They have grown up so fast! It’s hard to believe but millennials are about to be surpassed by Generation Z.
Gen Z will comprise 32 percent of the global population of 7.7 billion in 2019, nudging ahead of millennials, who will account for a 31.5 percent share, based on Bloomberg analysis of United Nations data, and using 2000/2001 as the generational split.
People born in 2001 will turn 18 next year, meaning many will enter college, be eligible to vote, and enter the workforce. Gen Zers have never known a non-digital world and have grown up amid events such as the “war on terror” and Global Recession.
“The key factor that differentiated these two groups, other than their age, was an element of self-awareness versus self-centeredness,” according to Marcie Merriman, an executive director at Ernst & Young LLP.
Millennials were “more focused on what was in it for them,” said Merriman. “They also looked to others, such as the companies they did business with, for solutions, whereas the younger people naturally sought to create their own solutions.”
Millennials will continue to represent the bigger proportion in the world’s four largest economies: U.S., China, Japan and Germany. The combined population just shy of 2 billion in those four countries will have a ratio of 100 millennials for every 73 in Gen Z next year.
According to an annual survey of young people by Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Ltd., “Gen Z respondents anticipate being slightly happier than their millennial counterparts,” with those in emerging markets in both groups more optimistic about economics and social progress than counterparts in developed nations.