16: Let's Talk About Demographic Inversion- with Jamie Irvine

Meet Jamie:Jamie Irvine is the founder and host of the heavy-duty parts report. He is also a sales and marketing consultant that specializes in working with heavy-duty parts manufacturers and distributors. He's like the Joe Rogan of truck parts.Kris: Jamie, I'm curious if you can share with the audience something interesting about you that they might not know.Jamie: Well, there are a couple of things. But one thing is I've been a podcast host really since 2017. But the heavy-duty parts report didn't start until 2019. So I had a whole other podcasting journey. Before that, I did 150 episodes. And it was just a very broad-based subject around the business. And I pivoted into the heavy-duty parts report. And so when I made that choice to pivot, it really was a case where nobody had not many people listen to the first show I had. And, and that's okay because I learned how to podcast and nobody was listening. So that was good. They didn't hear all my foibles. But then when I was able to start the heavy-duty parts report, because of all that experience, I was able to really hit the ground running. And I learned a lot from that. And that was great because the show took off and we've done really, really well. But I always hoped that it would lead to something more. And so just recently, I was invited to be a co-host on a nationally syndicated radio show on TNC radio called Mind your trucking business. And it is a brand new show. We've just published I think we've done 11 weeks now. And it goes live on TNC Radio dot live at 6 pm Central on Thursday evenings and then it's read and rebroadcasted as a podcast. So to actually be on the radio from those original days when I launched a podcast and I live literally had to Google. What is a podcast? I've come a long way.Kris: What's the biggest challenge facing manufacturers today?Jamie: I think, you know, you probably wouldn't be surprised if I said supply chain issues. But I actually don't think that's the biggest problem. I think that's an acute problem that we're having right now. But I actually think the larger more overarching problem is something called a demographic inversion. And I did some research on this recently, in 2019, there was a global census. And at that time, there were just over 700 million people globally over the age of 65. And there were only 680 million children under the age of five. Okay. Okay, so that doesn't sound like say, hey, it's pretty balanced, right the at the beginning of life and the end of life, those numbers are balanced. But what's going to happen between now and 2050, that's the part that got my attention, the gap is going to double meaning in by 2050, that gap is going to get twice as big. And there are going to be way more people over the age of 65 than there are children under the age of five. And I don't know if you know this, but even if we all got to work on the problem tonight, with our spouses, let's face it, we're not going to be able to solve the demographic issue for about 20 years, because it takes real roughly 20 years to get a child to adulthood and in the workforce. So this is a problem that we might have been able to solve in, you know, like 2000 to 2005. But it's too late now the dye has been cast and the trend has been set, the birth rates are not going to change. So this demographic inversion is creating a condition where it's not that there won't be young people. But the battleground for retaining and or sorry for recruiting a rather young talent is going to intensify year over year as we move forward. And then there's this other trend whereby 2030, all of the baby boomers will pretty much be wrapping up their careers. So one of the largest groups of people on the planet will be completely exiting the workforce. And there are just not enough Gen Xers to cover the spread between all