The CQ: Financial Compatibility > Physical Attraction for Gen Z and What Netflix' Viewership Data Reveals About the Internet
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By Forerunner
What We’re Talking About on Slack:
These are the jobs that keep older Americans working. Bloomberg tracked the occupations that have the highest share of workers older than 65, going back seven decades. In 2021, the top five jobs are funeral service workers, crossing guards, miscellaneous motor vehicle operators, tax preparers, and school bus drivers. Considering most of the professions that ranked throughout the years are for the most part low-paying (and some showed up again and again like farmers, tailors and clergy), it can be inferred that these workers were likely unable to save enough for retirement.
Nearly 9 million student loan borrowers missed their first payment after the three-year pandemic pause that ended this past fall—that adds up to about 40% of the 22 million borrowers. Back in October 2019 before the freeze, fewer than 26% of borrowers had missed their payment. However, borrowers won’t face major penalties if they miss payments, though interest will still accrue. One issue that may have complicated things for some is that millions of borrowers have a different student loan servicer than before the pause.
Almost half of Gen Z think being financially compatible is more important than being physically attracted to their partner, according to a new study. What’s more, 41% of Gen Z also say it’s more important than shared interests and lifestyle. “Over a third of Gen Z and 42% of millennials said finances are a significant challenge or the single most difficult issue they deal with, whilst only 17% of Boomers say the same.”
Return-to-office mandates are challenging for working mothers. The availability of remote and hybrid positions brought women’s participation in the workforce to record highs—women ages 25 to 54 reached 75%, and for college-educated mothers of kids under 10, it was almost 80%. Still, many executives are dismissive of the productivity levels of remote work. Just 9% of job listings on LinkedIn were fully remote in July, a decrease from 18% last year. “I came back because it was remote. I quite literally could not do my life if I wasn’t,” says a mom of four who works for Allstate, a company that had instituted a remote work policy and saw female applications increase 12%.
According to a new Pew Research Center survey on American teens’ internet and social media use, YouTube is the reigning champ for the second year with 93% of 13- to 17-year-olds using the platform, beating TikTok (63%), Snapchat (60%), Instagram (59%), and Facebook (33%). A third of teens use at least one of these “almost constantly.” The percentage of teens who say that they use the internet “almost constantly” has practically doubled to 46% since Pew first released the survey in 2015.
My not-so-perfect holiday shopping excursion with A.I. chatbots: That’s The New York Times’ take on the first holiday season powered by generative artificial intelligence. Shopify, Keurig, Instacart, Mercari, and Walmart are among the companies rolling out chatbots that help shoppers find inspiration for presents by asking them questions and searching the key terms in their answers for relevant products. The reporter’s personal experience testing them out (as well as those of people she interviewed) largely turned up product results that were out of the given price range ($269.99, not $100), included too many options (300) or too few (1), or were just not right (baseballs instead of baseball cards).
And also: retailers enlist A.I. in fight against returns. One example is Perry Ellis, which worked with e-commerce agency Acorn-i to determine which products had the highest return rates and to pinpoint phrases in product descriptions that may be confusing to customers. They then used A.I. to write new descriptions that address shoppers’ questions and concerns regarding tricky issues like fit or size and include search keywords. Those new descriptions are combined with behavioral data from Amazon’s database to target its ads. The result: Return rates dropped 15% over the course of the year-long experiment in the U.K.
The (surprisingly) good news on life expectancy: It’s still going up. According to The Wall Street Journal, there are two ways to measure mortality, and most recent articles have chronicled “period life expectancy,” which reports that U.S. life expectancy is on the decline. However, this statistic focuses on the number of people who died at each age in a given year, then calculates how long a hypothetical infant would live if those age-specific death rates applied for that infant’s entire life. “It’s as if you were stuck in time, and frozen in one calendar year, which isn’t the reality of life.” Meanwhile “cohort life expectancy” factors in medical advances, additional education, and rising living standards that can increase lifespans. That means, a boy born in 2022 will live 82.2 years and a girl 86.5 years—about seven and six years longer than what’s reported by period life expectancy.
Longevity treatments at your gym: Waste of money or worth it? The new trend to hit fitness centers are anti-aging offerings including cryotherapy, infrared sauna, IV vitamin drips, biological-age testing, and peptide injections; a few offer access to weight-loss drugs. The push has the potential to bring longevity closer to the mainstream.
The internet has become so vast, argues The Atlantic, that nobody knows what’s happening online anymore. When TikTok’s year-end report of the platform’s most popular videos and Netflix’s most streamed shows consisted of content largely unheard-of, many people were scratching their heads in confusion. “We live in a world where it’s easier than ever to be blissfully unaware of things that other people are consuming. It’s also easier than ever to assign outsize importance to information or trends that may feel popular but are actually contained.”
Portfolio Highlights:
Oura announces a partnership with Headspace as well as being named an official partner of the New York Knicks.
Inc. profiles founder Andrew Dudum on how Hims when public in just four years. Dudum also visited Inc.’s The Founders Project podcast.
Glossier CEO Kyle Leahy shares with Glossy on the brand's plans for fragrance.
Ritual’s founder and CEO Katerina Markov Schneider joined The Art of Being Well podcast to discuss what to look for in a supplement, traceability behind science and sourcing, and more.
Zola introduces the 2024 First Look Report, highlighting the next year’s wedding trends, with press mentions in People, The New York Times, and Vogue.
Marc Lore, CEO and founder of Wonder, and Jen Rubio, co-founder and CEO of Away, offer advice on creating a winning team to Inc. along with other founders.
Lauren Cooks Levitan, Faire’s CFO, discusses with Modern Retail how unique food brand collaborations help independent retailers stand out.
The Farmer’s Dog is featured in AdAge’s list of ad campaigns that made creatives jealous this year.
Abbie Synan, a Fora Travel advanced advisor, is quoted in Elle Décor speaking about the world’s most iconic hotels.