The past is another country. In 1980, the typical young worker in Detroit or Flint, Michigan, earned more than his counterpart in San Francisco or San Jose. The states with the highest median income were Michigan, Wyoming, and Alaska. Nearly 80 percent of the Boomer generation, which at the time was between 18 and 35, was white, compared to 57 percent today.

Three decades later, in 2013, the picture of young people—yes, Millennials—is a violently shaken kaleidoscope, and not all the pieces are falling into a better place. Michigan's median income for under-35 workers has fallen by 26 percent, more than any state. In fact, beyond the east coast, earnings for young workers fell in every state but Hawaii and South Dakota.

The median income of young adults today is $2,000 less today than their parents in 1980, adjusted for inflation. The earnings drop has been particularly steep in the rust belt and across the northwest.

As you can see in the next interactive graph, the three states with the highest median income for young people in 1980 were also the three states with the steepest 33-year decline in median income: Michigan, Wyoming, and Alaska. The winners of this continental shake-up are all on the coasts, particularly Virginia, Maryland, and just about all of New England.

Percent change in median income between 1980 and 2013:

The Census, which offered some of these findings on Friday, tells an occasionally contradictory story of the youngest generation in the workforce. For example, how does one make sense of the fact that Millennials are more educated and more impoverished than its parents' generation at a similar age? Surely, some of this is a matter of timing. The Census figures from 2009 through 2013 survey a generation struggling their way out of a historic recession.

The deeper explanation might be structural. Many young adults, particularly those who represent their families' first college graduates, are earning more than their parents. But young adults without a college degree have been run roughshod by technological changes, globalization, and slow wage growth that continues to this very week. Many of the cities with the largest declines in median income (Flint, Detroit, Cleveland, Youngstown, Toledo) were industrial hubs undone by the demise of manufacturing employment.

It's also worth pointing out that the United States has absorbed millions of immigrants over the past 30 years, often from poorer Latin and South American countries. (The Census notes that the share of ethnic minorities has doubled over the last 33 years.) It's possible that, even as these young families have raised their own living standards by moving to the U.S. and contributed to a growth economy, their below-average wages, when lumped into the aggregate, make it look like native-born families' wage growth is worse than it really is.

Although these figures paint a lugubrious picture of young workers today, it's nonetheless true that Boston, San Jose, Washington, San Francisco, and New York's metro areas have all seen double-digit real income growth since 1980. The coasts (and, more recently, energy-rich states like Texas) have largely thrived. Indeed, the United States is a plural noun, and the country's health is most accurately captured as a mosaic rather than a monolith. An unequal decade punctuated by an unequal recovery has left parts of the country better off in just about every way, while the vast majority of states are home to a Millennial generation that is quite clearly falling behind the pace of its parents.

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It’s common knowledge that many members of the Millennial generation in the United States are rejecting religion. But some analysts argue that, while these emerging adults are less likely to participate in organized religion, they retain an interest in spirituality.

Not so, concludes a newly published study.

“American adolescents in the 2010s are significantly less religiously oriented, on average, than their Boomer and Generation X predecessors were at the same age,” writes a research team led by San Diego State University psychologist Jean Twenge. Confirming earlier evidence, the study finds they are less likely than members of previous generations to attend religious services, and less supportive of religious organizations.

Importantly, however, “the declines also extend to the importance of religion, spirituality, and prayer,” the researchers write in the online journal PLoS One.While they caution that “these effects are both smaller and more limited,” they note that they “are not consistent with the idea that (young) Americans are less religious but not less spiritual.”

"American adolescents are now less likely to attend religious services. Compared to the early 1970s, more than twice as many college students in the 2010s never attended services (12 percent vs. 27 percent)."

“The large majority still have at least some religious involvement,” the researchers conclude. “(But) overall, the results suggest a movement toward secularism among a rapidly growing minority.”

Twenge and her colleagues looked at four large, nationally representative studies: The annual Monitoring the Future studies of eighth, 10th, and 12th graders, and the American Freshmen survey of entering college students (focusing on the years 1966 through 2014). They compared answers given by each of those groups to those given by members of previous generations at the same age.

“American adolescents are now less likely to attend religious services,” they write. “Compared to the early 1970s, more than twice as many college students in the 2010s never attended services (12 percent vs. 27 percent).”

Among all the age groups studied, “this shift is most pronounced after 2000, as Millennials enter the samples, with the number not attending services increasing 50 percent for 12th graders, 33 percent for 10th graders, and 31 percent for eighth graders,” the researchers report. “The percentage attending services weekly has also declined steadily; while 40 percent of 12th graders did so in 1976-79, only 30 percent did so in 2010-13.”

While the majority of young Americans continue to report a religious affiliation, the percentage answering “none” to that question continues to rise. “In just the 13 years between 2000 and 2013, 87 percent more college students chose no religious affiliation,” they write. “More students grew up without religion, and more are abandoning their parents’ religion by college entry.”

Twenge and her colleagues offer several possible explanations for this shift in thinking, including “the rise of individualism” and the tension between this insistence on independent thinking and the “rule-following and submission to authority” most religions require.

“The increasing acknowledgment that religion is not consistent with scientific understanding understanding of the universe may lead to a decrease in religion,” they note, “but the conflict between scientific knowledge and many religious teachings goes back hundreds of years, and therefore cannot explain the recent timing of the decline. It is possible, however, that the re-emergence of the science-religion conflict with debates about teaching creationism or intelligence design in U.S. schools pushed some young people away from religion. Another possibility is (the influence of) increasing high school graduation rates and college attendance, as more education is linked to lower religiosity.”

Whatever the reason, the emerging generation is clearly more secular than its predecessors, although it is deeply divided in this regard.

The study finds the decline in religiosity is larger among young women, whites, those of lower socioeconomic status, and residents of the Northeast. In contrast, this trend is “very small among blacks,” the researchers write, “and nonexistent among political conservatives.”

It looks like the culture wars will be continuing for the foreseeable future.

SEE ALSO: Study Suggests That Religion Doesn’t Make People More Moral

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NOW WATCH: George R.R. Martin's funny and insightful explanation of the role religion plays in 'Game of Thrones'

The EU is threatening to crumble and markets are in turmoil. Nativism and bigotry are taking political center stage in the US and around the developed world.

Blame your parents.

For decades, the generation of people between 52 and 70 — known as the baby boomers — have been controlling the planet.

The consequences of this came into sharp focus last week in the UK.

It was the baby-boomer generation that voted overwhelmingly for Britain to leave the EU in a bid for a return to isolationism, proving themselves all-too susceptible to the seduction of self-serving promises that leaders on the Leave side could never keep.

British youth, meanwhile, took the streets of London on Tuesday to protest the vote to leave.

This merits examination. Young people from the US can learn a lot from what the UK is experiencing because our parents are likely just as awful.

Old dog whistles, new politics

During the campaign, UK's Leave vote made a distinct promise that it knew would appeal directly to the baby-boomer generation. It promised to take the 350 million pounds a week that it claimed was going to the EU to maintain the UK's National Health Service (NHS).

It's England's publicly funded healthcare service, and yes, it serves mostly the elderly.

A few hours after the Leave vote won last week, Nigel Farage, the face of the campaign — even though he wasn't necessarily a part of the group — backtracked on that statement completely.

"No, I can't [guarantee it], and I would never have made that claim. That was one of the mistakes that I think the Leave campaign made," he said in a speech after the referendum. "We have a 10 billion-pound-, 34 million-pound-a-day featherbed that is going to be free money that we can spend on the NHS, on schools, on whatever it is."

It's hard to say that voters were totally swindled here. Fact checkers wasted no time in pointing out that there was no truth to Leave's statement from the beginning of the campaign, but Leave emblazoned the 350 million-pound-a-week claim on buses anyway.

Baby boomers heard what they wanted to hear, and they voted for it in much greater volumes than younger people. What they wanted to hear was that they would be taken care of immediately, and that they would not have to worry about invisible people on the continent.

What they didn't want to hear was how leaving the EU would cut off opportunity, economic and social, for the people who would have to live with the vote for a long time — opportunity that is worth paying for.

Again, it's not like no one told them. Economists, financiers, political leaders, and more warned them of the repercussions of a Leave vote. And in crushing the pound and UK stocks — especially banks — the market is telling them now.

Here's a fun chart:

This kind of short-term, me-first thinking is a hallmark of the baby-boomer generation on both sides of the pond.

'But you also have to get elected'

Donald Trump is using the same kinds of promises to bring in baby boomers here in the US. He's promising to cut taxes, an idea that they have always loved, and not touch Social Security, a program more baby boomers are coming to rely on.

On the latter point, Trump has come up against his own party. First, he sided with US House Speaker Paul Ryan, whose poindexter obsession with debt and the budget fits in well with the GOP's traditional commitment to keeping America's finances in line. Ryan wants to figure out a way to cut the program in the present so that it's around for future generations.

The problem is, that's a policy that doesn't appeal to baby boomers, who after voting for tax cut after tax cut during previous administrations, want to make sure that their retirements are secure. Forget what happens to their children — Generation X and millennials.

We should note that this sudden desire to spend money on Social Security doesn't necessarily jibe with how baby boomers have treated government spending since they took power. Since the 1980s, the big question in government budgetary policy has been "How much can we cut?" not "Where do we invest?" and this has been showing in America's education system and its infrastructure for years now.

And so, Trump has picked up that dog whistle and blown it. He now no longer wants to touch Social Security, but there will still be tax cuts — don't worry, Mom and Dad.

Trump told Ryan, according to Bloomberg Businessweek:

"From a moral standpoint, I believe in it. But you also have to get elected. And there's no way a Republican is going to beat a Democrat when the Republican is saying, 'We're going to cut your Social Security' and the Democrat is saying, 'We're going to keep it and give you more.'"

Now to be fair, this cheap pandering from politicians like Trump and Britain's Farage works because baby boomers actually go out and vote. Only 36% of 18- to 24-year-olds showed up to the Brexit vote, according to Sky News, but 83% of voters 65 and older showed up.

That's why our parents are being seduced in the first place.

A different world

Young people, by and large, cannot be seduced by this rhetoric — and based on Farage's backsliding, that's most of what it is so far.

According to Harvard's Kennedy School of Government Youth Poll, young people across the political spectrum overwhelmingly dislike Trump. Hillary Clinton has 61% of young voters likely to turn out to the polls for her while Trump grabs only 25%.

Part of this is because what Farage and Trump were selling was a return to a world that young people barely remember if they knew it at all. Years ago, the world was bigger. Distances were greater and there were more borders separating people and goods. Both men come from a world before globalization.

And they think that they can put the genie back in the bottle.

To younger generations, this seems impossible. Millennials are the most diverse — and largest — generation in history, so the xenophobic and nationalistic arguments Trump and Farage have made make less sense to us than to our parents.

The freedom of being able to move and learn in the physical world now mirrors what they can do with the internet in the digital world.

So, what Trump and Farage are presenting isn't just short-term thinking. It is thinking that's stuck in the past. It's the kind of thinking that still frames the world in terms of our war between capitalism and socialism. Younger people are showing signs that they're getting past that dichotomy.

In Harvard's poll, they overwhelmingly said that that they rejected socialism and capitalism — see the chart to your right. They're looking for something new.

Perhaps this is why, according to the same poll, only 15% of young people believe that the US is headed in the right direction. Half of the people polled don't think our leaders have the stuff to get us through — what seems like — tough times ahead.

Now, I hate to bring our grandparents into this, but they actually invested in our country. They passed the Federal-Aid Highway Act, which built the US Interstate Highway System, in 1956 and managed to avoid having a generational panic attack — like a Brexit vote, for instance — when that project wasn't done until 1992.

On the other hand, it was hard to get baby boomers to vote for spending on infrastructure development during the depth of the recession when Americans desperately needed jobs.

And don't even get me started on education spending as it relates to student loans.

Our parents are the worst.

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NOW WATCH: Obama on the Brexit vote: Don’t panic

On June 25, 2015, the US Census Bureau made it official: Millennials had surpassed baby boomers as the largest generation in the country.

New research narrows the finding even further.

According to data analysis from Torsten Slok, an economist at Deutsche Bank, there are more 26-year-olds in America than people of any other age — 4.75 million of them, to be precise.

Slok's analysis found that these so-called echo boomers are poised to wield a great deal of influence in the coming years.

Just as baby boomers took over business, politics, and the consumer economy during the 1980s and '90s, millennials currently in their mid-20s will make up the majority of jobs and big-ticket purchases such as houses and cars, Slok wrote in a recent brief, which was first reported by Axios.

In other words, their behavior would "echo" that of their parents.

Slok's findings go against much of the research into millennial spending behavior. Increasingly, young people are moving into cities to rent, not buy, and many prefer to spend their money on experiences rather than material goods. Saddled with college debt, some millennials feel they don't yet have the means to replicate their parents' behavior.

But another way to read Slok's findings is that millennials will represent such a large chunk of the spending economy — there are 83 million of them, after all — that what they spend money on won't matter as much.

Millennials may echo their parents' behavior in stimulating the economy through spending, but instead of buying new cars and houses, their hallmark behaviors could become ride-sharing and a desire to travel the world.

SEE ALSO: A mathematical theory says the perfect age to get married is 26 — here's why

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By last count, there were 4.6 million 26-year-olds in America.

That's more than any other age group in the country.

Torsten Slok, an economist at Deutsche Bank and the author of a new report on these echo boomers (or millennials or Gen-Yers, whichever you prefer), believes their widespread presence matters a great deal.

Just as baby boomers began spending like crazy in 1980s and 1990s, today's 20-somethings are poised to do the same in the mid-2020s.

"What's important from a broader perspective is they're about to get married and have children within the next five years," Slok says.

Marriage and family aren't the only characteristics that define echo boomers, who were born roughly between 1985 and 1995. Many of them grew up with financial constraints that have affected where they live, what they buy, and how they feel about important issues.

Here's what America's largest generation is all about.

SEE ALSO: A mathematical theory says the perfect age to get married is 26 — here's why

What they're buying

Echo boomers are far more likely to buy items for their value, not their convenience, a recent Goldman Sachs analysis found.

They aren't as impulsive with their shopping, and are far more likely to stick to a budget for big-ticket purchases — such as saving up for a pricey pair of durable boots over buying a cheaper pair every winter.

They also tend to favor buying experiences over material goods. Instead of collecting things that can gather dust, the group largely prefers to collect memories or stories.

How they're buying it

In many cases, millennials aren't driving to a physical store to pay for things in-person; they're saving their credit card information in their internet browser's keychain.

Just about every age group is engaging in e-commerce, but digital-native young people are still the only group doing the majority of their shopping online.

One 2016 report found the majority of that shopping isn't even done on a computer. Some 67% of millennials use their smartphone to check prices across different retailers, and an additional 64% primarily use their phones, not PCs or tablets, to search for coupons.

What they don't buy

Though Slok says echo boomers are moving toward starting families, many are still saddled with too much debt to even think about buying homes or cars. As a result, ownership in general has become less important to people in their 20s.

"Instead of having an ownership society, we now have a rental or leasing society," Slok says. "You still drive a car and live somewhere, but it's in a very different way relative to what your parents did."

Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, and countless other sharing-based services highlight how ingrained the anti-ownership attitude has become.

Being a millennial is hard.

You may never make it onto the property ladder, and older generations have made political decisions you'll have to live with.

To make matters worse, you're likely told you're spoiled and entitled when you can't find a job.

However, all might not be lost. According to new data from Indeed, one of the UK's largest job search websites, when you do get a job, you're more likely to hang onto it when the robot revolution comes. This is because the jobs millennials tend to choose are at lower risk of automation.

The site analysed the online search patterns of millions of UK jobseekers over six months, and found that nearly half of millennials (48%) were searching for what economists term "non-routine" jobs, such as professional and management roles. In comparison, 61% of baby boomers were looking for "routine" jobs, which include sales, admin, transport, and construction roles.

These sorts of jobs are more prone to automation according to economists, because they often involve repetition, which machines are quick to master. Jobs which include more human interaction are less likely to be replaced by robots.

Over a third (34%) of searches by baby boomers were for routine manual jobs, compared to barely a fifth for millennials, who were 67% less likely to search for these roles.

Mariano Mamertino, an EMEA economist at Indeed said that technology continues to reshape the way we work as well as the type and number of jobs that are available.

"Of course, no generation of jobseekers is completely doomed," he said. "Automation is a process, not a single event, and technological progress is going to impact different occupations at different times."

"Disappearing jobs can be a frightening concept and it's impossible to know exactly which jobs are 'safe' — but everyone can prepare for the future by building up transferable, non-routine skills that can be applied across a wide array of occupations," he added.

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If you're rapidly climbing up the career ladder, sooner or later you may find yourself managing people who are older than you. This can be kind of awkward and, in some cases, can cause friction in the workplace.

But it doesn't have to be that way. According to David Isaacs, a wealth adviser and CPA at Traust Sollus Wealth Management in New York, good conversation is the most important tool you can have.

Isaacs is a millennial, and he is tired of hearing the stereotypical labels of laziness and entitlement about his generation. He told Business Insider that while the immediate response to "millennial" being used as a derogatory term was annoyance, he had learned to take a step back from it.

The same logic can be applied to when you find you're in charge of managing people in a team who are in older generations. They might see you as spoilt or arrogant because of your age, but you can understand why they think that and change their mind with good communication.

"My recommendation would be to try to be more intentional in your communication, and say, 'OK, help me understand why you think the way you do, or why you feel that that's accurate,'" Isaacs said. "Everyone looks at situations through the lens of the past, so their experiences are going to dictate how they view what's coming after them. We can talk to each other and actually understand what someone is communicating."

Here are Isaac's three tips for what to do if you find yourself in a sticky situation with an older colleague at work:

1. Improve the team's communication

One way you can do this is by investing in communication training. Isaacs said that in the course his company took, one of the trainers pointed out that communication killed conflict and that conflict killed communication. So learning to talk to one another and appreciate others' points of view is pretty valuable in terms of reducing workplace friction.

2. Pay attention to different opinions

Nobody is perfect. Isaacs said that with this in mind, there would always be something new to learn and there would always be someone with a different experience from yours. If you approach a situation with the assumption you're always correct, then you're effectively shutting down any valuable communication.

"Maybe it still ends up that you're going to do what you wanted, but maybe not — maybe there's another possibility you haven't thought of," Isaacs said.

3. Ask how your coworkers want to be managed

Not everyone wants to be managed the same way, which is important to remember. Isaacs said the first question he asks someone who joins his team is, "How would you like to be managed?" to understand what kind of style the person will benefit from.

People who are fresh out of university compared with those who have been in the same company for 15 to 20 years will most likely require very different management styles. Some people like to be told exactly what to do, whereas others appreciate being left alone.

You can ask, "What can I do to facilitate your productivity and your progress?" Isaacs said, adding: "You just need to be able to facilitate their work — you don't necessarily need to micromanage them, unless they want you to do that."

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Numbering 92m, the millennial generation in the US is the largest demographic cohort in the country’s history.

As this group approaches its prime working and spending years, the impact on the economy is going to be huge.

So predicts Goldman Sachs, which has compiled a fascinating note on the factors that will shape this new "millennial economy."

The bank's starting point is that millennials are markedly different from previous generations. Born between 1980 and 2000, they have come of age during a time of rapid technological change, globalisation and economic disruption.

This has given them experiences and behaviours not shared by their parents. Perhaps most significantly, millennials are the first generation of digital natives. Technology is touching every aspect of their lives, including how they shop. The latest GS Research-Condé Nast millennial shopping survey bears this out. It found that millennials moved even more of their purchasing online over the past year, with Amazon cited as an increasingly common destination for fashion and beauty shoppers.

Having instant access to price comparisons, product information and peer reviews is also influencing the way that they buy products and services.

Millennials have also proven reluctant to buy big ticket items such as cars and luxury goods. Instead, they’re turning to a new set of services that provide access to products without the burdens of ownership. Experiences are increasingly valued above physical assets.

This generation also devoted more time and money to exercising and eating well. Their active lifestyle has spawned trends in everything from food and drink to fashion.

Many are willing to spend what little money they have on brands that they find compelling in this space. There can be little doubt that this unique generation is already changing our business and economic landscape.

City firms struggle to recruit and retain millennial employees, who are less enamoured by the traditional graduate scheme than those that came before them.

Employers must adapt their practices and their values if they're going to survive.

The fact that Goldman Sachs is investing time and money in figuring out what makes these kids tick, tells you all you need to know.

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If age really is just a number, what number marks old age?

Well, the answer to that depends on how old you are now.

Millennials hold the least generous views on aging, saying that you are old beginning at just 59, according to a new study by U.S. Trust. Older groups, however, put the starting point further out.

Gen X on average bumps the beginning of old age to 65, while boomers and the silent generation both agreed that age 73 is the start.

Here's how different groups defined "old" and "young," according to the 2017 U.S. Trust Insights on Wealth & Worth report:

The survey of more than 800 high-net-worth households defined millennials as being between the ages of 21 and 36, Generation X as ages 37 to 52, baby boomers as people 53 to 72, and the silent generation as anyone 73 or older.

Surprisingly, millennials were the most inclusive when it came to defining who is young, saying that only at age 40 does youth end. Of course, this means they think middle age spans only 19 years.

Gen X and boomers see people growing up quite a bit faster. Both groups on average say youth ends at 31, while the silent generation was more lenient, bumping the figure up to 35.

Asked separately to define the the age at which someone hits the prime of life, in terms of a person’s resources, potential, capacity and influence, millennials put that at 36. Older respondents—all already past 36 themselves—felt the prime of life came later. Gen X said age 47 was the prime, while boomers put it at 50 and the silent generation selected age 52 as best.

For another view, the Japan Gerontological Society and Japan Geriatrics Society released a study earlier this year that concluded the term "old" best applies to those between the ages of 75 and 89. People ages 65 to 74 could be thought of as "pre-old," while those age 90 and over earn the title "super-old," they said.

Negative opinions about aging can be a significant impediment to older workers who are looking to find new jobs or advance in their careers. That's a particular problem as longer lifespans and savings shortfalls have many people looking to delay retirement or work part time after they stop full-time work.

One piece of good news: AARP has demonstrated that young people's sense of what age is "old" can be changed pretty easily. As part of its Disrupt Aging campaign, the group questioned millennials on what age was old and then introduced them to people who were the ages they named.

In an entertaining video, you can see how the youths all changed their answers to a much later age because none of the people met the millennials' expectations of what an old person should look, act or sound like. The signs they were expecting to see? Illness, memory loss, difficulty walking, and struggles with technology.

Meanwhile, a study by Pew Research Center several years ago found that many of the markers we associate with aging—including illness, memory loss and an end to sexual activity—are experienced by fewer older adults than younger adults think.

In the end, maybe we should just take comfort in the fact that age really is just a number and that what we think of as old now may in fact not be that old.

SEE ALSO: Research shows how Generation Z thinks differently from millennials when it comes to money

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By last count, there were 4.6 million 26-year-olds in America.

That's more than any other age group in the country.

Torsten Slok, an economist at Deutsche Bank and the author of a new report on these echo boomers (or millennials or Gen-Yers, whichever you prefer), believes their widespread presence matters a great deal.

Just as baby boomers began spending like crazy in 1980s and 1990s, today's 20-somethings are poised to do the same in the mid-2020s.

"What's important from a broader perspective is they're about to get married and have children within the next five years," Slok says.

Marriage and family aren't the only characteristics that define echo boomers, who were born roughly between 1985 and 1995. Many of them grew up with financial constraints that have affected where they live, what they buy, and how they feel about important issues.

Here's what America's largest generation is all about.

SEE ALSO: A mathematical theory says the perfect age to get married is 26 — here's why

What they're buying

Echo boomers are far more likely to buy items for their value, not their convenience, a recent Goldman Sachs analysis found.

They aren't as impulsive with their shopping, and are far more likely to stick to a budget for big-ticket purchases — such as saving up for a pricey pair of durable boots over buying a cheaper pair every winter.

They also tend to favor buying experiences over material goods. Instead of collecting things that can gather dust, the group largely prefers to collect memories or stories.

How they're buying it

In many cases, millennials aren't driving to a physical store to pay for things in-person; they're saving their credit card information in their internet browser's keychain.

Just about every age group is engaging in e-commerce, but digital-native young people are still the only group doing the majority of their shopping online.

One 2016 report found the majority of that shopping isn't even done on a computer. Some 67% of millennials use their smartphone to check prices across different retailers, and an additional 64% primarily use their phones, not PCs or tablets, to search for coupons.

What they don't buy

Though Slok says echo boomers are moving toward starting families, many are still saddled with too much debt to even think about buying homes or cars. As a result, ownership in general has become less important to people in their 20s.

"Instead of having an ownership society, we now have a rental or leasing society," Slok says. "You still drive a car and live somewhere, but it's in a very different way relative to what your parents did."

Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, and countless other sharing-based services highlight how ingrained the anti-ownership attitude has become.

As the largest, and most disruptive, generation there's a lot to learn about millennials.

It's estimated that millennials will be almost 50% of the workforce by 2020.

How can we keep them in one place ? How can we talk to them ? What can we learn from them?

Can this generation of people teach older and younger generations the secret to happiness be one such lesson?

They prefer to spend money on experiences rather than on material items.

Older generations had the belief that in order to be successful you needed to have a good career with a good salary. This money allowed an employee to purchase essential items and the finer things in a life.

Most of the older generation want to purchase a home in the suburbs. They wanted that white picket fence. For most of that generation happiness was equated with a home purchase.

For millennials, that's not the case.

"In the hunt for happiness, many have shifted away from material things and toward experiences," writes journalist and author Dan Kadlec.

"This shift spans the generations, although millennials seem to be further along. 76% of millennials said they would rather spend on experiences rather than on material things. Compare this number with 59% of boomers who feel that ownership is happiness. This information is according to new research from Eventbrite, a ticketing company."

Mr. Kadlec adds, "From the start of their working years, millennials have placed a high value on job satisfaction and enriching experiences. millennial have come to the point of turning down offers or promotions that might get in the way of these experiences. Some 94% of millennials say experiences are an important part of a fulfilling life, according to the survey."

We can't pinpoint the exact moment when this became a turning point. Some believe that the change was connected with the millennials feeling suffocated by the "greed is good" type philosophy. This seems to have happened some time in the 80s.

The internet bubble burst in the early 2000s, and of course then came the 2009 economic meltdown. millennials have figured out that spending money on experiences are more rewarding and can make us all happier.

There's some science to back that up as well.

"We buy things to make us happy, and we succeed, but only for a while. New things are exciting to us at first, but then we adapt to them," says Dr. Thomas Gilovich, a psychology professor at Cornell University. Dr. Gilovich has been studying the question of money and happiness for more than two decades.

Gilovich's research is the synthesis of numerous psychological studies into something called the Easterlin paradox. Simply stated it says that money buys happiness, but only up to a point.

"Our experiences are a bigger part of ourselves than our material goods," says Dr. Gilovich. "You can really like your material stuff. You can even think of that "stuff" as part of your identity. In some way you can feel connected to those things. Nonetheless mere "things" remain separate from you. In contrast, your experiences really are part of you. We are the sum total of our experiences."

Furthermore, experiences give us something to look forward to and connects us with others. "We consume experiences directly with other people," says Gilovich. "And after they're gone, they're part of the stories that we tell to one another."

They have a different mentality regarding work.

millennials get a bad rap for being lazy. That's not true. They have a completely different mentality on work than previous generations.

millennials like to be doing something that they love and to have the flexibility to achieve a healthy work-life balance.

According to the Intelligence Group,"64% of millennials said they would rather make $40,000 a year at a job they love. They would even leave a $100,000 a year at a job they find boring."

A study from Udemy found that "Young millennials (ages 21-24) are nearly twice as likely to be bored at work (38%). Baby Boomers are only about (22%) likely to be bored."

The bigger picture? millennials aren't motivated or happy with a fat, juicy paycheck. They're seeking jobs where they can make a difference, grow professionally and personally, and have time to themselves.

"Is there really such a thing as work-life balance? If you love what you do for work, then you're not constantly aggravated by the elusive work-life balance achievement. Happiness is the barometer. You need to be comfortable that you're giving enough attention to family, work, friends, and your health."

Do what makes you happy or else everything else will suffer as a result. When things go too far in either direction, I tend to course-correct fairly quickly. "You need to be the judge of this and it varies a great deal person to person," Ryan Harwood, CEO of PureWow, told Forbes.

Kayla Buell, author and millennial career blogger, added:

"Work-life balance means doing an awesome job at work but also having enough time and energy to focus on my other passions and relationships. Last year, I made the switch to a new company which aligned more with my personal passions and allowed me to tap into that energy and focus in a new way. Like many millennials, I was starting to feel overwhelmed by the daily grind, so finding a way to blend my career and passion, allowed me to be more present in my relationships and feel more fulfilled overall."

They want to make the world a better place.

Research has shown that giving makes us far happier than receiving. Other studies have shown that that giving money to others, or donating to a charity, will put a bigger smile on your face. Merely spending that money on yourself doesn't fit the happiness meter. That's because we're a social species and survived for all these centuries because we helped each other out.

That's not to say that other generations haven't wanted to make the world a better place. It's just that millennials have taken this to a whole new level. 74% of this tech-savvy generation has a passion to change the world and are more than willingly to make a positive difference. This generation wants to make changes in both the lives of people locally and globally.

Are you a millennial? If so, let us what you can teach others about how to be happy.

Join the conversation about this story »

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• Xennials are a 'micro-generation' born between 1977 and 1985.
• This group has also been called the 'Oregon Trail Generation.'
• Xennials may have been hit hardest by the recession, because of a combination of student loan debt, job losses, and other factors.

It's hard not fitting in.

If you feel sort-of-but-not-quite like a millennial, and sort-of-but-not-quite like a Gen X-er, take heart: You might just be a Xennial. That's a term for the "micro-generation" born between 1977 and 1985.

The term was coined in 2014, by Sarah Stankorb in Good Magazine. Recently, people have started talking about Xennials again, with self-proclaimed members of this demographic waxing (read: tweeting) nostalgic about Oregon Trail and flip phones. Merriam-Webster even labeled "xennial" one of its "words we're watching."

Below, Business Insider has outlined the defining characteristics of Xennials, and how they're different from the generations that came before and after them.

SEE ALSO: There's a term for people born in the early 80's who don't feel like a millennial or Gen Xer

Xennials are a 'micro-generation,' born between 1977 and 1985.

Source: Business Insider

This group has also been called the 'Oregon Trail Generation,' in reference to a popular computer game when they were growing up.

Source: Social Media Week

Xennials were the first generation to grow up with household computers and have internet access. ('You've got mail!')

Source: Social Media Week

• Pew Research Foundation recently established its definition of millennials as people born between 1981 and 1996.
• Defining generations helps researchers see how coming of age during certain historical events and technological changes influence the way people see the world.
• Pew thinks it's still too early to define the generation that comes after millennials, but some names tossed around are "postmillennial generation" and Generation Z.

The only generation officially designated by the US Census Bureau is the baby-boomer generation.

Yet that hasn't stopped demographers from classifying other cohorts into ranges of birth years. Often this is done to better understand how formative experiences such as world events or technological changes shape the ways people see and interact with the world.

In March, the Pew Research Center established an official cutoff point for the end of the millennial generation, formally designating millennials as people born between 1981 and 1996.

In an explanation of that decision, Pew president Michael Dimock wrote that generations are better viewed as a tool for understanding how perspectives and views change — not as strict categories that define who people are.

Older millennials and younger millennials probably feel differently about a number of topics, but most were between ages 5 and 20 when the 9/11 terrorist attacks happened. That means that those attacks and their aftermath loomed large as those people have become adults.

The economic recession of 2008 — which came at a time when many millennials were entering the workforce — played a significant role too. Plus, as Dimock put it, "Millennials came of age during the internet explosion."

Here's how Pew officially categorizes the generations by birth year at this point in time:

The number of birth years that a generation includes can vary. Millennials span a 16-year range, according to Pew. The Gen X cohort was another 16-year group, but the boomers had a 19-year range and the silent generation an 18-year range.

Picking a cutoff year is complicated, of course, as groups change over time.

"[T]he differences within generations can be just as great as the differences across generations, and the youngest and oldest within a commonly defined cohort may feel more in common with bordering generations than the one to which they are assigned," Dimock wrote.

Yet establishing a cutoff point helps researchers investigate how a group has been shaped by similar experiences.

Pew thinks it's too early to define the generation that comes after millennials, but some names that have been tossed around are "the postmillennial generation" or Gen Z.

By the time people born in 1997 or later became teenagers, the US had largely become a place where it was possible to be constantly connected to the internet, usually with a mobile device (the iPhone launched in 2007). While millennials largely adapted to social media and consistent connection to the internet, people born from the late '90s on probably don't remember a time without those tools.

But the kids being born now will likely be considered part of a new generation after Gen Z.

Dimock said it's always possible that new data could give researchers a reason to reevaluate these generational boundaries, though. In the meantime, he said, the group coming of age after millennials would be especially interesting to follow.

"We look forward to spending the next few years studying this generation as it enters adulthood," Dimock wrote. "All the while, we’ll keep in mind that generations are a lens through which to understand societal change, rather than a label with which to oversimplify differences between groups."

SEE ALSO: Past generations left millennials and future youth facing a crisis

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• Kids have to go through certain rites of passage, regardless of when they're born.
• However, my kids’ lives will be strikingly different than mine in several key ways — like how the internet will shape their lives, their knowledge of environmentalism, and the lack of freedom to roam that I enjoyed.
• Though my kids will never know the feel of a typewriter, they will know an America where we’re approaching equality for different types of people.

In many ways, my kids’ childhoods will be just like mine, just as my own youth shared so many similarities with that of my parents, they of theirs, and back on it goes.

All kids have to go through certain rites of passage when it comes to friendships, relationships, struggles in school, the establishment of an identity, and all of the other million and one things that make us who we are.

In many other ways, my kids' childhood will be starkly different than those halcyon days of my youth. The world has changed, and the way people approach parenting has changed.

Here are five ways my children's young lives will be distinctly different than mine:

SEE ALSO: 'Xennials' were born in the early '80s — here are all the ways they're different from the millennials they were supposed to be

1. Freedom to roam

I was born in 1982, and whether or not the statistics back it up, the America of the late 1980s and early 1990s just seemed safer than it does today. My parents and the parents of friends never batted an eye when we elementary school-aged kids would disappear down the street on our bikes or run off into the woods after breakfast and not return until dinnertime.

I used to wander miles away from my home with no way for my parents to find me nor for me to quickly contact them, and it was simply never a problem — the parents knew us kids would always come back.

My kids? Once they're grade-school aged, I'll let them go wherever they want ... on our property. When they're a bit older, they can go to the end of the cul-de-sac on which we live.

2. Information everywhere

I grew up before the internet existed. In fact, I was still writing school papers by hand until my middle school years, when Word Perfect enabled me to type instead of scrawl.

In my day, when you wanted information, you went to the library and cracked open a book. In a time before smartphones, Wikipedia, and a million blogs, students could practice deeper learning and generally trust the information they found. Also, we got to enjoy the delightful running of mouths that occurs during conversations when no one can fact-check your claims.

Today, as soon as they're old enough to have regular access to the web via a family computer (and, one dreaded day, their own phones), my kids will have access to answers to any and every question. For the most part, this is great, but sometimes information found online is biased or outright wrong.

3. They will come of age as we approach equality

The other day at dinner, in the organic course of conversation, my son casually said, "Or maybe he'll marry a boy," as my wife and I opined on the future of a friend's relationship with his girlfriend.

My throat caught as I realized fully what I had long hoped and suspected: My son and daughter will never think twice about the normalcy of same-sex relationships. The US remains far from the finish line when it comes to genuine equality and tolerance, but we've moved in leaps and bounds toward it, even in the 35 years I've been alive.

In my youth, the word "gay" was an epithet hurled about the playground that landed with a sting. My kids will use that term (or the accepted descriptor of their day) as an adjective with all the ferocity of the words "tall,""young," or "blonde."

• On June 23, 1988, NASA climate scientist James Hansen told the US Senate it was time to acknowledge that climate change was happening and take action to limit its effects.
• Thirty years later, the world has continued to burn fossil fuels faster and faster, cranking planet-warming carbon dioxide levels higher than they've been for millions of years.
• Without taking action soon, it'll cost future generations trillions to try to deal with the problem.

Exactly 30 years ago, James Hansen, the director of NASA's Institute for Space Studies, told the US Senate that the question of the day — whether climate change was happening — was no longer in doubt.

"It is time to stop waffling so much and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here," Hansen told reporters at the time.

Hansen's testimony before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources on June 23, 1988 — coincidentally the hottest June 23 in the District of Columbia's recorded history— is frequently considered the most important climate change hearing in history.

The greenhouse effect that Hansen described — in which the widespread combustion of fossil fuels causes a heat-trapping buildup of gases like carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere — has since become almost common knowledge. For more than 400,000 years, the concentration of atmospheric CO2 fluctuated between just under 180 and 300 parts per million (ppm). Levels are now over 400 ppm and climbing.

The most alarming consequences of that change, like an uninhabitable planet, are still far off. But the near-term effects of climate change, things people alive today will see, include rising sea levels, exaggerated temperature extremes, and stronger hurricanes and typhoons.

The question Hansen's testimony raised was what would be done about that threat. Leading scientists had spoken; political leaders had the information; and even ExxonMobil researchers had privately concluded that "major reductions in fossil fuel combustion" would be needed to prevent "potentially catastrophic events," according to prizewinning investigative reporting.

But the answer to that question, 30 years later, is very little.

The more time passes, the more difficult and expensive fixing the climate problem will get. Hansen is still sounding alarms — in a study published last year, he calculated that future generations could be forced to spend more than $530 trillion cleaning C02 out of the atmosphere (something we don't yet know how to do efficiently). For context, the entire US budget is about $4 trillion annually.

That's quite a burden to leave the children of the future.

The leaders that got us here

After Hansen's testimony, the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works sent a letter to Lee Thomas, the EPA administrator, asking for an examination of policy options that would help stabilize greenhouse gas emissions.

"It was shelved," Mary Wood, head of the University of Oregon School of Law's Environmental and Natural Resources Law Center, told Business Insider.

In 1988, George H.W. Bush, who would take the presidential oath the following January, vowed to"fight the greenhouse effect with the White House effect."

That didn't happen. In fact, at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Bush famously declared that "the American way of life is not up for negotiation."

The members of the 101st Congress in 1989 hailed mostly from the Silent Generation (the average age was about 53) and to be fair, they were stuck with a problem created by past generations, too. But by the time those leaders were in power, they had access to knowledge about the scale of the problem that previous generations' representatives did not.

Of course, behavioral psychologists and economists know that humans aren't good at coming together to deal with problems whose consequences seem far off.

"On any issue, it takes an enormous amount of effort to overcome the status quo," environmentalist and author Bill McKibben told Business Insider. "In the case of climate change, it's doubly hard, since you have to deal with the entire world. In a certain way, we shouldn't be too surprised about how difficult it's all been."

But the biggest barrier to action hasn't been cooperation, nor a lack of information.

"It turned out that we were not engaged in an argument for which more evidence and data was the cure — we'd won the argument long ago," McKibben said. "It was a fight, and it was about money and power … And that one we were losing."

The power of money and misinformation

Energy company executives have long known the scientific consensus on global warming. Exxon leaders were informed by company scientists that there was general scientific agreement on the topic in the 1970s. Oil giant Shell created a film in 1991 explaining the future threats of extreme weather, flood, famine, and climate-related conflict.

But they also knew that a serious fight against climate change would hurt their businesses, and lobbied against regulation.

In the early 2000s, groups connected to energy billionaires like the Koch brothers also started funding efforts to discredit climate science. As Jane Mayer explained in her book "Dark Money," political consultant Frank Luntz showed these groups how to persuade voters that the science wasn't clear.

"On cue, organizations funded and directed by the Kochs tore into global warming science and the experts behind it," Mayer wrote. From 2005 to 2008, the Kochs spent almost $25 million funding anti-climate groups, according to the book.

Such groups poured money into political campaigns, directed at candidates (often Republicans) who voiced doubts about the established science. According to a 2013 study, organizations connected to fossil fuel companies have spent almost half a billion dollars on "a deliberate and organized effort to misdirect the public discussion and distort the public's understanding of climate."

And lo and behold, political inaction continued. In 2001, George W. Bush rejected the Kyoto Protocol, which would have gone into effect and required emissions cuts by 2008. (Bill Clinton initially signed it.)

In the most recent presidential election, Republican candidates had already been given a total of more than $100 million from fossil fuel barons by March 2016. President Trump's administration is now full of officials who don't accept the scientific consensus on climate change.

"A government decision maker that has taken money from the fossil fuel industry cannot simply turn around and take action on the climate the next day," Wood said. "They've been compromised, they've breached the duty of loyalty."

The influence that fossil fuels companies now have in politics, Wood added, has created a conflict of interest between government officials and citizens that's "the size of the Gulf of Mexico." Ironically, the Gulf is particularly at risk of being destroyed by the thousands of oil spills that happen there every year.

A straightforward solution

Those in office during Hansen's initial testimony may have been part of the Silent Generation, but by the 111th Congress in 2011, the average age of leaders in the House and Senate marked them as Baby Boomers. And their generation has failed to confront the problem, too.

Of course, it's wrong to blame two full generations for our climate crisis (as tempting as that may be for future generations). Many people have spent their lives pushing for solutions, and it's unfair to villainize the average layperson for the actions of politicians or the 100 companies that are responsible for 71% of global carbon emissions since 1988.

However, the window in which action can still avert the most devastating consequences of climate change is rapidly shrinking. Hansen recently told reporters that his study last year suggested putting the problem off for even a few more years could create a situation where "the costs of trying to maintain a livable planet may be too high to bear."

That means that the Baby Boomers currently running our country and energy companies are in a unique position. They may be our last line of defense, our final chance to fix the situation.

"It's a historic moment, because we're at the last possible moment of opportunity to avert irrevocable catastrophe," Wood said.

The solution is simple.

"The irony of all this is that it's been entirely clear from the beginning what we need to do," McKibben said. "It has to look like the very rapid conversion to 100% renewable energy."

Eventually, the world will run out of fossil fuels and be forced to make that switch — though if we burn through all oil, gas, and coal before we do so, the planet will be drastically different. Many researchers believe the right policies can facilitate a much faster transition.

"We undertake enormous expenditures to do things that we think are in the long term interest, national security expenses for example, undertaken with a view that they protect us against future threats," Larry Karp, an economist at UC Berkeley, told Business Insider.

Wood also likens the threat of climate change — and necessary action — to military efforts.

"There was certainly a consensus in World War II when everyone stepped up to the threat. Car manufacturers made military equipment, toy manufacturers made gun bets — that kind of war effort was incredible then and that's exactly what's needed now," said Wood. "It takes a real leader to meet that threat."

There are substantial bipartisan arguments in favor of switching to renewable energy: It's the only way for the US to achieve energy independence, and the falling price of renewables has already created a market trend towards cleaner energy.

Plus, the cost of such a transition would be far cheaper than the alternative. A 2014 report by the International Energy Agency estimated that transitioning away from fossil fuels by 2050 would cost the world $44 trillion. But by cutting fuel use, the report estimates, we'd avoid $115 trillion in fuel costs, which would more pay for the switch (not to mention the fact that the costs of wind and solar have fallen significantly since those calculations were done).

Rising activism around the world

As older leaders continue to stall, millions of individuals in younger generations are now pushing for policies and investments that could avert the worst effects of climate change.

"It became clear, we've got to organize for some power of our own," said McKibben — a Boomer who's devoted his career to this cause.

McKibben's organization 350.org, is filled with young activists leading initiatives to fight projects like the Keystone Pipeline and other new oil, coal, and gas developments.

Climate-related lawsuits are on the rise around the world as well. In the US, a group of 21 kids, aged 9 to 21, are currently suing the federal government. They argue that by engaging in actions that contribute to climate change despite long-held knowledge of its dangerous consequences, the government has violated their constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property.

Hansen's granddaughter Sophie Kivlehan is one of those kids. If their lawsuit succeeds, the case could establish a fundamental right to a stable climate and compel agencies to pursue that goal.

Advocacy like this has contributed to the emergence of a stronger global consensus about the need to curb emissions.

"Paris was a success, though you have to squint a little bit to see it — at least everyone agreed there was a problem," McKibben said.

Although President Trump has said the US is withdrawing from the agreement, cities and states around the country have vowed to meet the Paris agreement's emissions reduction goals anyway. Other countries, including China and the EU, have said they plan to stick to their pledges no matter what.

The question, however, is whether any of these efforts can yield results quickly enough.

"In order to catch up with the physics of climate change we have to go at an exponential rate," McKibben said. "It's not as if this was a static problem. If we don't get to it very soon, we'll never get to it."

The looming cliff

More Gen Xers and Millennials are assuming positions of authority every day. But the threat of climate change is quickly getting harder to deal with.

I am a Millennial — I was born five years before Hansen's testimony — and I'm also a father. I wonder every day if we will solve this in time for my son to avoid the most disastrous versions of climate model projections.

"He's going to look back and think, 'what the hell were you all thinking,'" McKibben said of my son. "And the answer will be that we weren't thinking enough."

"Huge swaths of the world will be living in places that by the end of the century will have heat waves so deep that people won't be able to deal with them, you have sea level rising dramatically, to the point that most of the world's cities are drowning, the ocean turning into a hot, sour, breathless soup as it acidifies and warms," McKibben said.

The legislators currently in power cannot, of course, be held responsible for that stark future. And they're not to blame for a problem that started at the beginning of the industrial era. But by virtue of their position at this moment, they're the ones with the power to finally do something.

"They're sitting in a historic moment that is cast upon them by nature itself," Wood said. "Everybody in the future will know that we sat in this one fleeting moment of time. Everybody will know who stood up and who stood on the sidelines."

This story was originally published on July 22, 2017. It has been updated for the anniversary of James Hansen's testimony.

SEE ALSO: The world faces a future of floods, famine, and extreme heat — here’s what it’ll take to bounce back

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• Baby boomers own two of every five homes in the country.
• Home demand from younger generations might not be enough to fill the void left by departing older owners.
• This may cause gluts in some local markets. 

Will baby boomers turn into party poopers when they unload their homes in large numbers starting in the next decade? Could they create an indigestible oversupply in the market that lowers home prices and frustrates sales?

That’s a sobering scenario outlined by two new, provocative studies. One, from Fannie Mae’s Economic and Strategic Research group, warns that the “beginning of a mass exodus looms on the horizon,” where “homeownership demand from younger generations is insufficient to fill the void left by multitudes of departing older owners.” The net result: gluts in some local markets with potentially negative impacts.

A second study, from the Stephen S. Fuller Institute at George Mason University, focuses on the Washington D.C. market and sees a similar problem ahead. “The significant number of older owners in relatively large homes may portend a ‘baby boomer sell-off'” in the D.C. region and elsewhere in the U.S., it reports. Some long-time owners “may have difficulty attaining the price gains they witnessed in their neighborhoods during recent years,” according to author Jeannette Chapman, the Fuller Institute’s deputy director.

Both studies cite demographic and housing data to make their cases. Boomers — the giant generation of Americans born between 1946 and 1964 — own 32 million homes, two of every five in the country. The generations preceding them occupy another 14 million homes. Collectively their properties are valued around $13.5 trillion, according to the Fannie Mae study, co-authored by Patrick Simmons of the strategic research group and Dowell Myers, a professor at the University of Southern California.

All of these homeowners face key choices: Do we stay put, sell, downsize or move to a rental? At some point, the inevitable kicks in: health issues and death will force them to dispose of their properties.

Fannie’s study estimates that from 2016 to 2026, between 10.5 million and 11.9 million older owners will end their ownership status. Between 2026 and 2036, another 13.1 million to 14.6 million will do the same.

This massive and unprecedented generational unloading of houses could be “negative for the home sales market,” the Fannie study warns, because the upcoming generations of buyers may not have the financial capacity — or desire — to absorb the large numbers of homes coming to market. How much of a price hit to boomers’ and potentially other owners’ properties could occur can’t be predicted at this point, co-author Myers told me in an interview.

“It’s impossible” to forecast price impacts “10 years ahead,” he said. “We do not mean to be alarmists,” he added, but hope to spur discussion of the impending challenges and the need for public and private policies that might cushion the impacts. Among the possibilities: Create additional financing programs that encourage Millennials and others to purchase first-time homes, so that they have the equity needed to purchase boomers’ homes 10 to 20 years from now.

In the Fuller Institute study, author Chapman notes that there’s already a mismatch in many Washington D.C. area neighborhoods, where empty nest seniors own homes with far more space than they need. More than 273,000 homes are owned by individuals 50 years and older that have at least two more bedrooms than the number of people living in the house. “As these owners downsize or move elsewhere … ” Chapman says, “the potential for increased supply is large enough to moderate price gains.”

Arthur C. Nelson, a professor of planning and real estate development at the University of Arizona, says some local markets with large oversupplies of boomer homes for sale could encounter significant price declines. In an email, Nelson, who has written about the coming challenges with boomers’ homes for several years, suggested that in the worst-hit areas, price declines could be as crushing as “a quarter or a third or more” — essentially the next housing crash.

Not everybody agrees. Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, says such dark forecasts ignore positive developments well underway — strong U.S. population growth, the rising importance of foreign born buyers who will help sop up the oversupply of large houses in metropolitan suburbs, and the “glacial” speed at which the oversupply is likely to manifest itself.

Yun is emphatic: There should be “no measurable price declines” attributable to the boomers.

What’s this all mean for you? At the very least, be aware of the issue. And think about devising a strategy for dealing with whatever scenario sounds most realistic to you, whether you’re an owner or future buyer.

SEE ALSO: Trump's trade war is overshadowing another global battle that could plunge markets into chaos

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• Labeled by Gallup as "the job-hopping generation,"millennials generally don't plan on staying with their employer for more than a few years.
• Gen Zs, the generational cohort born after 1997, will likely be just as restless.
• Glassdoor chief economist Andrew Chamberlain said younger workers feel comfortable asking for perks that older generations may not have.
• But 20-something workers also tend to have low opinions of their employers.

Millennials have been dubbed "the job-hopping generation." And it looks like Generation Zs, who were born after 1997, are poised to be just as restless.

Glassdoor chief economist Andrew Chamberlain told Business Insider that younger millennials and Gen Zs across the board are demanding perks and benefits that older generations may not have felt bold enough to ask for — particularly more paid time off and work-from-home options.

"There are a lot of young millennial and Gen Z workers who have definitely never been through a recession," Chamberlain said. "They started working since the end of the last recession. I think today priorities are changing in that people are becoming more choosy."

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Workers who entered the job market in the mid-2010s have only experienced a remarkably strong job market. In October, unemployment reached the lowest levels since 1969. That's pushed employers to resort to everything from creating job titles like "time ninja" to hiring candidates from automated phone calls to fill their many job openings.

"It's the strongest job market in a generation," Chamberlain said. "There are 7 million unfilled jobs in the US, and companies are falling over themselves to hire certain kinds of talent."

Read more:Teens say they cringe when brands use these 11 outdated slang words — here's what Gen Z is saying instead

Despite the fact that they've entered an incredibly robust job market, most 20-something workers don't feel a sense of loyalty to their employers.

According to the 2018 Deloitte Millennial Survey, 43% of millennials and 61% of Gen Zs plan to leave their company in two years. Just 28% of millennials and 12% of Gen Zs say they'll stay beyond five years.

And while Chamberlain said younger workers are comfortable demanding benefits like paid time off or work-from-home, they don't believe that their employers want to provide the essentials, like a pension plan. As Business Insider's Shana Lebowitz recently wrote:

"Results from a Business Insider survey of 1,000 in early December suggest that today's young workers aren't operating under any delusions about how much security their employers can provide them. Respondents ages 18 to 29 were 19 percentage points less likely than the average respondent to say a pension is essential to a good job. Respondents over 60, on the other hand, were 13 percentage points more likely."

The result is an interesting paradox among the workforce's newest members — they expect to find a job quickly and easily, and feel comfortable asking to work from home in their PJs, but aren't so certain that their employer will invest in their future.

SEE ALSO: Generation Zs reveal their 100 favorite brands

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Barbara Corcoran doesn't invest in rich kids because poor kids have one trait that makes them more likely to succeed

• Al Gore's Generation Investment Management on Tuesday announced it had closed a $1 billion growth equity fund, the largest in the firm's 15-year history.
• Generation's growth equity partner Joy Tuffield and director Shalini Rao told Business Insider the time was right for a large influx of cash for sustainability-focused companies, even with some sustainability companies reporting difficulties raising funds from more traditional firms.
• But Generation also plans to use the new fund to expand the definition of sustainable investments beyond environmental projects and include societal and health companies as well.
• Generation's earlier growth equity funds have also invested in Asana, DocuSign, Gogoro, CiBO, M-Kopa, Ocado, Optoro, and Seventh Generation.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Venture investing will look a lot different in five years if Generation Investment Management has any say in the matter.

The sustainability-focused firm was started 15 years ago by former US Vice President Al Gore and former Goldman Sachs Asset Management co-CEO David Blood. On Tuesday, the London-based firm announced it had closed a $1 billion growth equity fund, its largest fund to date.

"Ultimately we have a very high conviction that the world is going to transition to a much more sustainable economy," Generation's growth equity partner Joy Tuffield told Business Insider. "It's going to be fairer. It's going to be more equitable. It's going to have a lower environmental impact. It will be sustainable and kind of like an environmental practice."

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The billion-dollar fund plans to grant checks ranging from $50 million to $150 million to mid- and late-stage companies with mission-driven founders. Upon launch, the fund has two investments: the genomics-testing company Sophia Genetics and the developer-training software company Andela. Generation's earlier growth equity funds hold stakes in Asana, DocuSign, Gogoro, CiBO, M-Kopa, Ocado, Optoro, and Seventh Generation.

"We have always had a growth equity strategy and we are going to continue doing that," Tuffield said. "We are going to be a pretty meaningful active minority investors in these companies. We'll be looking to play a role in helping support the entrepreneurs in whatever way makes sense."

Planetary health, people health, and financial health

The new fund will allow Generation to expand its definition of a sustainable business beyond its traditional environmental focus.

According to Shalini Rao, Generation's director of growth equity, the new fund will have three additional areas of focus: "planetary health, people health, and financial health." That will position Generation to back ideas that may not fit the traditional "sustainability" mold but could offer higher returns in the long term.

"It's taking that long-term vision as to what the world ought to look like and the companies we believe will be on the right side of history and are very much mission-driven," Rao said. "So for financial inclusion and well-being, how do you think, at a systems level, what returns a better outcome for the population? In our view, that sort of beneficial return will also be synonymous with a better return from an investment profile."

Rao points to Generation's earlier investment in the workplace-productivity software company Asana as one of the examples of what the firm's strategy looks like in practice. The company, which helps workers streamline project management in a cloud-based system, is popular with distributed teams and remote workforces.

Rao said software like Asana would help better distribute highly qualified technical talent away from urban centers struggling with wealth inequality. Asana checks the boxes of planetary health and financial health, Rao said, because it also decreases the need for corporate travel and the associated carbon emissions.

"I'm focused really on trying to find different intermediaries and business intermediaries that are helping to address wealth inequality and sort of remove rent extractors that previously didn't add value to the system," Rao told Business Insider. "We think that's a really important mission to stand behind."

Investing in a sustainable future

The time is ripe for a fund solely focused on sustainability, Tuffield said. She said Generation's research-driven approach had helped it avoid some of the pitfalls other venture firms had come across when investing in sustainability companies, most notably the "green tech" boom and subsequent bust of the early 2000s.

"We're not necessarily opportunistic — we're focused and deliberate in the types of investments that we're looking for and the investments we ultimately end up making," Tuffield said. "Expertise in how these industries are transitioning has helped serve us and not make investments that we otherwise would look back on and regret."

A recent New York Times report found that startups marketing themselves as "sustainability companies" had difficulty raising capital from traditional venture firms hesitant to look at the industry with a fresh perspective. Anecdotally, Rao and Tuffield say they have seen no evidence of the phenomenon but do believe there is a hesitation to make longer-term bets from other legacy investors.

"Part of the original mission of Generation is to prove that sustainable investing delivers outperformance and long-term investment," Rao said. "That is the best way of investing because, not only is the way you ought to invest, but frankly because it's the way that drives long-term performance."

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• Gen Z and baby boomers are at odds when it comes to trusting brands.
• Data-intelligence company Morning Consult conducted thousands of interviews to get a sense of the companies consumers trust.
• Gen Z trusts tech giants like Google, Netflix, and Amazon.
• Boomers gravitate toward delivery services, food brands, and the Weather Channel.
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Once trust is gone, it's gone. But there's a major generational gap when it comes to what brands people choose to put their faith in.

Data-intelligence company Morning Consult conducted 16,700 interviews per brand for almost 2,000 brands. Each participant was asked "How much do you trust each brand to do what is right?" and given the options of "a lot,""some,""not much,""not at all," or "don't know." Morning Consult's website says its trust ranking "is determined by share of 'a lot' responses."

The survey found that the youngest and oldest consumers diverge sharply when it comes to how much they trust brands — and which brands they trust. Gen Z shoppers have an average brand trust rating of plus 10; less than the average boomer rating of plus 21.

And when it comes to the brands that they trust the most, Gen Z gravitates toward tech, ranking Google, Netflix, Amazon, YouTube, and Playstation as its top picks. Those rankings have no common ground with those of the baby boomers. 

For older shoppers, the United States Postal Service delivers the most when it comes to trust. The federal mail service is followed closely by the United Parcel Service, Hershey, the Weather Channel, and Cheerios.

For their part, the age groups sandwiched between Gen Z and the boomers favor a mix of those companies. Millennials most trust Google, UPS, Amazon, Paypal, and Netflix. Gen X puts a lot of stock in USPS, Google, Amazon, Hershey, and Paypal.

"It's no secret that trust is key to brand success," Morning Consult CEO Michael Ramlet said in a statement. "In today's climate, every single day presents leaders with the opportunity to cultivate reliability — a key driver of trust."

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• Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts asked during oral arguments in an age discrimination case if saying "OK, boomer" would be an example of age bias.
• The courtroom interrupted him with laughter, according to a transcript of the questioning. 
• The case involves a former federal employee who says she was discriminated against because of her age. 
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The phrase "OK, boomer" has made it from viral internet meme to a hypothetical example of age bias in a line of questioning at the Supreme Court of the United States. 

Chief Justice John Roberts asked on Wednesday if the phrase would count as age discrimination.

If a person in charge of hiring "is younger" and tells an older applicant "OK, boomer," Roberts asked, "is that actionable?" 

The courtroom interrupted his questioning with laughter, according to a transcript of the oral arguments.

Roberts' question came during oral arguments in the case Babb v. Wilkie, in which Noris Babb, a former pharmacist at a Florida Veterans Affairs Medical Center, alleged she was passed up for a promotion because of age discrimination.

Roberts asked if "stray comments" like the usually humorous "OK, boomer" would indicate that age was a "significant factor" in the decision not to hire someone, and if condemning off-hand comments like that would lead to a "regulation of speech in the workplace." 

Babb's lawyer, Roman Martinez, said comments like ethnic slurs or "calling people 'boomer' or saying unflattering things about them in age when considering them for a position" would "of course" be an example of discrimination. 

The phrase "OK, boomer" started as an internet meme popularized by Generation Z and Millennials as a response to criticism from the Baby Boomer generation, those born roughly from 1946 to 1964. 

Roberts' questioning wasn't the first time "OK, boomer" has been used by a prominent person in government — in November, a 25-year-old lawmaker in New Zealand used the retort in the country's legislature when an older lawmaker interrupted her speech during a debate on climate change. 

While the meme quickly faded from popularity with Gen-Z on the internet, its appearance at the highest court in the United States from Roberts — who, born in 1955, is a boomer himself — suggests we haven't seen the last of it. 

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