With a social life reduced to zero, I took time during the COVID-19 lockdown to focus on our backroom — the repository of our filing system, photo albums, shelves of books and miscellaneous material. The aim was to reduce and part with whatever we could.
Along the way, I pulled a file simply labeled “Lists.” It contains lists of companies and people — some of the pages dating back years.
This must be ripe for shredding, I thought.
That wasn’t the case. I was amazed and impressed at how many people on those lists are still active in the community and gave a silent cheer for remaining relevant to my generation — the baby boomers from ages 58 to 76.
But there is clearly upward pressure from the talented generations that follow us — which bodes well for the future of the islands.
Our team and an informal focus group narrowed down who we would invite to be in this first feature on younger businesspeople, Next Gen frontrunners.
Our 12 interviewees landed at the end of Generation Z and in the Millennial generation — from ages 25 to 34.
According to the 2010 census, out of a Guam population of 159,358 there were 10,746 people aged from 25 to 29 and 10,346 aged from 30 to 34. The median age for men was 28.9 and for women 30.
Census 2020 demographics on population tiers are expected (finally) in October for Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa and the Virgin Islands.
In the meantime, the Census Bureau does project population numbers. For 2022, the bureau estimates Guam has a population of 169,086, up from what is said the population was in 2020, which was 153, 836. For 2022, it projects the NMI population as 51,475, down from the figure in 2020 of 57,557.
The bureau projects that the Guam population now, from ages 25 to 29, is 12,553 and from 30 to 34 is 11,382 — so the number of people potentially eyeing the executive jobs of their future in the generations above them has grown in a decade. In the NMI in 2022, there are 3,495 people aged 25 to 29 and 2,412 people aged 30 to 34, according to the bureau’s projection.
My thanks to the knowledgeable folks at the Guam Bureau of Statistics and Plans for helping me find the projections.
Managing Editor Oyaol Ngiriarikl and I interviewed the Next Gen frontrunners ourselves and put the question topics together. Whatever generation you are, you can see if the answers match your expectations.
As a group our 12 interviewees touched on the prowess of their group (or themselves) electronically in using the internet and the social media that have become so much a part of all our lives.
So, it’s appropriate that our other story brings you news of our telecom providers for the region — the businesses that provide the connection between our devices and the electronic world. The importance of those businesses in our lives rose during the pandemic to the level where they can aptly be described as a utility as important as any other. Fortunately for us it’s a competitive business environment.
Before you read on, here is a quote that applies to this issue of Guam Business Magazine, attributed to Jeff Bezos, the ex-CEO of Amazon.
“If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell six friends. If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends.”
