America’s Covid Baby Bust Means The Future Has Arrived Early For Homebuilders

Demographers don’t make for scintillating keynotes.

Their stock in trade is glacially-evolving zip-plus-4 and mailbox-level data. They thrill at the subtlest wrinkles in household patterns across 20-, 50-, and 100-year timespans, and are as fascinated by what happened in household composition, family formations, and consumer expenditures in the mid-t0-late 1970s, as they appear to be at what’s going on across the generational cohorts we give names to today.

So, how did demographics suddenly elevate – particularly during and in the immediate early wake of Covid-19’s sundering of assumptions that underlie business, society, science, and culture – to its current, ultra-cool cache?

As it turns out – and we’ve all become painfully aware – glaciers can alter velocity with the best of exponential transformations too.

Demographics, the structural basis for long-range optimism in residential investment, real estate development, construction, distribution, and related manufacturing and partner businesses, has suddenly hoisted a Jolly Roger. That’s made demographics – normally, a back-burner theme in business planning – quite the topic du jour.

Annual white population losses over the four years between 2016-17 and 2019-20 were 129,000; 252,000; 290,000; and 482,000. Together, this loss of more than 1 million white people outweighs the white population gains of the decade’s six earlier years, leading to a likely first-ever decade decline of the nation’s white population when the final 2020 census results are tallied (Download Table A).

In contrast, nonwhite race and ethnic groups increased in size over each year of the decade, and were responsible for all of the nation’s population growth between 2016 and 2020. Latino or Hispanic Americans led all groups, with annual gains at or approaching 1 million a year. Asian Americans added between 300,000 to over 500,000 to their population each year, followed by Black Americans, persons identifying as two or more races, and American Indians and Alaska Natives.

So, while demographics may not be where charisma, inspiration, and motivation tend to coalesce in discussion and planning, it has become a critical path planning matter, not just for the far-out horizon, but now.

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