In a hypothetical showdown between Montreal millennials and boomers, the millennials would finally have the upper hand — at least numerically.
Census data shows millennials outnumbering baby boomers in the census metropolitan area (CMA) for the first time, Statistics Canada announced Wednesday. The same is true in Toronto, Vancouver and Ottawa-Gatineau.
But while millennials might have strength in numbers, we're betting that boomers would have a greater emotional stake in a brawl with their eventual replacements.
If you could somehow convince all the 20 and 30-somethings in the city to work together (unlikely) and use boomers' hardened disdain for millennials to motivate them to all gather in one place (more likely?), who do you really think would win?
We digress.
In the 2021 census, millennials accounted for 23.3% of the total population in Canada's six largest urban areas, including Calgary and Edmonton, both of which already had more millennials than boomers before the 2021 census. Baby boomers accounted for 22.3%.
In Montreal's downtown, defined by Statistics Canada as the western half of the Ville-Marie borough and part of the Sud-Ouest, millennials made up over 35% of the population, compared to boomers' share of under 20%, in the 2021 census.
Nationally, the breakdown in downtown areas is 35.1% millennial and 20.9% boomer.
(For the record, Statistics Canada defines Gen Z as being born between 1997 and 2012, millennials between 1981 and 1996, and baby boomers between 1946 and 1965.)
The federal agency attributes the growth of millennials' urban population share to economic opportunity in and immigration to the country's largest cities.
By contrast, baby boomers are the generation with the biggest presence in Canadian urban centres with fewer than one million residents (24.7% to millennials' 21.5%) and in areas outside of urban centres (29.7% to 17.9%, respectively).
"As a result" of this age distribution, StatsCan wrote in a census brief, "large urban centres and the rest of the country have different needs that reflect its resident populations and generations. For example, the six largest urban centres, which also have a younger population, have special needs in terms of daycare centres, schools, and public transit for commuting."
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