{"id":4409,"date":"2026-07-06T16:09:02","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T16:09:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bostonrelocationinsider.com\/?p=4409"},"modified":"2026-07-06T16:09:02","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T16:09:02","slug":"i-was-born-65-years-ago-the-economic-changes-have-been-head-spinning-and-not-always-fair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bostonrelocationinsider.com\/?p=4409","title":{"rendered":"I was born 65 years ago. The economic changes have been head-spinning \u2014 and not always fair."},"content":{"rendered":"<article>\n<div>\n<p><span><i>This column is from Trendlines, my business newsletter that covers the forces shaping the economy in Boston and beyond. If you\u2019d like to receive it via email on Mondays and Thursdays, <\/i><i>sign up here<\/i><i>.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/bostonrelocationinsider.com\/?p=4407\">The six teams that could land LeBron James<\/a><\/p>\n<p><span>America just turned 250 years old, but I\u2019ve been fixated on another big birthday: my 65th. On Saturday, instead of hosting a UFC cage match, I will celebrate by attending my youngest child\u2019s wedding.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>July 11, 1961, wasn\u2019t a particularly newsworthy day, my arrival notwithstanding. Local news that day featured an unsolved Lynnfield murder and a legislative fight over the state\u2019s Sunday \u201cblue laws.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p><span>And in the world of business, the US Department of Labor reported that the average weekly wage of a factory worker reached a record $94.24 in June (about $1,080 in today\u2019s dollars). <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>My dive into the newspaper clips put me in a reflective mood: How has the US economy changed in the six and a half decades since yours truly squalled his first squalls? We\u2019re talking about a stretch during which some 76 million baby boomers came of age, transformed American culture, politics, and business, and pretty much ruined the country \u2014 if you buy the critique of younger generations.<\/span><\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><span>Get Starting Point<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span>A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday.<\/span><\/div>\n<div>\n<div><label>Enter Email<\/label><\/p>\n<div><button>Sign Up<\/button><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><span><b>The big story<\/b>: American workers went from making things to selling services. Computers morphed from room-sized mainframes to the infinitely more powerful cell phones that fit in our pocket. Medicine extended life expectancy at birth in 2024 to 79 years from 70.2 years .<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The nation became much more affluent overall, but wealth is less evenly shared now than at any point in my lifetime.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Manufacturing declined from 28 percent of all jobs to 9 percent last month, as globalization, automation, and offshoring hammered domestic production.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Services went from just under half of all employment in 1961 to 72 percent in June. Professional and business services doubled to 14 percent of jobs. Education and health services tripled to 18 percent.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>All the while, the Edelman-era economy has averaged 3 percent growth a year. But like me, the economy isn\u2019t moving as fast as it used to. Over the past decade, GDP rose an average of 2.4 percent a year.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>There have been eight recessions during my lifetime. The longest, from December 2007 to June 2009, was triggered by the housing bust.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><b>Taming inflation:<\/b> A major pivot point came in the early 1980s when Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker aggressively raised interest rates to break the back of runaway inflation. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>It was an extraordinarily painful move \u2014 rates approaching 20 percent caused two recessions \u2014 but it worked. The Consumer Price Index fell from an annualized rate of 14.8 percent in March 1980 to 2.5 percent in July 1983. For the next 25 years, a period known as the Great Moderation, inflation was stable, averaging 3.1 percent a year.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/bostonrelocationinsider.com\/?p=4405\">After years of cuts, GBH touts growth in donors and launches statewide show<\/a><\/p>\n<p><span><b>Wall Street takes over:<\/b> The Great Moderation ushered in an extended economic expansion, stock market rally, and a bigger financial sector.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The Standard &amp; Poor\u2019s 500 index produced an average annual return (including reinvested dividends) of 20 percent from the start of the Reagan-era bull market in August 1982 through the dot-com bust in March 2000. From July 1961 through last week, the index returned an average 10.6 percent a year; a thousand dollars invested in the index on the day before I was born would be worth nearly $725,000 today.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>As prices climbed, individual investors returned to the stock market after the disastrous 1970s; the mutual fund industry took off; and self-funded 401(k)-style retirement plans replaced company-paid pension plans. Deregulation sparked new financial products and reunited Wall Street with Main Street banks.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><b>One technology revolution after another<\/b>: In the 1960s, the silicon chip made the vacuum tube obsolete (except for audiophiles) and the USA went to the moon.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The 1970s brought the microprocessor, followed in the 1980s by the personal computer, the commercialization of the internet in the 1990s, and social media in the 2000s.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The last 15-plus years has been head-spinning: gene editing and mRNA vaccines, streaming (Netflix and Spotify), the expansion of solar and wind energy, self-driving cars, and (shudder) artificial intelligence.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><b>Final thought:<\/b> The US economy has been on an incredible, though volatile, climb since 1961. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Median household income increased 31 percent on an inflation adjusted basis to $83,730 in 2024, the most recent year available. The official poverty rate fell by more than half to 14.2 percent.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>But the unequal distribution of the wealth created over the past sixty-plus years threatens to further inflame economic discontent and political polarization. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>US income inequality has climbed almost consistently since 1980 and is now the highest among any developed nation, based on the World Bank\u2019s Gini index. The share of wealth held by the middle 40 percent of Americans declined to 29.5 percent in 2024 from a peak of 35.8 percent in 1985, according to data from the World Inequality Lab.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>If these trends aren\u2019t reversed, I\u2019m not sure what our country will be like when my 75th birthday comes along.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/bostonrelocationinsider.com\/?p=4403\">MLB made right call on fight between Cade Cavalli and Willson Contreras, and other Red Sox thoughts<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wealth has grown substantially over the six and a half decades since yours truly squalled his first squalls. It&#8217;s also shared far less equitably. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4408,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>I was born 65 years ago. 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