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5 Classical Music Albums You Can Listen to Right…
Collections of works written and performed by Nathalie Joachim and Philip Glass, and a recording of Handel’s “Alcina,” are among the highlights.
Collections of works written and performed by Nathalie Joachim and Philip Glass, and a recording of Handel’s “Alcina,” are among the highlights.
With obesity affecting nearly 1 billion people worldwide, the World Obesity Federation aims to address the global crisis on World Obesity Day tomorrow (Monday), the South China Morning Post reported.
The surge in obesity rates is alarming, evident in Hong Kong, where 32.6% of adults are now classified as obese, according to the Department of Health’s Population Health Survey 2020-22.
Professor Alice Kong from the Chinese University of Hong Kong warns that obesity is linked to increased risks of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, joint problems, and premature death.
As the economic burden grows, the World Obesity Atlas 2023 projects a significant rise in healthcare expenditures related to overweight individuals in China alone.
American nutrition researcher Dr Neal Barnard, in his upcoming book, “The Power Foods Diet,” introduces a breakthrough plan that mimics the effects of weight-loss medications like Wegovy and Ozempic but without side effects.
Barnard emphasises a low-fat, plant-based diet as an effective, affordable, and side-effect-free solution for reaching and maintaining a healthy weight.
Barnard identifies “power foods” with attributes such as appetite suppression, trapping calories, and boosting metabolism. Berries, green vegetables, melons, citrus fruits, and legumes fall into this category. Cinnamon, ginger, and hot peppers also show weight-loss effects.
Encouraging a three-week trial, Barnard’s book provides a simple-to-follow meal plan and over 120 plant-based recipes. He cautions against fad diets, calorie restriction, and the misconception of avoiding carbohydrates.
Regular exercise, sufficient sleep, and stress management are highlighted as crucial components in combating obesity and achieving sustainable weight loss.
The Body Shop has admitted to breaking employment law in sacking hundreds of people at a moment’s notice, The Independent can reveal.
Administrators for the troubled cosmetics company made some 270 head office staff redundant last Tuesday, telling them over Microsoft Teams that they would not be paid beyond the end of the day and the company would not provide them with any form of redundancy package.
The dismissed employees – some of whom had worked there for more than a decade – were instead told to claim unpaid wages and holiday pay from the taxpayer-funded Redundancy Payments Service. A further 489 job losses and 75 store closures were announced on Thursday.
Dismissed employees were told to claim unpaid wages and holiday pay from the taxpayer-funded Redundancy Payments Service
(Getty)
Employees on last week’s “brutal” Teams call said their sudden dismissal by Body Shop International Ltd was “affecting people financially and mentally”, with one telling The Independent that they had been left “on the verge of losing everything by a company that once valued ethics and community”.
This includes at least 15 women on maternity leave or soon to have their baby, who will now only receive government maternity pay as opposed to the packages they were offered while Body Shop employees, according to one new mother made redundant last week.
“When I found out I was pregnant, the good maternity package at [the Body Shop] is what kept me going and I know it’s the same for other mums,” said another woman, who warned the situation had “put a massive financial strain on my family” just weeks before she is due to have her baby.
One employee who had worked at the company for 13 years said the sudden end to their pay meant their February wage was not going to cover their family’s bills. “To be treated this badly has taken its toll on a lot of people affected,” they said.
Another said it had been their “dream job” to be hired last March, only to be left “on the verge of losing everything by a company that once valued ethics and community”, adding: “Never in my working life have I ever been treated like this before.”
Employees on last week’s ‘brutal’ Teams call said their sudden dismissal by Body Shop International Ltd was ‘affecting people financially and mentally’
(Bloomberg/Getty)
They have applied for jobseeker’s allowance, a council tax reduction, and said they plan to ask their mortgage provider to go interest-free for six months “to keep the roof over my head”, adding: “How they can be allowed to treat us like this is beyond me, I don’t even know how they can sleep at night.”
In a response to an email campaign by dismissed workers, administrators at the firm FRP Advisory have now admitted they did not follow “normal regulations” on properly consulting employees or their representatives before dismissing them, saying there was “insufficient time” to do so.
Administrators argued in their response on behalf of the Body Shop, seen by The Independent, that they had not properly consulted employees because “a swift reduction” in head office payroll costs was judged to be required, citing their statutory duty to take actions to benefit all of the company’s creditors.
Solicitor Nick Humphreys, of Penningtons Manches Cooper, said that while the email notes there was a tension between the duties owed to employees and creditors, the administrators do appear to be admitting to a breach of duty to employees.
It is not uncommon for companies in financial distress to fail to observe their employee’s rights because of the duty upon directors of such firms to maximise their creditors’ returns, according to Tina Maxey, an employment lawyer at Ellisons Solicitors.
Solicitor Michael Newman, of the firm Leigh Day, said he “would question whether the law has got the balance right between creditors and employees” in such situations, adding: “The creditors will have invested money, but the employees will have also have invested a lot of time and work in the company over the years, and it is a shame that the law prioritises creditors in this situation.”
About the Body Shop’s sudden mass-firing, he added: “For a company renowned for its ethical credentials, it perhaps shows how far it had come from its origins.”
Ms Maxey said a failure to properly consult staff was a breach of their rights but not a criminal offence on the part of administrators or the company, adding: “As long as it has notified the secretary of state of the redundancies, the company can choose whether or not it collectively consults.”
Employees can, however, seek compensation via a tribunal if not properly consulted, and The Times reports that a group of more than 175 Body Shop employees are preparing to pursue a claim through Acas, the government’s advisory, conciliation and arbitration service.
The Insolvency Service said it had been working with Body Shop administrators to ensure employee claims can be processed and paid as soon as possible. “The Insolvency Service’s Redundancy Payments Service will make statutory redundancy and related payments to support eligible employees who have been made redundant,” a spokesperson said.
FRP Advisory has been contacted for comment.
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To follow his 2016 debut album “In My Room,” in which he played every instrument, and recorded every vocal track, all inside a small room in his childhood home in North London, Jacob Collier didn’t record one album – he recorded a four-album cycle. Using the editing software Logic, the six-time Grammy-winner made himself sound like an orchestra and choir, blending R&B, pop, jazz and everything-in-between while working with some of the biggest acts in music. With the latest installment, “Djesse Vol. 4,” Collier collaborates with such artists as Brandi Carlile, Camilo, Chris Martin and John Legend. Correspondent Conor Knighton talks with Collier about the “emotional, chemical reaction” that comes from his musical alchemy.
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PESHAWAR, Pakistan — A police officer in Pakistan is being hailed as a hero after she protected a woman from a furious mob accusing her of blasphemy over what she was wearing.
Sheher Bano, an assistant superintendent of police in the city of Lahore, “put her life in danger” to rescue the woman after colorful Arabic calligraphy on her outfit was mistaken for verses from the Quran, the Muslim holy book, said Usman Anwar, police inspector general of Punjab province.
Blasphemy is a highly sensitive issue in Muslim-majority Pakistan, where it is punishable by death. Accusations have led to violent assaults, detentions and mob lynchings.
In a ceremony in Rawalpindi on Wednesday, Bano received Pakistan’s highest honor in law enforcement from the country’s military, which called her “fearless.”
Police first received a call last Sunday afternoon that a crowd of dozens had gathered outside a restaurant in a busy shopping area of Lahore. The crowd accused the unnamed woman of committing blasphemy with her kurta, a long loose garment that resembles a collarless shirt, and demanded that she remove it.
“My first and immediate responsibility was to instantly shift the woman from there,” Bano told NBC News in a phone interview on Friday. She said she tried shielding the woman, who sat panicking in a corner as the angry mob grew outside.
“This woman has disrespected the Quran,” a man is heard telling a police officer in a widely circulated video on social media.
In a video posted Monday on Facebook by Punjab Police, Bano can be seen pleading with the crowd.
“Since a year I’ve been serving this area as the ASP,” she said, referring to her title as assistant superintendent of police. “You should be able to trust us.”
Bano then went back inside the restaurant, covering the woman in a head-to-toe black robe and golden headscarf before pulling her out. She pushed through the crowd surrounded by police officers, trying to get the woman to safety.
The woman was moved to a police station, Bano said, as mobs began forming around different police stations in the area. Officials then brought in local scholars and clerics, including some who had been in the angry crowd.
They looked at the calligraphy on the dress and concluded it did not contain any Quranic verses, apologizing for their misunderstanding.
Bano said the dress was instead printed with the Arabic word “helwa,” which means beautiful.
The woman wearing the kurta apologized in a video later posted on Facebook by Lahore Police.
“It was not intentional and happened by mistake,” she said. “I just bought this kurta thinking it was a design.”
“I still apologize,” she said, adding that she is a devout Muslim and would never commit blasphemy.
Blasphemy was codified in law under British colonial rule and later expanded by the Pakistani government. Officials are under pressure to change the laws, which rights groups say are often used to intimidate the country’s religious minorities.
Last year, a man suspected of blasphemy was pulled from his cell at a police station in Punjab province and lynched outside by an angry mob.
At least 56 people remained in police custody over blasphemy allegations as of December 2023, according to a report by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
Mushtaq Yusufzai reported from Peshawar, Pakistan, and Mithil Aggarwal reported from Hong Kong.
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Iran claims to allow the country’s Christian minority to practice its faith in peace. The reality for many Iranian Christians, however, is plagued by whippings, arrests, imprisonment, surveillance and harassment, according to a February report from the religious freedom NGO Article 18.
One shocking finding of the Article 18 40-page study, titled “Faceless Victims: Rights Violations Against Christians in Iran,” states, “By the end of 2023, at least 17 of the Christians arrested during the summer had received prison sentences of between three months and five years, or non-custodial punishments such as fines, flogging, and in one case the community-service of digging graves.”
The report noted, “Despite a comparable number of Christians being arrested in 2023 as in previous years – 166 arrests were documented in 2023, compared to 134 in 2022 – fewer names and faces could be publicized.”
IRAN HAS WORLD’S ‘FASTEST-GROWING CHURCH,’ DESPITE NO BUILDINGS – AND IT’S MOSTLY LED BY WOMEN: DOCUMENTARY
“More and more Iranians are converting to Christianity every day,” one Iranian Christian reports. (Adis Easaghlian/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)
Rev. Johnnie Moore, the president of the Congress of Christian Leaders, told Fox News Digital, “The Department of State’s absolutely insane policy toward the Islamic Republic, which is wreaking havoc worldwide, also has real life-and-death consequences for the people in Iran. The mullahs presently feel they have a license to kill whoever they want and no one will do anything. So more people are being captured and killed and the terrorist leaders of the Islamic Republic particularly lust for the blood of women and Christians. “
Moore, an influential evangelical leader, explained that Iran’s regime persecutes Christians “Because these mullahs fear the power and resolve of Iranian women, and they know that Iranian Christians, who only fear God, do not fear the ayatollah himself. The more the mullahs threaten, imprison and kill us, our movement just multiplies. No church in the world is growing, secretly, and faster than the Iranian church and Iran’s women look very much forward to the day when the world greets the first woman president of a free Iran.”
He continued, “I predict she and her cabinet, inclusive of evangelical Christians, the Baha’i and others, will make their maiden international trip to Jerusalem and Washington. The mullahs want to kill us for one reason: they know we are winning. It would be nice to have more help from the State Department but it isn’t required.”
Iranians protest the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini after she was detained by the morality police, in Tehran, Sept. 20, 2022. (AP Photo/Middle East Images, File)
A State Department spokesperson told Fox News Digital, “The persecution of Christians and other religious minorities in Iran is longstanding and well documented. The U.S. continues to condemn these actions and use all the tools at our disposal to address such egregious violations.”
The spokesperson added, “The Department’s most recent Report on International Religious Freedom in Iran notes, ‘Officials continued to disproportionately arrest, detain, harass, and surveil Christians, particularly evangelicals and other converts from Islam, according to Christian NGOs.’”
When Fox News Digital asked if the State Department will impose new human rights sanctions on Iran’s regime for the persecution of Christians, the spokesperson said, “While the Department does not preview sanctions, Iran has been designated as a ‘Country of Particular Concern’ and imposed Presidential Actions under the International Religious Freedom Act for having engaged in or tolerated particularly severe violations of religious freedom every year since 1999.”
IRAN PROXIES ENGAGED IN ‘INVISIBLE JIHAD’ AGAINST CHRISTIANS IN MIDDLE EAST, REPORT WARNS
A prison guard stands along a corridor in Tehran’s Evin prison June 13, 2006. (Reuters/Morteza Nikoubazl )
The raw violence used by Iran’s theocratic state against Iranian Christians was documented in the Article 18 report. Ali Kazemian said his interrogators “discovered that I had a metal implant in my left leg from an historic break” and “for this reason, one of the agents kicked my left leg several times. Then they put me on a chair, tied my hands together, and the interrogator said: ‘You are now in an electric chair’… Then they violently punched me several times.”
He said the security forces threatened him, declaring: “We’ll harm your wife and children!… We’ll bring your wife to the interrogation room and strip her naked in front of everyone, to see if you can really resist and stay quiet!”
Iran’s regime has targeted all forms of Christianity for persecution, including Protestants and the arrest of Catholics.
Article 18, which published the report in collaboration with Open Doors, Christian Solidarity Worldwide and Middle East Concern, said there might be as many 800,000 Christians in Iran. The report extrapolated the number 800,000 based on a “A survey of Iranians’ attitudes toward religion in 2020, conducted by a secular Netherlands-based research group, revealed that 1.5% of Iranians from a sample size of 50,000 self-identified as Christians.”
A huge mural of Iran’s supreme leader on Motahari Street on March 8, 2020, in Tehran. (Kaveh Kazemi/Getty Images)
The report was published on Feb. 19 to draw attention to the 45th anniversary of the Iranian regime’s brutal execution of Anglican pastor Arastoo Sayyah in his church in Shiraz, a mere eight days after the Islamic Revolution. Sayyah was the first Christian murdered by the regime.
Sheina Vojoudi, an Iranian Christian who fled the Islamic Republic, told Fox News Digital, “Christianity in Iran is classified under political-security crimes, Despite this, more and more Iranians are converting to Christianity every day. Christianity is considered by the Islamic Republic in Iran as a Western religion and works against the Islamic Republic.”
IRAN REGIME LEADERS ACCUSED OF MASS MURDER IN 2019 PROTESTS
An anti-U.S. design on a government building wall in the capital, adjacent to the Armenian Cathedral of Tehran. (Adis Easaghlian/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)
Vojoudi, who is an associate fellow for the U.S.-based Gold Institute for International Strategy, added, “The persecution and killing of the Christians started after the occupation of Iran by the Islamic Regime and since then the Islamic Republic has murdered at least 15 Iranian pastors.”
According to Vojoudi, Iran’s regime ramped up its persecution of the struggling Christian community following the Green revolution movement in 2009 against the widely documented fraudulent election of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
“The regime in Iran increased the persecutions and arrests due to fear of its downfall and that, of course, doesn’t exclude the Christians in Iran,” Vojoudi said.
She said, “The regime burned 300 Persian Bibles and seized 650 Bibles and until today having a Persian Bible is a crime. A prohibition on preaching in Persian in the churches was announced by the intelligence organizations.”
Vojoudi converted to Christianity and fled to Germany due to religious persecution. Article 18’s report stated, “Christian converts from Islam are numerically the largest Christian community in Iran, but they are not recognized by the state and are frequently targeted by the authorities and, in some cases, by their extended families and society. “
AYATOLLAH’S FAVORITE NEWS SOURCE DECLARES ‘HORROR AND FEAR’ IRAN MILITARY CAMPAIGN AGAINST US, ALLIES
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reviews a group of armed forces cadets during their graduation ceremony at the police academy in Tehran, Iran, Oct. 3, 2022. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP)
Vojoudi said, “I used to go to a church near this cathedral church in Tehran, of course secretly. This church was open to the public, but I forgot on which days, but is extremely under [the] watch of the regime.
“The picture of [Ayatollah Ruhollah] Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic regime, sits right next to the church, means that they watch everyone, and they have no respect for other religions.”
Article 18 wrote, “With converts constituting the largest – albeit unrecognized – Christian community in Iran, the issue of ‘apostasy’ is a central concern… a Christian convert was sentenced to be hanged for apostasy in 2010, the charge of apostasy and death sentence were overturned in response to international pressure, but many converts have since been threatened with a similar fate upon arrest and during interrogations.”
The dire fate of Iranian Christians has forced them to organize house churches as part of an underground movement.
Vojoudi said Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, declared in a speech the “importance of confronting the house churches and provoked his followers against the Christians by claiming that the house churches are created by the ‘enemies of Islam’ and must be stopped.”
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Article 18 listed a number of demands for the international community, including that foreign nations urge Iran “to ensure and facilitate freedom of religion or belief for all its citizens” and “highlighting human rights infractions during bilateral and multilateral dialogues with Iran.”
Fox News Digital sent numerous press queries to Iran’s U.N. mission and its Foreign Ministry in Tehran.
Ever wondered what’s lingering on the surfaces you encounter every day?
Tim Call, a 32-year-old microbiologist from Utah, has discovered the mystery.
The Utah scientist has taken to TikTok to shed light on the hidden world of germs that infest your water ordered from a restaurant.
In a recent nine-second video on his profile, @WhatMightGrow, Tim showcased a disturbing revelation about a popular fast-food chain’s drinks dispenser.
Have you watched it?
The footage, accompanied by a viral Spongebob soundbite, compares the bacteria from the dispenser to what it should resemble.
The result?
A disconcerting visual of a murky, orangey-brown liquid in contrast to a clear sample seconds later. This revelation has ignited shock and concern, with thousands expressing their disgust in the comment section.
Quarkz, a viewer, commented, “I’m never asking for a cup of water at a restaurant again!” Similar sentiments echoed in the comments, revealing a collective apprehension towards the cleanliness of common public spaces.
Tim, with a TikTok following exceeding 317,000, specialises in exposing the unsanitary truth behind everyday items. Recently, he turned his attention to cinema popcorn, unraveling startling findings in a captivating experiment.
@whatmightgrow Storytime: In this fun experiment, I went to a movie theater and tested the popcorn they sold. Additionally, for comparison, I grabbed some popcorn off the floor to show that bacteria can grow on popcorn. Unsuprisingly, popcorn from the floor is filthy. However, when I worked as an environmental microbiologist for various industries, this is a common test procedure and I would test items that would be commonly found on the floor. Often I would test factory workers shoes and EVERY SINGLE TIME I would find some of the craziest growths and via PCR it was determined to almost always have pathogens present. The most common pathogen I would see were Staphylococcus, Listeria, E. Coli, and Salmonella. The lesson of this mini experiment is to show what you would find if you were to eat things off the floor. I wish I knew this as a little kid, because I was notorious for going to the candy section where you could scoop out candy into bags, and eating any candy that was on the floor. If I were to guess, the small amount of bacteria found on the “fresh” popcorn would be Staphylococcus which is commonly found on humans and probably came from myself or the movie theater workers. The growth from the floor popcorn could literally be anything and would need PCR for identification. #popcorn #movie #microbiology #bacteria #science #fyp #longervideos ♬ Runaway – Piano Rendition – The Blue Notes & L’Orchestra Cinematique
Venturing to a local cinema, Tim collected fresh popcorn from the stand and a handful from the theatre floor. Testing both samples, the results were glaringly different. The fresh popcorn remained relatively pristine, while the floor popcorn dish displayed a thriving community of bacterial colonies and substantial patches of fungus.
As viewers grappled with the implications, comments poured in, with one person humorously noting, “So what you’re saying is; I shouldn’t eat popcorn off the floor anymore?” Tim’s experiments serve as a visual guide, answering questions about the cleanliness of everyday items.
In a conversation with Tim, he shared, “I make this content because I’ve always been curious about what was growing around me, and I wanted to visually see it.”
I have covered economics for 11 years now, and in that time, I have come to the realization that I am a statistic. Every time I make a major life choice, I promptly watch it become the thing that everyone is doing that year.
I started college in 2009, in the era of all-time-high matriculation rates. When I moved to a big coastal city after graduation, so did a huge crowd of people: It was the age of millennial urbanization. When I lived in a walk-in closet so that I could pay off my student loans (“The yellow paint makes it cheerful!”, Craigslist promised), student debt had recently overtaken auto loans and credit cards as the biggest source of borrowing outside of housing in America.
My partner and I bought a house in 2021, along with (seemingly and actually) a huge chunk of the rest of the country. We married in 2022, the year of many, many weddings. The list goes on.
I am no simple crowd follower. What I am is 32, about to be 33 in a few weeks.
And there are so many of us.
If demographics are destiny, the demographic born in 1990 and 1991 was destined to compete for housing, jobs and other resources. Those two birth years, the people set to turn 33 and 34 in 2024, make up the peak of America’s population.
As the biggest part of the biggest generation, this hyper-specific age group — call us what you will, but I like “peak millennials” — has moved through the economy like a person squeezing into a too-small sweater. At every life stage, it has stretched a system that was often too small to accommodate it, leaving it somewhat flabby and misshapen in its wake. My cohort has an outsized amount of economic power, but that has sometimes made life harder for us.
When millennials gripe that they get blamed for everything, in other words, the accusers might be onto something.
The 1990 and 1991 babies’ influence in the consumer economy has often been overt.
While it is difficult to pinpoint the spending habits of just two birth years, this group makes up a sizable chunk — about 13 percent — of the generation that marketers have been trying to woo for more than a decade. Millennial vacationing and dining-out habits caused research firms to endlessly tout the rise of the “experience economy.” We’ve been accused of killing McMansions and formal dress codes, but we helped to fuel the rise of tiny homes and athleisure.
“There are a lot of them — their parents may have said they’re very special, but there were a lot of these very special babies,” said Neil Howe, who coined the term “millennial.” “They create a lot of pressure. Whatever they are buying, a lot of people are buying it.”
That economic influence extends well beyond day-to-day consumption. When peak millennials went to college in 2009, the enrollment spike was so significant that community colleges that had once prided themselves on welcoming all students started to turn away applicants.
When that group began to graduate and moved for jobs, the population of metro areas like New York City, San Antonio and San Francisco jumped to new highs, leading to a fierce contest for a limited supply of apartments in some places — the Bay Area in particular.
That re-urbanization boom came “when those millennials were coming of age, getting their first jobs, looking for housing, looking for roommates,” said Igor Popov, chief economist at Apartment List.
Now, the people who will turn 33 and 34 this year are at another crucial juncture in their financial lives: They are leaving cities, starting families, and buying houses. And while some of those changes have been sped up by the pandemic, the demographics alone help to explain why today’s economy is performing in often surprising ways.
In 2017, a real-estate mogul birthed a meme when he suggested that millennials were failing to buy homes because they were squandering their money on avocado toast and fancy coffee. Outrage ensued. The New York Times published a fact check.
But like many a flip statement that strikes a deep societal nerve, the toast comment took off for a reason. People really were wondering why millennials weren’t buying houses in greater numbers.
Much of the answer was unquestionably that the generation had just experienced a grueling entry into the labor market in the aftermath of the worst recession since the Great Depression. But at least a small part was likely simpler. While we often talk about millennials as one monolithic group, the biggest part of the generation — peak millennial — was still in its mid-20s in 2016 and 2017. That’s on the young side for homeownership.
Today’s population of 30- to 34-year-olds is about 700,000 people larger than the group between ages 35 and 39.
Now, those people are increasingly ready to buy.
Millennials snapped up houses in 2020 and in 2021 as the Federal Reserve cut interest rates to near-zero. That was partly about the pandemic: People wanted space amid lockdowns. But it also reflected that a big group of people were finally far enough along in their economic lives to buy property.
“Just the demographic story is a big one to explain why homeownership went down in the 2010s, bottomed out in 2016, and now we’re seeing this boom in suburban demand that the housing market is grappling with,” said Mr. Popov of Apartment List.
And the wave of millennials now trying to buy could contribute to a topsy-turvy housing market for years to come.
The median age for first-time home buying is typically in the mid-30s, according to the National Association of Realtors. Peak millennials are only now approaching that age range.
Given the sheer generational numbers, “the demand for entry-level single-family homes should remain high for the rest of the decade,” economists at Fannie Mae noted in a recent analysis.
But hot demographic demand is colliding with very limited housing supply, following years of under-building after the 2009 recession. That has helped to push prices to record levels — where they are hovering even as the Fed tries to slow the economy with higher borrowing costs. And steep prices are combining with elevated mortgage rates to make the market painfully unaffordable, including for the starter homes many peak millennials would love to buy.
Today’s crazy housing market is not the first time 32- and 33-year-olds have found themselves forced to compete with one another for resources — nor will it be the first time they helped to reshape a market with lasting consequences.
The sub-generation faced its first real economic scramble in 2008 and 2009, when they graduated from high school and, in many cases, tried to go to college.
The group made up a huge entering class in its own right, but thanks to the Great Recession, older people with few job opportunities were also flooding into college classrooms to weather the downturn.
Enrollment rates spiked. The population of people in college peaked in 2010, the year after my class matriculated.
“The big strain that the students felt was to get classes and to get resources,” said Robert Kelchen, a professor who studies higher education at the University of Tennessee.
Tuition rates climbed sharply at public schools as state support waned during the downturn, though they also nudged steadily higher at private colleges. The ratio between student debt burdens and starting salaries got worse.
But demand for college seats has begun to reverse as demographic trends pair with a cultural shift away from higher education. Less selective colleges, which couldn’t add seats fast enough in the late 2000s, are now closing and merging.
It’s not just colleges. Another age-old institution could struggle as peak millennials age: wedding venues. The millennial generation’s sheer numbers have managed to prop up demand in the wedding industry even at a time when marriage rates overall have been steadily falling, said Shane McMurray at the Wedding Report.
But a post-lockdown wedding boom from 2022 is already fading, and will likely recede further as my agemates move past top marriage years. Mr. McMurray thinks business will stay steady for some time, but eventually, “it’s going to impact the industry pretty significantly.”
Thirty-three-year-olds could also whipsaw the job market.
Throughout much of the 2010s, employers had more entry-level applicants than they knew what to do with. When peak millennials graduated from high school in and around 2009, they were a flood of potential workers pouring into a labor market rocked by recession. The unemployment rate hovered at a near-record 16 percent for 18- and 19-year-olds that year.
The labor market remained weak even when those who went to college began to graduate, and employers had their pick of hires for years on end. Remember the rise of baristas with bachelor’s degrees?
Now, that tide is turning.
The economic backdrop has changed, for one thing. Companies have been clamoring for hires ever since letting workers go at the start of the pandemic. Demographics could be part of that story. A lot of people were born in 2001, albeit not quite as many as the millennial peak, which had helped to keep entry-level employees available. But that early 20s group is mostly in the labor market these days, and noticeably fewer people are now aging into adulthood with each passing year.
The question is whether the drop-off is significant enough for employers and workers to feel it.
If it is, there would be precedent. Economic research has suggested that the Baby Boom generation (which included a peak birth cohort born in the early 1960s) faced a tough entry into the labor market as its members competed for a limited supply of jobs. Generation X, or the so-called “Baby Bust,” was smaller — and experienced better outcomes.
“There seemed to be a real advantage in the labor market to the baby busters,” said Ronald Lee, a demographer at the University of California Berkeley, noting that they saw good wage growth and rapid advancement.
“That might be true for Gen Z-ers as well,” he said.
In fact, late baby boomers offer a template for the way a big sub-generation moves through the economy. They were the largest population group in history until millennials came along, and they were much bigger than the Silent Generation, the group that came before them.
That gap meant that the economy had to stretch out even more rapidly to accommodate boomers when they were hitting their adult years in the early 1980s. And they too entered a challenging economy: Inflation had spiked, so the Fed had raised interest rates to double-digit levels, forcing the economy into a punishing recession right as late baby boomers were looking for jobs.
“The market was flooded,” said Richard Easterlin, an economist at the University of Southern California who is behind a lot of the research into how generation size affects labor outcomes.
Because they were forced to compete in crowded job and housing markets, some peak-birth-year baby boomers have been left with permanent economic scars compared to the rest of their generation: Research suggests that they remain at a heightened risk for homelessness.
So are peak millennials destined for a similar fate?
Mr. Easterlin thinks that my peers are likely to be better off.
“It is the change in generation size that is important for outcomes, not just the generation size,” Mr. Easterlin told me.
While there are roughly 1.5 boomers for every one person who had been in the generation before, that ratio is more like 1.1 for millennials. It’s as if baby boomers were a giant trying to fit into an extra small sweater, and millennials are a giant squeezing themselves into a large.
It is not that millennials have had a painless ride. Dennis Culhane, a University of Pennsylvania social researcher who has tracked homelessness among baby boomers, noted that millennial homelessness in New York City was high after the 2008 recession, for instance. But since competition isn’t as fierce as it was for younger boomers, the bumpy start should fade with time.
In recent years, millennials do seem to be finding their economic and financial footing.
After high initial unemployment, today’s early-30 adults now work at very high levels, with about 8.1 in 10 holding jobs. Wealth holdings for people under the age of 35 have recently begun to pick up notably, helped along by rising home values and higher stock prices.
Still, evidence of a struggle lingers under the surface. Men in the early 30-something group are employed at much lower rates than 30-something men were in previous generations, part of a long-running trend. Debt delinquencies for auto loans and credit cards are picking up sharply for people aged 30 to 39 as student loan repayments restart after a pandemic hiatus and put the generation under financial pressure. And today’s 30-somethings are having historically fewer kids.
While that last one can be chalked up to a wide array of societal factors, people cite financial concerns as one of the top reasons they are not procreating.
That decline in childbearing itself could create big economic changes and challenges ahead — specifically, around 2055, when people my age will be nearing retirement.
If today’s 32-year-olds become a huge wave of retirees when they hit their mid-60s, they will be drawing money out of a retirement system that is poised to have far fewer active taxpayers to support it, assuming today’s demographic trends do not change.
Peak millennials will also be filling up nursing homes with fewer young nurses to staff them, eating at restaurants with fewer servers and cooks to choose from, and in general taxing an economy with far fewer young people to support them.
And that will be a problem not just for the early ’90s kids, but for everyone who follows.
The question is whether fertility trends for the generation turn out to be a permanent state — or just another sign that millennials are doing things later, and that the peak of the generation is still aging into the years when those crucial decisions get made.
On that, I can only tell you what I tell my mother when she wonders (gently, hintingly) if and when she’ll ever be a grandmother.
Thirty-three isn’t all that old in the grand scheme of things. We’ll have to wait and see.
Kate Middleton and Prince William’s relationship has been branded ‘just like any other boyfriend and girlfriend.’
The Prince and Princess of Wales, who dated each other for a couple of years before tying the knot in 2011, loved making jokes with each other.
Former royal butler Grant Harrold says: “What I liked was that Kate, being a girlfriend and obviously not a member of the family, would be with me and the other staff and she was so polite, friendly, and fun and making jokes.
“I remember there were days I had off where I’d be running an errand or I’d left something up at Highgrove [House] and they were around, so you’d just catch up with them.”
The former butler added, “It was always fun and it was always nice that I got on so well with them because they’d then ask me to travel the country with them.
He continued: “When my phone used to go off and it was William, all my friends would be like that’s so cool, but to me it was normal. That was the relationship I had with them. I think it was really special and not unusual, actually, because in a private home you’re expected to get on with the family. As for the younger members of the family, you’re not employed by them, but you end up having a relationship with them as well.”
When Shawn Fain, the United Automobile Workers president, unveiled the deal that ended six weeks of strikes at Ford Motor in the fall, he framed it as part of a longer campaign. Next, he declared, would be the task of organizing nonunion plants across the country.
“One of our biggest goals coming out of this historic contract victory is to organize like we’ve never organized before,” he said at the time. “When we return to the bargaining table in 2028, it won’t just be with the Big Three. It will be the Big Five or Big Six.”
Four months later, the first test of that strategy has come into focus, and it features a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tenn.
According to the union, more than half of over 4,000 eligible workers have signed cards indicating support for a union. Workers say they have done so because they want higher pay, more paid time off and more generous health benefits — and because the recent strikes at Ford, General Motors and Stellantis persuaded them that a union can help win these concessions.
“The Big Three, they had their big campaign, and their big strike and vote, and new contracts — we paid attention to that very closely,” said Yolanda Peoples, who has worked at the Volkswagen plant for nearly 13 years.
The Volkswagen plant announced an 11 percent pay increase shortly after the strikes at the Big Three. The raise brought the top hourly wage for production workers to $32.40, but the comparable wage for the Detroit automakers will exceed $40 by the end of the new contracts. (Volkswagen said the wage adjustment was part of a yearly review.)
Unions need a simple majority of votes to win, but the U.A.W. says it won’t file for an election at the Chattanooga plant until 70 percent of the plant’s workers have signed cards and workers have built an extensive organizing committee, which union officials expect in the next month.
The caution reflects the U.A.W.’s experience in the South, where past campaigns fell short.
But the stakes may be even higher this time given the union’s investment in organizing several plants at once — including a Mercedes-Benz factory in Alabama, where more than 50 percent of workers have signed cards, and a Hyundai plant in Alabama, where the union has cards from more than 30 percent of workers.
Last week, the union said it was also allocating $40 million to organizing auto and battery workers through 2026 — far exceeding its previous budget for such efforts, according to Jonah Furman, a union spokesman — and suggested that time was of the essence.
“In the next few years, the electric vehicle battery industry is slated to add tens of thousands of jobs across the country, and new standards are being set as the industry comes online,” the union said in its funding announcement.
If the union wins in Chattanooga, said Joshua Murray, a sociologist at Vanderbilt University who has studied the auto industry’s response to unionization, it may quickly replicate the victory at other plants, as it did during an organizing wave in the 1930s.
“A lot of time the failure to unionize is not that workers are against being in a union — it’s that they’re not convinced they can win,” Dr. Murray said. “Showing they can win is a big deal for getting workers who weren’t gung-ho about it to be gung-ho.”
A loss in Chattanooga, Dr. Murray said, could sap employees’ confidence and encourage management at other automakers to resist.
Other analysts, like Sam Fiorani, vice president of global vehicle forecasting at the research firm AutoForecast Solutions, predicted that Tesla would be a particular challenge. “The head of Tesla is Elon Musk, and he’s going to fight against change,” Mr. Fiorani said.
The union appears to be benefiting from a resurgence of interest in organizing after a lull during the presidency of Donald J. Trump and the start of the pandemic. Last year, unions won more than 1,225 elections — the most in at least a decade, according to the National Labor Relations Board. They lost about 500.
Polling shows that younger workers are especially supportive, and they appear to be helping to fuel the recent auto industry organizing. “We’re letting them know, ‘You’re making a nice pay rate compared to your age, but this can be better,’” said Ronald Terry, a worker involved in the organizing at the Hyundai plant in Alabama.
Younger workers at the Volkswagen plant also express frustration at the paid time off they accrue: 12 or 13 days during their first two years of employment, several of which they must use during plant shutdowns if they want to be paid.
Asked about the complaints, a Volkswagen spokesman said that the company understood that time off was a significant issue and that it had recently announced an increase in unpaid time off for emergencies.
The company said last month that its Chattanooga wages had increased at nearly twice the rate of inflation since 2013, and that the average production worker would make more than $60,000 this year before bonuses or overtime and pay less than $2,000 in premiums to cover more than 80 percent of health care costs.
The union sought a vote in Chattanooga in 2014 and faced no opposition from the company, whose worldwide plants are mostly unionized. But the effort failed amid pressure from state Republican leaders, who suggested that a union would jeopardize the plant’s expansion.
With workers complaining of understaffing, high injury rates and last-minute overtime, the U.A.W. tried again in 2019. But pleas from Tennessee’s governor and the plant’s original chief executive, who said he had returned to his former position to address workers’ concerns, appeared to defuse support. The union narrowly lost.
This time, the union appears determined to minimize the effect of such pushback.
The union wants to recruit a volunteer leader for every line on every shift at the plant — more than 125 altogether, according to the union’s tally. That way, organizers say, the volunteers can quickly respond to rumors or company talking points that co-workers encounter.
“If you don’t have someone continuing that conversation, we have seen some of that backsliding in a few smaller areas,” said Isaac Meadows, a worker involved in the organizing.
He attributed the backsliding to the influence of outside groups and chatter from workers’ friends and relatives that a union would discourage employers from locating in Tennessee.
Gerald McCormick, a Republican who as the state’s House majority leader opposed the union during the 2014 vote, said Republicans might worry that the union would support left-wing causes in Tennessee if it got a foothold there.
“They don’t want to do them any favors,” he said, referring to the state’s Republican leadership, which he predicted would oppose the union campaign again.
As in 2019, the employer’s response may be crucial. The Volkswagen brand appears to be roughly holding its own in the United States, and somewhat ahead in the transition to electric vehicles.
More than 11 percent of Volkswagen’s U.S. sales last year came from E.V.s — specifically the ID.4, a compact sport utility vehicle built in Chattanooga. That figure was higher than the overall 9.4 percent share for plug-in vehicles in the U.S. market, according to BloombergNEF, an energy research firm.
A Volkswagen official said during a tour of the plant that about one-third of its output this year would probably be ID.4s, and that the share could double within a decade.
If that happens, the plant may be relatively well positioned to absorb higher labor costs. Corey Cantor, an electric vehicle analyst at BloombergNEF, said continued battery innovation, along with efficiencies from larger-scale battery production, could offset the cost increases associated with unionization.
But a union presence could complicate the ramp-up in electric vehicle production, Mr. Fiorani of AutoForecast Solutions said, if the union resists the decline in workers per car that may accompany the shift. He noted that companies that made their own batteries might be able to reallocate those workers rather than lay them off, however.
Pablo Di Si, the chief executive of Volkswagen Group of America, said in a statement that the plant had already added jobs in battery pack assembly and battery engineering.
Meeting with reporters last month, a Volkswagen official said that the company would stay neutral during an election campaign, but that “neutral doesn’t mean silent — it means impartial to what employees decide.”
The official added that the company would correct misinformation, which it accuses the union of spreading, about pay and working conditions in the plant. (Companies reaching neutrality agreements with unions typically do not intervene this way.)
Mr. Meadows, the union supporter, said managers had communicated skepticism in sometimes subtle ways, like removing union fliers from lunch tables.
“Somebody put out a couple of business cards for a lawn service company, and we had some material on the same table,” Mr. Meadows recalled. “Our materials disappeared, and the others did not.”
Volkswagen said the cleanliness of the tables was governed by “clear policies.”