Neil Freiman

Moving on, something very unusual is happening in America.

And no, I'm not talking about the Knicks actually being good.

Young people are way more pessimistic about the job market than older people.

In fact, the optimism gap between young and older Americans is the widest of any country in the world.

A new Gallup poll shows the stark difference.

In the U.S., just 43% of people aged 15 to 34 believe it's a good time to find a job in their local area compared to 64% of people aged 55 and above.

That's a gap of 21 percentage points, and it's pretty much unheard of.

There are a few reasons why this is so weird.

First, for decades in the same Gallup poll, younger Americans have been more optimistic about jobs than older people until 2024 when older Americans became more optimistic and young people's optimism just fell off a cliff.

The second reason for the strangeness is that America is a true outlier relative to most other countries.

Globally, younger people are considerably more optimistic about their ability to find a job than older people.

There are only six places out of 141 where younger people are at least 10 points more pessimistic about the job market than older people.

China, Hong Kong, Norway, Serbia, the UAE, and...

the United States.

I realize I just threw a bunch of numbers and names at you, so here's what I want you to take away.

The fact that young Americans are more pessimistic about jobs than the olds is a very new phenomenon, and their relative pessimism is the biggest gap anywhere around the world.

Yeah, but AI automation is happening all over the world.

So that's why it's still so perplexing why we're seeing this massive historic gap in the United States.

Maybe this will explain why the olds are so happy because basically,

Baby boomers hold more than $85 trillion in assets.