Scary Charts

Scary Charts – 08.16.26

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Drawing on a nationally representative survey of 1,591 U.S. adults ages 22–75, this research uncovers a five-year difference between when current retirees, on average, actually left the workforce (age 57) and when future retirees expect to retire (age 62), with half of those planning to retire anticipating they’ll need to delay even further. Future retirees are shifting away from traditional income sources like Social Security and pensions, planning instead to rely more heavily on personal savings and continued employment. Career interruptions remain a significant but underappreciated threat to retirement security, as half of U.S. adults have left the workforce for more than a year.

The entire study Bridging retirement expectation gaps New evidence and insights can be downloaded here:

https://www.tiaa.org/public/institute/publication/2026/bridging-the-gaps-in-retirement-expectations

Remember my earlier post The Fear Shared By Most (Not Just Another Random Thought on Retirement) describes the greatest fear in retirement is outliving your savings. And Economist Teresa Ghilarducci is of the opinion working longer is not a plan but an illusion.

Yikes.

Scary Charts – 08.08.26

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The class disparity in happiness is nothing new. The GSS data reveal that college-educated men were happier than their less-educated peers going back to the 1980s. And while the GSS shows somewhat steady levels of happiness from the 1980s through the 2000s, other well-being metrics suggest rising discontent in earlier decades. Mortality data, for instance, shows a steady and concerning rise in what researchers call “deaths of despair”—fatalities attributable to drug overdoses, suicide, and alcoholism. The rise in “deaths of despair” has been especially dramatic among white working-class men. Our analysis of death records and population estimates finds that the suicide rate per 100,000 white non-Hispanic men ages 25 to 44 has risen from 31 in 1992 to 54 in 2023, a shocking 71% increase over just three decades.

The entire study and more scary charts can be downloaded here:

The Roots of Working-Class Men’s Discontent

https://ifstudies.org/report-brief/the-roots-of-working-class-mens-discontent

A Striking Concentration of First-born Excess in Neuropsychiatric Conditions – Scary Charts 08.03.26

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The study has a number of limitations and…

This study was supported by award no. 1R01MH137646-01 from the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institutes of Health to S.A.K. and A.R. The funders had no role in study design, data collection or analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript. Birth order and disease risk across the human phenome – https://www.nature.com/articles/s44360-026-00177-z#Abs1

I’m a first-born.

YIKES.

Scary Charts (Prescription Drug edition) – 08.02.26

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Today, three PBMs, CVS Caremark (34% market share), Express Scripts (23%, owned by Cigna’s Evernorth), and Optum Rx (22%, owned by UnitedHealth Group), control nearly 80% of all U.S. prescription claims. In exchange for placing a manufacturer’s drug on the formulary, or giving it preferred status over competing therapies, the PBM negotiates rebates, administrative fees, and performance payments from the manufacturer. A portion of those payments flows back to the health plan, while the PBM retains part of the negotiated revenue.

One feature of today’s market that surprises many people is how vertically integrated it has become. The largest PBMs are no longer independent middlemen. They sit inside healthcare conglomerates that also own insurers, pharmacies, physician groups, specialty pharmacies, and mail-order pharmacies. For example, CVS Health owns Aetna, CVS Caremark, CVS Pharmacy, MinuteClinic, and Signify Health. UnitedHealth Group owns UnitedHealthcare, Optum Rx, and Optum Health. Cigna owns Express Scripts through Evernorth. This consolidation has fueled ongoing debate about whether these organizations can optimize each part of the supply chain independently or whether incentives increasingly favor the parent company as a whole. Mark Cuban on Breaking the Drug Pricing Cartel: Inside Cost Plus Drugs – https://pearhealthcareplaybook.substack.com/p/mark-cuban-on-breaking-the-drug-pricing

Hat Tip – https://ritholtz.com/2026/08/10-sunday-reads-239/

Yikes.

Scary Charts – 07.30.26

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Manhattan led the city with the median asking rent jumping 9% ($427) in a single year to reach $5,117. Brooklyn recorded the second-biggest annual spike of 5.9% ($225), as the median rent rose to $4,054. Queens followed closely with rents rising 5.6% to $3,561 from last year. Fresh College Grads Face NYC’s Toughest Rental Market Yet as Asking Prices Surge to 7-Year High – https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/college-grads-toughest-rental-market-nyc-july-2026-rent-report/

Yikes.

Scary Charts – 06.28.26

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Americans of all ages now spend far more time on screens, crowding out time that might otherwise be spent with a book. This trend too shows a similar socioeconomic divergence: Specifically, adults with high school education or less are four times more likely to be smartphone-dependent (24%) than college graduates (6%). A Generational Collapse in Reading – https://www.demographyunplugged.com/p/a-generational-collapse-in-reading

Yikes.

Scary Charts 05.17.26

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Source – The Class of 2026 is cooked https://www.semafor.com/article/05/15/2026/ai-has-contorted-the-job-market-for-twentysomethings-leaving-college-this-may

Source – https://layoffs.fyi/

“I think the junior level is definitely finding it harder now to enter the workforce,” said John Romeo, who leads the consulting firm’s research arm, the Oliver Wyman Forum. “It’s those mid- and senior-level employees that CEOs are now looking at to drive productivity.” That’s because of the types of tasks that AI agents are able to perform, from writing code at the level of a junior developer to evaluating sales leads. What the agents can’t do in many fields is make judgment calls using the insight that comes from on-the-job experience, according to labor experts. AI Poised to Tilt Job Market Leverage Toward Older Workers – https://finance.yahoo.com/economy/policy/articles/ai-poised-tilt-job-market-150000094.html

Yikes!

If you managed to scroll down this far here’s a bonus video.