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The coming crash at the intersection of demographics and corporate ageist practices ft. Dan Pontefract
17 Plays15 days ago
What if the biggest threat to your organization isn't the economy, AI, or market disruption — it's an age debt you haven't even started calculating?
In Part 1 of this two-part conversation, acclaimed leadership strategist and bestselling author Dan Pontefract unpacks the crisis quietly gutting organizations from the inside: the systematic dismissal of experienced talent through ageism, short-term cost-cutting, and a complete failure to plan for a longer-lived workforce.
If you're 50+ and have been sidelined, laid off, or passed over because of your age — this episode gives you the language, the data, and the validation you've been looking for. And if you're a leader or HR professional, Dan has a clear message: the cost of ignoring age is coming for your bottom line.
🎯 IN THIS EPISODE: • Why organizations are "setting fire to their own burning bridge" by eliminating senior talent • The 4 pillars of the Age Debt Crisis: Demographics, Ageism, Longevity & Wisdom • The personal ageist experience that completely redirected Dan's career focus • Why the age crisis isn't on any C-suite priority list — and why that window is closing.
👤 ABOUT DAN PONTEFRACT Dan Pontefract is a globally recognized leadership and corporate culture strategist with 20 years of senior leadership at SAP, TELUS, and Business Objects. A multiple award-winning author, Forbes and Harvard Business Review contributor, four-time TED speaker, and adjunct professor at the University of Victoria's Gustavson School of Business — Dan has partnered with organizations including Salesforce, Nestlé, and BMO worldwide. Named to the Thinkers50 Radar list and Inc. Magazine's Top 100 Leadership Speakers.
His sixth book, The Future of Work Is Grey: The Untapped Value of Age in the Workforce, releases May 6, 2026.
🌐 Dan's Website & Speaking Info: https://www.danpontefract.com/
📚 Dan's Books: https://www.danpontefract.com/booksbydan/
📌 RESOURCES 🔖 The Future of Work Is Grey — Order Now: https://www.danpontefract.com/the-future-of-work-is-grey/
💬 JOIN OUR COMMUNITY Navigating ageism, job loss, or age discrimination in the workplace? You're not alone. 👉 Ageism Survival Guide Discord: https://discord.gg/rrdaq48xJ
🔔 Subscribe for weekly strategies built for the 50+ workforce.
"Youth runs fast, but age knows the terrain."
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Transcript
Transitioning from Job Titles to Skills
00:00:00
Speaker
And I think that we have to ah disassociate our, well, I was VP of this or director of that and start thinking about well what's your what's your skills map?
00:00:13
Speaker
and start identifying with all the good things that you can do and how you might transfer that into either another full-time role. Maybe it's a part-time role. Maybe you are what I call the trivial pursuit pie graph and the pie piece, and you have six things that you do.
Introducing Dan Pontefract
00:00:36
Speaker
Hey, welcome back to the Ageism Survival Guide. I'm John Steck. Today, we're joined by someone who has spent his career helping organizations rethink how they lead, how they learn, and how they treat their people.
00:00:53
Speaker
Dan Pontefract is a Canadian-based and globally recognized leadership and culture strategist, a six-time award-winning author, and a five-time TEDx speaker. He's a Thinker's 50 Radar honoree and the founder of the Pontefract Group.
00:01:10
Speaker
His work has shaped leaders and organizations around the world from SAP and business objects to his decade at TELUS.
00:01:21
Speaker
Dan's writing, now that he has published numerous books, appears in outlets like Forbes, Harvard Business Review, and IMD. And his books, including Open to Think, Work Life Bloom, and his latest, his newest, which is going to be available on the 5th of May, The Future of Work is Gray, had become essential reading for anyone who's trying to build their workplaces into more human, more collaborative and adaptive spaces.
00:01:52
Speaker
But before all of that, I have to say that Dan had one of the most important character building roles in modern civilization. He was, for a brief but unforgettable two months, a Wendy's Fry guy. And according to his own LinkedIn page,
00:02:10
Speaker
and you can go and check it out. um Nothing says future of work visionary like a man who has really risen from the deep fryer. And it's a story that I absolutely love.
Dan's Leadership Mission
00:02:24
Speaker
So today we're going to spend most of the time talking about Dan's upcoming book, The Future of Work is Gray, because I think it absolutely fits the topic of the Ageism Survival Guide channel.
00:02:35
Speaker
So with that, I'd like to introduce Dan Pontefract. Welcome to the Ageism Survival Guide. John, thank you. I'm so proud, honored, humbled to be here, your first guest. And thank you, first of all, for shining a light on a subject that far too many are ah afraid to. And so I'm really looking forward to getting into our discussion.
00:03:00
Speaker
So could you tell us a little bit about a little bit more about yourself? I know I scratched the surface, but but who is Dan Pontevract? Well, ah so i'm I'm trying to be the opposite or the antithesis of my last name, first of all, John. So in Latin, Pontifract is broken bridge. Ponti is bridge, frac is to break. So I'm trying to be the opposite. I'm trying to
Bridge-Building in Organizations
00:03:24
Speaker
build bridges. And so what I've always been trying to do, I suppose, right, whether I was an academic, ah then I went to the dark side, into the corporate world, as you mentioned,
00:03:35
Speaker
And I've always been in sort of education, leadership, culture building roles. And I'm just basically um the itch to scratch has always been how do ah people, whether they're leaders or individual contributors, either or are are my fancy, how do they interoperate better together to achieve the goals of whatever that organization may be, be that not-for-profit, public sector, or for-profit.
00:04:06
Speaker
so I've always been fascinated by what gets in the way. do do Do some people burn the bridge? Do some people flood it out? Do some people sort of run fast over it, even though it's rickety? And then do others sort of build a stable...
00:04:22
Speaker
ah culture building if you will type of bridge and i've in that kind of metaphor i've always been also interested in the itches the scratch of the planks on the bridge so that could be collaboration that could be purpose that could be how we create and or make decisions that could be how we execute on those said decisions that could be my disdain for employee engagement and work-life balance and how do we find better ways to integrate life with work.
00:04:53
Speaker
or recently somewhat obviously age and it it's manifestation of the good and the not so good as people are crossing that bridge. So that's that's kind of me in a nutshell. Three kids, all of them in university right now. So it's Kostin, Denise and I, my beloved ah Fortune. ah We've been married coming up to 31 years. We did really get married young. ah And yeah, we live in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.
00:05:19
Speaker
ah having ah both of us met in our undergrad at McGill University, looked at each other and somehow Denise said yes to my flimsy proposal. And we got married right after graduation and moved from Montreal to British Columbia.
00:05:34
Speaker
Fantastic. So with that proposal, did you pull out the the ah Fry Guy credential? Was that the winning line? That was hidden for a while until I had the the gumption to suggest that I was a Fry Guy for two months. but You know, honestly, that's so funny you bring that up because as as everyone should be, you're formulated by your roles and your decisions and your career somewhat, obviously. That taught me so much as a 16-year-old about what to do and what not to do.
Influence of Early Career Experiences
00:06:05
Speaker
That manager, Dave, was his name. Manager Dave was a jerk.
00:06:10
Speaker
And that's partially why I didn't want to stick around after two months. It was like... Why do you have to treat? I mean, I know I'm 16, but do you have to treat me as if I'm not human? It was just so bizarre.
00:06:23
Speaker
So it took me probably six seconds to realize i i can't stay in this gig. I need to go find another gig. But it took me two months to find my way into what was called Food City, the grocery store that employed me all the way through to university.
00:06:39
Speaker
No, that's fantastic. I agree with you 100% that those early jobs are incredible learning learning pools where where you just understand what you want or or don't want in in the rest of your life. Totally. Fully understand that one.
00:06:55
Speaker
Now, ah since today we're going to talk mostly ah about your book, you mentioned and we talked about that you had multiple books, but how did that topic of age somehow get on
Writing on Age and Leadership
00:07:09
Speaker
your radar? Like what what made that pop on your radar and and made it interesting enough and pertinent and ah enough for you to dive in and and write an entire book about it?
00:07:20
Speaker
A couple of reasons, John. ah First, I'm trying to make up for mistake. So I'll come back to that in a second. But I was actually in the midst of writing another book ah called Work Life Bloom, which came out in 2023. And I'm not trying to name drop books. I'm just giving you the chronology.
00:07:40
Speaker
But as I was writing it in 2021, we're still kind of locked up ish pandemic. But I got a ah got an email from one of my speaker bureaus.
00:07:52
Speaker
And so, you know, I do whatever, 30 to 50 keynotes a year amongst all my other little ah dalliances with work. um And the email basically went something like this. It was like, hey, Dan, ah heads up, we're refreshing the roster. and Thanks for your service. it was like, wow.
00:08:12
Speaker
whoa, what is we've been in business like for 10 years, 15 years maybe, and a form letter, what I think, I think it's an Aegis letter. So I called out the Bureau individual and on it and I'm like, what is it?
00:08:28
Speaker
What's behind this? what's What's going on here? Oh, as if like I wasn't going to follow up. Oh, Dan. Yeah. Well, yeah. In fact, we are refreshing the roster. And I'm like, so middle-aged white guy, like what's the, like, is there too many of us? What's the deal? And you just felt and saw the intrepidation of my inquisition on on the why. i was like, am I too old? Like, God, no, not really. I'm like, not really. And it's just this very...
00:08:58
Speaker
disturbing, uncomfortable, ageist conversation, which was like, OK, fine. ah That's how you want to play this game. i will come back to haunt you. That's that's going to happen.
00:09:09
Speaker
Not in I call you out. I'm i'm not naming the bureau, not naming the individual and by any stretch, but it was one of those. Huh? Here I'm writing a book about something entirely else, and I thought I was going to drop it to get right into this this age issue because it stirred something in me.
00:09:30
Speaker
But then, i this is the mea culpa part, I ah realized that I had never paid attention to age. And here I was both a chief learning officer at SAP and TELUS where I was in charge of leaders, culture, developing people. And that was through my 30s, 40s and early 50s, basically.
00:09:56
Speaker
And I'm like, huh, what what's wrong with me? Like, why wasn't I thinking about age at the height of sort of my executive prowess?
00:10:07
Speaker
And I really went for a longish bike ride, longer than normal, sort of like one of those 120K rides to kind of cleanse myself with the John, why why wasn't I thinking about age when I'm trying to develop leaders? Never crossed my mind.
00:10:24
Speaker
So then I start replaying some of things as a chief learning officer that I did and didn't do. And i thought, okay, well, that's ah that's a swing. It i wasn't even a swing and a miss, John. I just missed. Like, I didn't even swing. I sat there and didn't even think about I wasn't even in the batter's box.
00:10:43
Speaker
And I think you were not alone. So those are kind of the two impetus. Yeah. I think you were not alone. i think certainly in the companies that I worked, that there was never a discussion about that. um not not and Not with hr not with the training or development. we We had the same. So you were definitely not alone. But but but sorry, let me let you continue with your mea culpa. Well, I appreciate the support. That was very kind of you. That's quite empathic of you.
00:11:08
Speaker
ah But i just it really did gnaw at me. A 120 kilometer ride did not do anything other than deplete my iron levels, I suppose, but it didn't do anything. So like, oh my God, I have to, I have to, I have to pause this, but I have to finish the other book I'm writing. And then immediately I need to get into this other one because I knew there was something there.
Understanding 'Age Debt'
00:11:30
Speaker
So that book, uh, work, life bloom, we i finished that up essentially the beginning of 2022. It published in fall of 2023, but books are so weird because, um, it, it takes, it takes like a year and a half to get it
00:11:47
Speaker
into the market, yet you finished it, essentially. So I then in 2022 began in earnest the the beginnings of researching and thinking and interviewing and just like putting my toe in the water of this whole age and the particularly the workplace. like I am ah all pro for the people who are writing about longevity and age and society and those for individuals. Great. But I I wasn't I wasn't as interested in that per se, because here I am thinking again about what just affected me in my, quote, career or at least part of my career with a speaker bureau saying, hey, see you later. And then me going back and doing the existential crisis cross correlation. Excuse me of Dan, you missed this as a as a leader.
00:12:33
Speaker
So in 2022, 2023, 2024, effectively, that's, I just was digging and listening. And there weren't a lot of yous out there.
00:12:43
Speaker
There still aren't a lot of yous that are actually now raising this this bar up and saying, is there ageism happening in our organizations? What is happening with age in our organizations?
00:12:54
Speaker
And there, you know, I started to I started reach out and talk to a fair number of people that were in the community, that were in the space. And my my my brain exploded.
00:13:06
Speaker
who is ah It was my own come to Jesus meeting with myself. i was like, okay, this is this is going to be something for sure. and And here we are, essentially.
00:13:19
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's it's certainly a kind of a crisis, developing crisis. And look, in a world that's that's filled with crises right now, um you've actually, i think, coined yet another one. you You coined something called the age debt crisis. and And I think that jumps like right into the heart of of your book. Maybe we can start there and talk about what that is, what it means and and some of the implications of what is an age debt crisis.
00:13:47
Speaker
Well, no one likes to be in debt, first of all, right? I mean, um I had some student university debt when I left McGill, took a couple of years to get rid of that loan, but it felt good when it was gone. But the the pressure, that stress, that anxiety, that, oh my God, I'm in debt, that was just not fun for my first three or four years of my career.
00:14:07
Speaker
Age debt, I hope, is sort of a very similar analogous weight that organizations and leaders really must wrestle with and try to expunge.
00:14:20
Speaker
And so for me, what i what it came down to was four key, I suppose, categories of debt that accumulate this overall age debt. So very simply, number one is demographic apocalypse slash demographic disruption. There's a age debt blindness for leaders and organizations that just are not listening to the tarot cards of demography change. So we can maybe tackle that a little bit. So demography change, number one. Number two, to the point of this wonderful podcast and what you're digging into, ageism. I mean, it is both invisible and blatant.
00:15:00
Speaker
And it is not just ageist for older workers. We're talking ageism right through the organization from the 16 year old fry guy at Wendy's to the Warren Buffett ah recently retired. So you see it right across the the gamut. Number three is indeed longevity, meaning organizations and the people who are under their employe no No one's really thinking or helping the organization prepare for a longevity type, I guess, lifestyle, work style. And so that may be things like um not doing anything about menopause for women who may be suffering from menopause or just sort of, oh, but we don't talk about that. That's not a thing. We're like, oh, wait a second. and and Like, actually, it is a thing. Or grandparent care.
00:15:54
Speaker
where a grandparent may be looking after because of the fact that they're still at work and they're grandparents, but they're actually supporting children that are 20, 18, 16, 10.
00:16:08
Speaker
So just a bunch of things that aren't happening with the discussion of where longevity is going. And in particular to that is also preparing to live longer. So the financial pieces, to living longer, which is a good news story, but we're not really helping organizations or employees see the force through the trees on that one.
00:16:28
Speaker
And then the fourth is wisdom. So there is, ah sadly, this is affecting mostly organizations who have employed ah middle to older age workers, and then they they gas them. they they like They're gone. They're gas lit out of the organization. They are terminated. They're annexed. They're nixed. Whatever word you want.
00:16:53
Speaker
And what we don't do and what's happening is there's this hollowing out of knowledge and wisdom and intelligence and you know tacit knowledge. And or these organizations are now like, well, where's Betty? And how did I, how do what happened to payroll? I've been paid in three weeks. Or where's Juneep? And Juneep used to have that relationship with ah Procter & Gamble.
00:17:18
Speaker
But we just lost the account. Like, what how did how did Junip know what to do with PNG? So long story short, demography, ageism, longevity and wisdom, those four add up to age debt.
00:17:33
Speaker
And it is it is blatantly obvious to me in the research I did that it is here and now in Asia, in Europe and coming for the Americas.
00:17:46
Speaker
But it is weirdly ignored. And so the age debt is piling up ah wherever I look. And it's just something that needs to be talked about, discussed, and hopefully at least eradicated to the point where we can look at it as an opportunity for doing something different.
00:18:06
Speaker
Wow, that's that's that's really big. and And you think about how how how can corporate leaders, you know how do they miss this, right? You talk about um outdated assumptions, things that like, for example, 65 is a retirement age. That's kind of this old thing.
00:18:25
Speaker
assumption or myth that that that people retire at that point. and And as you said, with longevity, I mean, that's no longer the case.
Overlooking Age in Corporate Leadership
00:18:32
Speaker
Also, from a financial perspective, people probably haven't saved or or maybe they haven't saved enough to retire at age 65. So how does this myth keep rooted so deeply amongst executive ranks?
00:18:47
Speaker
I don't get it. Well, ah yeah I have a theory and then there's some sort of actual practice ah points that I'll bring up. But first of all, theory. this this is not This is not a file of importance.
00:19:02
Speaker
And in the book, I actually sort of cheekily say i could call this the climb edge crisis. But we're too busy not dealing with the climate crisis. So we're not going to definitely we're not going to tackle the climate age crisis. Right. C.L. I.M.A.G.E.
00:19:23
Speaker
So it's way down. It's not it's not even way down the list. It's not even on the list. Because this is like thinking out to 2030, 2035, 2040, yet this is like a slow osmosis where the room is slowly filling up with more age debt.
00:19:40
Speaker
And then as older leaders, you know, have other problems and files to deal with, this is like, this is going to be someone else's problem. Let's, you know, don't let the door ah hit you on the way out kind of thinking, which is just terrifying and terrible in the same breath. Yeah.
00:19:56
Speaker
so that's That's number one. That's the kind of Dan's ah cheeky theory ah perspective. Number two is that, well, I guess on the practical side, the this isn't costing per se money yet.
00:20:11
Speaker
And when it's not costing money and and organizations are still really thinking about, well, how do I save money? How do I cut costs? This is more of a, well, we're just running the business like we did in the 80s, 90s and 2000s. So we're just going to continue on yet.
00:20:29
Speaker
Fundamentally, everything has changed since 2007-8 with the fiscal cliff crisis, yet we're still trying to play the economic prowess power of how we used to do it in this new model in 2026 going forward. It's just from an economic perspective, it's bonkers weird backwards.
00:20:49
Speaker
But what again, because it's not cost it does it's not a line item to say it's costing us money. So we don't we don't we don't have to do anything about it. We're still working with the relics of the past.
00:21:00
Speaker
So shareholder return, profit return, you know, dividend thinking, all of that on a for profit, publicly traded company. And then just EBITDA and sort of ah cost containment, um cost effectiveness is still there. the The whole age thing is not on the list.
00:21:18
Speaker
No, I was going to say, they don't look at the opportunity cost, which is what it is at the moment, right? They're looking at the actual accounting cost of older workers on the bottom line. I think that's part of the blindness, maybe.
00:21:32
Speaker
they're They're a cost, like it's a cost. And so what's the best way to become more efficient with our costs is to start looking at your number one expense, that's salary.
00:21:43
Speaker
And when you look then deep dive into the line items of salary, that's typically middle aged to older workers who have tenure and have worked up, quote, the career ladder to make more on their job description pay. And so ergo, what happens is, ah you know, bean counters and the like look at it and say, OK, well,
00:22:01
Speaker
We could get rid of six young people or two older folks. like look We're good. Let's get rid of those two and where we'll call it a day. so we just The whole thing has to be re-architected, quite frankly, because again, number three to my point was human resources slash people and culture.
00:22:19
Speaker
They're the ones that are supposed to be in charge of sort of the talent pipeline, the culture, the evolution of how we do work. And there are nary a percentage over 10, I would say, that is actually forward thinking, ah driving the change that's required for the rest of their colleagues in the C-suite to actually make this a file of importance.
00:22:47
Speaker
And this this is not going to come from a COO, CFO. This is not going to come from the chief revenue officer. This is not coming from your CIO, CTO. It's just not going to happen. That's just not their bailiwick.
00:22:58
Speaker
So i wherever I go now, I urge CHROs and directors and VPs of HR and PNC, people in culture, to actually begin the process of raising this up at the C-level so that it becomes a file.
00:23:13
Speaker
Right. I have to admit, um I've seen the flow ah often going from, let's say, from the finance department to the human resources department, right?
00:23:25
Speaker
Hey, this is the cost. You guys get this much resources and and that's it. You have to meet this. The flow doesn't really go the other way. um There is not that conversation on that strategic ah the strategic view of what they have to do over the long term. And and you, i think I'm sure, know how to how budgeting works, right? You have, and I'm being a little bit cynical here, um how companies try to, every department fights for its maximum amount of budget possible and and and fights for it and and tries to keep that year after year after year. And and and then along comes finance. And as you said, they they look for the biggest line item where they can cut costs. And typically that's going to be
00:24:07
Speaker
employees and that's going to be older employees. At least that's that's been my experience in the the several companies that I've been with through multiple waves of, let's say, involuntary or even voluntary retirements. Well, there's ah there's a there's a term that's used for short-term thinking called short-termism. And that short-termism, sorry, um John, it's usually applied to how we will do whatever it takes to make the quarter and or make the annual and or if you're publicly traded to make whatever is applicable to giving back again on a shareholder buyback or shareholder return or dividends.
00:24:51
Speaker
And so the company twists itself into a gymnastics trampoline pose to do everything it can to ultimately acquiesce to what either the street says, i.e. in the for-profit publicly traded companies, or what the board or what the C-suite says we will do to make our EBITDA level. Now, I'm i'm not naive. I've been in capitalism. I know how it works. What I'm getting at is that if if we don't apply...
00:25:20
Speaker
an antithetical short-termism kind of thinking to age, i.e. if we just think that we can sort of whack older people or even not hire younger people, that's a whole other kettle of fish we should get into, because you know we don't want the costs of having the young people and their benefits, etc. We don't want to bring them in. we can We can use AI, don't worry, we're fine. or to your point, nuking or getting rid of terminating older folks because it's, well, they're more expensive. They're the top of the line on the payroll and that's our number one expense. All of that to me is short termism.
00:25:56
Speaker
that That is analogous to sort of the for profit side of how we twist ourselves into a gymnastics trap of trampoline move to do whatever we can to make the street happy or the shareholders happy or the profit takers. But on the age side, if we are employing the same, i guess, vernacular, if not analogy, and we are applying a short termism approach to talent,
00:26:21
Speaker
And not thinking about the next two, three, five, 10 years of our organization and doing whatever we can to just eradicate costs. That's short termism with your talent pool. And that is a way to basically create and set fire to your own burning bridge.
00:26:39
Speaker
Right. i i I see that coming. And, um, Yeah, the the demographic shift, I mean, it doesn't happen overnight.
Global Demographic Challenges
00:26:47
Speaker
it's It's coming. And before we started to record, we briefly talked about how, you know, when when is that coming? When will it be felt in in in the Americas, in let's say in Canada or in the United States? what what What's your estimate? I have my estimate, but I'll let you go first. It's a great question. That's a great question. let's Let's go Asia, Europe, Americas, and just sort of like follow the westerly wind, as I call it, I guess.
00:27:11
Speaker
So I'm sitting in um one of the ah I'll never forget this. I'm sitting in the 20th floor of the Bank of Japan talking with one of their economists.
00:27:24
Speaker
And basically, this is the two lines that that were used on me after sort of 90 minutes of charts and like looking at the future of Japan, etc.
00:27:34
Speaker
Number one. Dan, when you go back to Canada, make sure that you tell your people not to do what Japan is doing. I was whoa, okay. So that's that's good that's from the chief economist. That's ah very interesting. Number two, Dan, did you know in 2024, adult diapers outsold baby diapers in Japan?
00:27:58
Speaker
Wow. And then my jaw dropped.
00:28:02
Speaker
and I thought, huh, okay. That is just not something that's ever computed in my head before, but here we are. no And so that's Japan, that's now China, it's certainly South Korea. You look at where Asia, as I call it, the kind of canary in the age coal mine, they are, those countries, like basically Asia, mostly, ah generally speaking, Asia, and there's a couple outlier countries, but mostly Asia, is in the same predicament, is that because there was not a lot of immigration, sort of closed borders,
00:28:37
Speaker
And then birth rates plummeted. So you can see the contraction of their population and their GDP and them scrambling to figure out how they keep their economies rolling. That's today.
00:28:49
Speaker
If you go west from Asia, if you will, going that way, ah towards... Europe, you're beginning to see now the the fraying of the of the sweater or the fraying of the scarf, whichever way you want it, and the yarn is now it's like 20 meters downstream. You're like, wait, that used to be part of the sweater or the or the scarf. what's What's going on?
00:29:13
Speaker
Whether it's France or Italy or Germany or Switzerland, they are beginning right now to enter into a OMG moment whereby they realize that in certain sectors, they just don't have bodies that are up and coming.
00:29:34
Speaker
So they are struggling slash grappling with what to do. So from, for example, in Italy, their construction um workers are now at a point in which that they're pleading with younger workers, younger people to come into the trades, to come into construction. Their average age has shot up over the last 10 years. And so they're just not having the same type of progression from a talent perspective, a pool perspective of in the construction industry. That's just one.
00:30:10
Speaker
I could go through all of it and say they are now beginning right to grapple with what is it is that they're going to do. Then you get to the Americas. And by the way, all the while, since the early 1970s, birth rates are plummeting, but no one's really paying attention to it.
00:30:26
Speaker
So whether it's Asia, Europe, or North America, South America, Africa is actually okay, by the way. ah from a population birth rate perspective, it has dropped. It's not quite at ah below the replacement rate as a continent, but it's on its way. So number four out of our ah not very good situations demographically is Africa, the continent. So Asia, terrible.
00:30:48
Speaker
Europe, it's a silver medal terrifying situation that they're grappling with. In the Americas, OMG is just about to hit. So ah Canada's birth rate plummeting just like the other two regions, ah sit currently sits at 1.26. And as immigration levels have been capped, or I guess lowered, as has ah happened in the US, you can now see again stress. So just a couple examples.
00:31:20
Speaker
in um In Canada, just about a month ago, so the federal government somehow holds a big press conference. And I paid attention to this particular one because it was the industry minister coming out and saying, all right, folks, we're going to run out of minors.
00:31:37
Speaker
ah If any young people would like to come into the mining profession, we've got a ticket for you. And they've done the math from a demographics perspective and realized that the average age of the miners in Canada is like 49. They're like, oof, what what are we going to do here?
00:31:54
Speaker
In America, the BLS, Bureau of Labor Statistics, sort of issued a plea a couple of weeks ago and said, um we're running out of sewers and seamstresses.
00:32:08
Speaker
You're like, what? done like Yeah. So if you want your suit tailored, et cetera, the average age of the sewer seamstress tailor in America is 54.
00:32:19
Speaker
the average age. And so you're like, what? Like people don't want to get into the sewing seamstress, you know, ah tailor profession? Turns out not. ah and So it has that that has skyrocketed the last 10 years at average age and with people dying literally at their place of work because they like they couldn't sell their shop and they kept being seamstresses or sewers or tailors. And like no one's buying my shop. No one wants to be this. So they they die and roll. It is So I'm just giving you little pieces of of colored commentary where wherever you go, whatever you look at, aside from maybe professional sports, which looks like they're fine, minute little population that get to be athletic athletes, male or female, professional athletes.
00:33:06
Speaker
But ah regardless, when you look around in any industry, everywhere you look, it's like, whoa. There is a longevity issue, an ageism issue, there's a wisdom transfer issue, and of course there's this demographic issue that's happening.
00:33:21
Speaker
It's incredible to to see how that's coming and somehow you're not watching it.
Conversation Wrap-up
00:33:27
Speaker
Again, it's it's like like a train, a train crash that's that you can clearly see is coming, and and yet there's there's not much reaction to it. You mentioned, of course, oh, so go ahead, Dan.
00:33:41
Speaker
I'm just going to say quickly, like a line I've used with my publisher, who she's just amazing. When say to Jesse, I said this last year, i said, look, once you see it, you can't unsee it.
00:33:54
Speaker
And so every time that I see her we talk about the book or whatever, she's like, you when you told me that line, that's like, now I see it everywhere. It's like, I cannot unsee this demographic change that's happening. That's the first half of my conversation with Dan Pondefract.
00:34:07
Speaker
I hope you found it as fascinating and even as alarming as I did. Don't forget to subscribe and turn on the notifications so that you don't miss the second half of our conversation next week.