We are Maggie's Babies. We grew up in Cool Britannia.
We rode Choppers wherever we liked and came home when we were hungry.
We danced all night in fields and warehouses.
Our first jobs, with the lunchtime drinking and the office romances, were not so different from university.
We put memos in the internal post and waited.
We bought our first house for what a deposit costs now.
We started work with a fax machine on the desk. We now have AI in our pockets.
We are the
Wasted
Generation.
The one they wrote a law against, for music with “a succession of repetitive beats”.
We grew up. As people generally do.
We embraced responsibilities.
Had families.
Even made some money.
We are the Wasted Generation.
The generation running British business.
And the generation British business is wasting.
866,000 people our age are out of work and want it.
And our age group holds nearly half the country’s household wealth.
Businesses don’t hire us because we are “too old”.
Brands ignore us because we are “too old”.
So they waste our experience.
And they waste our money.
The waste back then was the exuberance of youth, and it was no waste at all. It was growing up. Our way.
866,000: people aged 50 to 64 who are unemployed, or out of work and want a job. DWP, April to June 2026. Nearly half: 47% of Britain’s household wealth is held by households where the main householder is 45 to 64. ONS Wealth and Assets Survey, April 2020 to March 2022.
We are Generation X.
We were written off before.
It didn’t stop us then.
It won’t stop us now.
Magnus Wood
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