Generation Jones: The Demographic Group No One Talks About

The “Brady Bunch Kids” are all Members of Generation Jones, the Demographic Group No One Talks About Photo credit: Paramount (1974)

The oldest members of a demographic group that no one talks about are now applying for Medicare. Will they retire, or will they help to define the Future of Work?

In the United States, people born between 1957 and 1964 are labeled Late Baby Boomers. And yet, some well informed academics and demographers call this Baby Boomer-tagalong cohort Generation Jones. Its members emerged during a time of buoyant post-war optimism, peaked during [manned] spaceflight, and ended in the wake of the JFK assassination and American military involvement in Vietnam.

I am a “Gen Jones” member who was born in 1961. And, without a doubt, our most famous member — born that same year — is President Barack Obama. In a January 2009 blog post, I cited this Wikipedia description:

“Jonesers were the people who as teens in the 1970s made this slang word popular, but beyond this historical claim, many believe the concept of “jonesing” is among this generation’s key collective personality traits. Jonesers were given huge expectations as children in the…