When we first asked this question in October 2020, college enrollment rates had been softening for nearly a decade. We hypothesized that young people were beginning to question the return on investment in higher education — particularly given the substantial debts likely to be incurred and an increasingly uncertain payoff. We noted significant declines in two-year college enrollment and among young men specifically. A June 2026 update finds those trends have not reversed. They've gotten substantially worse.

The financial crisis of 2008-9 set back an entire generation of Millennials just as they were trying to establish themselves economically. When we wrote this in 2020, COVID was piling on, and Gen Z was about to get hit before they'd even gotten started. The question we were asking: were we watching the beginning of a long-term, structural decline in living standards for younger Americans?

Older Americans were already working out of necessity long before COVID arrived, with many carrying relatively high debt balances, facing depleted retirement savings, and watching defined-benefit pensions disappear. Now, with recession hitting hard and fast, the challenges facing the 65+ workforce have become dramatically more acute. What happens next for older workers may reshape retirement in America for a generation.

Twelve years after the financial crisis, US fertility rates are still drifting lower , defying years of Census Bureau forecasts calling for a rebound. Now, with another severe recession underway, the question isn't whether birth rates will fall further. It's by how much, and for how long.