Rory O’Neill, WOR national correspondent Interview

Rory O’Neill speaks with Mendte in the Morning about the shortage of 18-year-olds in the country as a result of the recession in 2007-2008.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well, I'm not surprised by headlines a lot, but this
headline that we may have a shortage of eighteen year
olds is a little surprising. Let's get more on that
from Rory O'Neil WLR, National correspondent. So we have a
we may be facing a shortage of eighteen year olds.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
That looks to be the math Yeah, okay, Larry, now
here's a math problem for you. I think I'm going
to warn you. All right, So take the year twenty
twenty five, subtract eighteen. What were we doing?

Speaker 1 (00:33):
What were we doing?

Speaker 2 (00:35):
What happened? What was going on in two thousand and seven,
two thousand and eight?

Speaker 1 (00:39):
I have no idea what was it?

Speaker 2 (00:41):
A great recession? So when housing prices were collapsing, a
lot of couples said, ooh, not the best time to
be having a kid right now. And that's been lingering.
So now we're paying the piper for that decision eighteen
years ago when couples decided not to have kids. Now, look,
the US already had a declining birth rate, but it
really fell off the charts after the Great Recession began.

(01:05):
Should note there was a strong reversal of that with
COVID everyone home on lockdown was to a little baby talk,
But what else are you gonna do? Right? The overall
trends you should have masked up, is all I can say.
But the overall trend is that the birth rate is
going down. And sixty minutes to the great piece this

(01:26):
weekend about how this has been affecting Japan in particular,
But it looks like what's happening there now could be
around the corner for us because those eighteen year olds,
they're now not going to colleges right they just don't exist.
So you're going to see a big competition to try
to get those students because in the first half of
twenty twenty four, we actually had one college closing every

(01:47):
week in this country.

Speaker 1 (01:49):
You know, it's fascinating you say this because I was
just talking to some college recruiters because my son's going
through this, and they apparently are making a huge push
right now to get adults to go back to school,
and they're making a huge push for the military as well.
So this all makes sense tying into your story that

(02:10):
they see this coming. So there's been a warning about this,
I would imagine for some time now.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
Well, right, So, and colleges and universities are facing the
problem of a lot more people are saying, hey, wait,
do I need that degree? Is it really necessary? Do
I need to go into that kind of debt for
a job? Maybe I'd be better off in the trades.
So as that discussion has been on the increase, well
now the student population is about to be on the
decrease significantly again, two point seven million fewer college aged

(02:38):
kids than a decade ago.

Speaker 1 (02:40):
Yeah, and play that out. I mean, it's not just colleges,
it's the workforce.

Speaker 2 (02:44):
It's the workforce. And then they're the ones, by the way,
who will be paying the Social Security you and I
are collecting. Right, So you need that bigger workforce at
the bottom of that pyramid in order to pay the
benefits that we've been paying in for decades.

Speaker 1 (02:59):
Yeah, that's something to watch. That's a really extremely important story.
And how we make up that population is part of that,
especially now that we're deporting so many people at the
same time.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
And I said, and Trump has said he wants to
have more tax incentives. He's trying to inspire a baby boom.
In that Japan story on sixty Minutes, they said, you've
got people aren't marrying before, they're not having kids, so
you've sort of got the one two punch there. They
profiled one small town in Japan that had their first
childbirth in twenty years.

Speaker 1 (03:33):
You've mentioned Japan a couple times now, but I would
assume that the pandemic hit worldwide. So this problem's worldwide.

Speaker 2 (03:42):
Yes, but some of them have had problems going into it.
China's got a bigger problem because of their one child policy, right,
so they have a lot more older people only supported
by one child, so they've got their own systemic issues
when it comes to this. Really, Africa is the only
continent with population that's still on the increase that we

(04:03):
may have seen more regularly here on our side of
the planet. So it's a fascinating change in the way
that things are going, you know. And America's growth and
population has long been fueled by the immigration, and of
course now that's something that's a bitten flux.

Speaker 1 (04:19):
It is in flux. But there, you know, I don't
care what the administration.

Speaker 2 (04:23):
Says, legal immigration, legal immigration, Yeah, there you go, there
you go.

Speaker 1 (04:28):
Yeah. And also there's you know, it's it's the the
numbers are ten to twenty million people. We're not deporting
ten to twenty million people. He won't have the time
in office to deport ten to twenty million people, so okay,
so it's uh, that's fascinating though. I've never heard that
story before, but it is something to watch. Thank you

(04:48):
so much, Rory O'Neill.