What social trends have taught us about the economy of 2023
This year the world has learned that some men can’t stop thinking about the Roman Empire. Here at The New York Times, we can’t stop thinking about what social trends like these tell us about the American economy.
We had no shortage of viral memes and moments to discuss in 2023. Americans flocked to Paris (and abroad in general). Millennial women stocked up Stanley thermoses their fathers used, one of many female-driven consumer fads. Partly thanks to Barbie, Birkenstocks also returned louder than a 90s trend. People spoke in Taylor Swift’s lyrics.
Such social developments can tell us a lot about the economy in which we live. To round out 2023, we’ve gone through some of the big cultural events and what they’ve taught us about the job market, economic growth and the outlook for 2024.
‘He’s just Ken’ had problems in the job market
“Barbie,” the film that launched a thousand think pieces, hit theaters this summer with the telling promotional tagline: “She is everything.” He’s just Ken.”
This was clearly a film about the job market.
The film shows Barbie trying to grapple with the harshness of a real world that isn’t dominated by women, and Ken trying to find his place after realizing he has no clear place in Barbie’s fictional world.
That was more than just social commentary. Like Barbieland, America has seen a real difference in outcomes for young men and middle-aged women in recent years – especially in the labor market. Younger women were working at historically high levels before the pandemic, and they bounced back immediately after the 2020 recession.
Men were a different story. Employment among younger men has recovered, but they are still working at much lower rates than a few decades ago. Men in the 35 to 44 age group in particular have been working less and less in recent years and have recently failed to recapture their 2019 employment peak.
Specifically in 2023 women 1.4 jobs won for each of these Gentlemen did (until November).
What’s behind the long-term decline of male employment? Economists and sociologists point to a number of causes: A abandoning the marriage and the decline in childbearing has eroded a traditional social reason for work. Men may be having something of an identity crisis at work in a modern economy where many new jobs are trending toward “pink collar” service sectors such as child care and nursing.
“Ken is trying to find his place in the world,” says Betsey Stevenson, an economist at the University of Michigan, explaining that this relates to a world of different possibilities that leaves some men looking for a new base. “We have moved from an economic model where the average job makes things to an economy where the average job takes care of someone.”
Men are too less educated than today’s young women, which may leave some with a less marketable resume. (In the movie, Ken tries to get a job on the coast but is told he lacks the skills. He complains, “I can’t even be here at the beach!”)
Taylor Swift and Beyoncé showed America’s willingness to spend money
It wasn’t just the labor market that women dominated this year: it was a year of female-centric consumerism. Take, for example, the two musical events of the summer. Both Beyoncé and Taylor Swift had huge concert tours that stimulated a lot of economic activity. They also released movies of their shows, bringing the fun (and money) to the box office.
The concert itself was an example of a broader economic trend. Consumers continued to spend strongly, especially in 2023 on services such as live music and international travel. That was somewhat of a surprise because forecasters had thought much higher Federal Reserve interest rates were likely to push the economy into a recession this year.
‘Girls’ dinners’ are one of the cheap food trends
Another place where ladies led the way in 2023? Culinary innovation. Young women posted viral TikToks on what, depending on one’s demographic background, might be called a charcuterie board (millennial), a Plowman’s (Brit) or a lunch (Oscar Mayer). But for Generation Z, it was a girls’ dinner.
This, like the Roman Empire and men meme, was an example of applying gender to a fairly broad and basic concept. Girls’ dinners came in many shapes and sizes, but they were essentially just meals composed of relatively affordable ingredients: think leftover bits of cheese, boxed macaroni, or chicken nuggets.
What they clearly reflected was a broader economy-wide trend towards greater food frugality. Major retailers, including Walmart and McDonald’s, reported seeing a new group of consumers as even middle-class consumers tried to save money on groceries after years of rapid food inflation. Overall price increases have slowed significantly in 2023, but several years of rapid inflation have added up, pushing many prices for many basic needs significantly higher.
Ozempic was concerned about large food
Consumer trends in the food sector saw another major and unexpected change this year. Some major food companies are concerned that people are about to buy less food because of products like Ozempic and Wegovy, which gained fame this year as part of a new and effective line of weight-loss drugs. While that was a hopeful moment for many struggling with obesity and its health consequences, it was a moment that caused consternation and adjustment among some retailers and fast-food chains. Walmart said it already seeing impact on request.
ChatGPT Raised eyebrows in the economy
Healthcare wasn’t the only sector to see a major breakthrough in 2023. OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot shot to fame this year for generating human writing, and its competitors came up with their own offerings (including one that fell in love with a Times columnist).
Such technologies can have major economic consequences, reform how we work, replacing some jobs and possible increasing productivity. For now, office workers use it to write emails. Students have used it to write papers. Your friendly economics correspondent tried to use it to write this story section, but artificial intelligence and Times editors have a different understanding of the term “short.”
The freely available version of ChatGPT works based on 2022 data, so also declined to comment on another major development this year.
“If ‘rizz’ refers to something specific, please provide more context or clarify,” the chatbot responded when asked if it owned Oxford’s Word of the Year, a Gen Z abbreviation for “charisma.”
With a little more insistence it admitted: ‘I have no personal qualities.’