Generation Jones

Generation Jones is the generation or social cohort between the Baby Boom generation and Generation X. The term was coined in 1999 by American cultural commentator Jonathan Pontell, who argues that the term refers to a full distinct generation born from 1954 to 1965. Media coverage of Generation Jones typically has described it as a distinct generation, using Pontell's dates. Others see this as a subset of the Baby Boom Generation, primarily its second half. A third view is that Generation Jones is a cusp or micro-generation between the Boomers and Xers.

Members of Generation Jones were children and teens during Watergate, the oil crisis, and stagflation. Unlike "Leading-Edge Boomers," most of Generation Jones, primarily its latter segment born from 1960 forward, did not grow up with World War II veterans (although some were Korean War veterans) as parents, and, as they reached adulthood, there was no compulsory military service and no defining political cause, as opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War was for the older boomers. For many, their parents' generation was sandwiched between the Greatest Generation and the Baby Boomers. Also, by 1955, a majority of U.S. households had at least one television set, and so unlike Leading-Edge Boomers born from 1946 to 1953, many members of Generation Jones (trailing-edge boomers) have never lived in a world without television. Generation Jones were children or teenagers during the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s and were young adults when HIV/AIDS became a worldwide threat in the 1980s. The majority of Joneses reached maturity from 1972 to 1979, while younger members came of age from 1980 to 1983, just as the older Baby Boomers had come of age from 1964 to 1971.

The name "Generation Jones" has several connotations, including a large anonymous generation, a "keeping up with the Joneses" competitiveness and the slang word "jones" or "jonesing", meaning a yearning or craving. Pontell suggests that Jonesers inherited an optimistic outlook as children in the 1960s, but were then confronted with a different reality as they entered the workforce, in the case of the United States, during either the inflationary period of the Ford administration, the recessionary period of the Carter administration, or the Reaganomics of the Reagan administration and the shift from a manufacturing economy to a service economy, which ushered in a long period of mass unemployment or underemployment. Mortgage interest rates increased to above 12 percent in the mid-eighties, making it virtually impossible to buy a house on a single income. De-industrialization arrived in full force in the mid-late 1970s and 1980s; wages would be stagnant for decades, and 401(k)s replaced pensions in nearly all avenues of employment except those in the public sector, leaving them with a certain abiding "jonesing" quality for the more prosperous days of the past.

Generation Jones is noted for coming of age after a huge swath of their older siblings in the earlier portion of the Baby Boomer population; thus, many note that there was a paucity of resources and privileges available to them that were seemingly abundant to older Boomers. For example, Baby Boomers often filled senior and more lucrative employment positions vacated by retiring Greatest Generation and older Silent Generation members, leaving Jonesers with fewer opportunities for promotion because their Boomer siblings would enter retirement windows only slightly ahead of them. Therefore, there is a certain level of bitterness and "jonesing" for the level of doting and affluence granted to older Boomers but denied to them.

The term has enjoyed some currency in political and cultural commentary, including during the 2008 United States presidential election, where Barack Obama (born 1961) and Sarah Palin (born 1964) were on the presidential tickets. As of 2025, the two most recent former vice presidents, Kamala Harris (born 1964) and Mike Pence (born 1959) respectively, are members of Generation Jones.