Gen Xers now hold roughly 37 percent of management positions in the United States and 51 percent globally.13 But, just as Generation X ages into managerial positions, those positions are vanishing. In the past two decades, US corporate hierarchies have become flatter, with a reduction, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, in the ranks of middle managers.14 It seems that every day there’s another report of a company’s bold new plan to cut costs and increase annual savings by “streamlining”—read: having fewer people do more work.
