Income & Demographics changes

[Geoff]

From today's (Saturday) Boston Globe:
http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2007/05/26/wages_of_younger_men_fall_study_says/

"A generation ago, American men in their 30s had median annual incomes of about $40,000 compared with men of the same age who now make about $35,000 a year, adjusted for inflation.

That's a 12.5 percent drop between 1974 and 2004, according to data from the Pew Charitable Trusts' Economic Mobility Project."

Hmm... 12.5% drop in income over the last 30 years for 30-year-olds. I'd always thought the baby boomers were somewhat more affluent than their younger replacements. It stands to reason that there is quite a bit of correlation between the decline in skier visits and the inflation-adjusted income of 30-year-olds.

 

[MadPadraic]

From today's (Saturday) Boston Globe:
http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2007/05/26/wages_of_younger_men_fall_study_says/

"A generation ago, American men in their 30s had median annual incomes of about $40,000 compared with men of the same age who now make about $35,000 a year, adjusted for inflation.

That's a 12.5 percent drop between 1974 and 2004, according to data from the Pew Charitable Trusts' Economic Mobility Project."

Hmm... 12.5% drop in income over the last 30 years for 30-year-olds. I'd always thought the baby boomers were somewhat more affluent than their younger replacements. It stands to reason that there is quite a bit of correlation between the decline in skier visits and the inflation-adjusted income of 30-year-olds.

Where can one get skier visit data?

 

[Vinny]

Where can one get skier visit data?

When Mt. Snow was being sold, I did some searching for skier visit data with little luck. There appear to be very few detailed reports available to the general public.

The NSAA has info, but most of it is "members only". http://www.nsaa.org/nsaa/marketing/availableResearch.asp

You can see a very general overview of the ski industry here:
http://www.nsaa.org/nsaa/marketing/docs/0506-research-compendium.pdf

You can also get a 10 year overall trend of total skiers here (all sports listed)
http://www.nsga.org/public/pages/index.cfm?pageid=153

Hope this helps.

 

[ski_resort_observer]

Personally, I find all "adjusted for inflation" costs to be of no use or value when trying to use for any comparison to real time costs. Now, for example, we all have expenses that did not even exist 30 years ago. In addition, one needs to look abit closer at the sample used by the Pew Charitable Trusts' Economic Mobility Project used to come up with this figure.

What is the cost of a lift ticket from 30 years ago when adjusted for inflation, cost of equipement, transportation and lodging just to mention a few things that need to be considered when even beginning to make any such comparison.

What about he fact that the cost of buying a SP at kmart the past 3 seasons has gone down over 60% from previous years. Why did they suffer an above market sector decline in skier visits over that 3 years time period when the SP's cost so much less?

In total skier visits in the US has remained about the same for many years. What about skier visits by americans in Europe? While "skier" visit have declined greatly in recent years, "snowboarder" visits have soared but flattened out the last couple of years.

On a side note, the NSAA is reporting preliminary figures that show that the northeast had a 6% drop in skier visits. That number might or might not end up being correct but that does not even correlated to individual resorts. Here is just one example.
http://news.alpinezone.com/16507/

Again, overall stats really mean nothing except for the fools that get paid to determine them.

To correlate overall visits, let alone visits by 30 yo's based on the stats of the article you use is a leap that has no basis in fact IMHO.

 

[riverc0il]

That statistics Geoff cites essentially is looking at the buying power of a dollar which is definitely going down. A lot of statistics get thrown around suggesting that the cost of lift tickets are the same as 30-40 years ago when adjusted for inflation, but that only tells half the story since pay has not kept up with inflation. So even if inflation adjusted cost is similar, wage adjusted cost has not kept pace. Plus you need to look at adjusted values of fixed expenses (housing, loans, vehicles, fuel, groceries, utilities, etc.) to eliminate fixed expense and get a better picture of adjusted disposable income. There are a lot of issues going into the economics of skiing and you would be hard pressed, as SRO mentioned, to pin down entire changes due to one or two statistics. I think adjusted disposable income would be an interesting one to look at. But most people these days spend more disposable income on home entertainment, home improvement, and other "around the house" things than before.

Hmm... 12.5% drop in income over the last 30 years for 30-year-olds. I'd always thought the baby boomers were somewhat more affluent than their younger replacements. It stands to reason that there is quite a bit of correlation between the decline in skier visits and the inflation-adjusted income of 30-year-olds.

I am approaching 29 and definitely feel not quite as well off as my folks. I feel very comfortable without having kids. I doubt I would be able to give my kids what my parents gave me if we decided to have two kids right now (older than when my parents had two kids). It still boggles my mind how many trips and all the skiing we did as a family. But that is just one first hand perspective, hardly an indication of the average skier or their family/financial situation.