the ‘womens’ lib’ movement, a fragile economy, and increasing divorce rates.

Where is this all leading, you may well ask? It leads to that category of people with whom I have a closer affinity, namely the baby boomers who were born in the early post-war  years, in the late 1940s and 1950s. This vast group, are said to represent the ‘work to live ‘ generation. But where are they now? What are their current aspirations and interests? Do they have any ambitions? For  travel,hobbies, self-determination, or what? This is the group, I hope to identify and engage with over the next five years. What are you doing now? What would you like to do given the chance? I would like to find out.

That the so-called boomers’ group is now so important in the UK is shown by figures from the Office of National Statistics which have been reported in the press.In a population at an all time high, people of pensionable age exceed the number of children under 16 years of age .

Stop by again soon. This theme is going somewhere.