In our January 2024 Boca Interview, demographer and Florida resident Ken Gronbach addresses some of the most pivotal issues among populations and generations in the U.S.—with our state serving as the locus, or perhaps the canary in the coal mine, for many of these topics. Here is more from our wide-ranging conversation.
Speaking about economic trends among generations, it seems to me that young people are leaving college saddled with so much student debt, coupled with the soaring costs of housing, that they’re in a much more precarious financial place than previous generations were at the same age. Does that jibe with your data?
Not really. But I will tell you this. We need to do something about housing for Generation Y and Generation Z. Because they’re not going to be able to afford the housing. Florida will not be attractive for that reason. So when I speak to people in real estate, from Canada and the U.S. and specifically Florida, I tell them: multifamily, multifamily, multifamily housing. We have to find a way to find these young people an affordable place to live, and make them two or three bedrooms so they can have kids. Because if you make them one-bedroom, they’re not going to have kids. So to get Generation Y and Generation Z to move down here, it’s going to be a little bit of a challenge. But they’ll be offset by the ethnicity that the Latinos bring to the equation.
The pandemic accelerated working from home. What are the implications of this massive change in where and how people can work?
It’s not going to change. It will be a good percentage of people that will work from home, but there’s this thing called the bump theory, where you need to mix with your fellow-workers. It’s better for your business, and people are becoming more and more amenable to that. You get in an elevator, and you turn to the person next to you, and you say, ‘wait a minute, you work with that Thomason guy, right? What’s he like?’ I think we’re going to be fine … I don’t think the whole separation thing is going to stay that way.
Speaking earlier of Canada, I was telling this audience in Canada, listen, you have to have more kids. You’re reliant on immigration. And a kid came up to me afterward and said, it cost me 15 bucks in tolls to get here today, to work. I have to live that far away to be able to afford housing. That’s an important consideration. Housing, housing, housing. Do you know, we’re going to have 170 million people in 2024 that are under 40. That bodes so well for the United States, for Florida, for Canada. We’ve never had that type of population, and it’s huge. That’s what sets us apart from the E.U., Asia, Russia. The United States will be the center of the Earth, and I think Florida’s going to be its capital.
When companies hire you to speak at their functions, what are they most concerned about and hoping to gain from your presentations?
Are they still going to be able to make money? That’s the bottom line. I get up in front of people, and I say, ‘listen, Albert Einstein said, if you can’t explain it simply, you don’t know it. So what I’m going to do is give you some very basic concepts in demography that you can use for strategic planning.’ What they want to know is what’s next.
I’ll give you an example of one that didn’t go well. I spoke to BNSF Railway, Warren Buffett’s railway. I said, rail is dependent on harbors, big boxes of stuff coming off of boats. Well, guess what—where is manufacturing going? Manufacturing is going to re-shoring back to the United States, definitely to Mexico, definitely to Central and South America and Canada. We’re going to make stuff here, there’s some drawbacks to that … but certainly, that’s going to be a big change. So what did BNSF Railway deduce from my presentation? They’re going to get into trucking, or they better build rail to Mexico and Central and South America. So that’s what they want to know—what do we do now to protect our future?
And you have actionable answers.
Not only do I have actionable answers, but they’re not pie in the sky. They’re already happening. So many of the big questions that we have, the answers are right in front of us. And all you have to do is recognize them. Which is why I say, let’s make more babies. Because there’s a situation that’s right in front of us, and we’re experiencing that on a personal basis. So it’s time to do something.
This Web Extra is from the January 2024 issue of Boca magazine. For more like this, click here to subscribe to the magazine.
