Gen Z is Struggling to Maintain Employment, and the Reasons are Obvious
Over and over, the media continues bashing Gen Z as being ‘incompetent’ and ‘incapable’ of anything in their careers.
As part of Generation Z, it does get tiring, and there are many common misconceptions about us. I have worked with all age ranges across several industries, from freelancing to startups, agencies, and in-house teams.
There seems to be a divide in how we work and how we feel about work, but it doesn’t seem to be a bad thing…
Instead of blindly placing the blame on Gen Z, we’ll take a step back to examine corporate transparency, performative workaholism, inexperience, and the decline of workplace loyalty. As well as accountability issues, promises made but never kept by corporations, and the changing landscape of the American Dream.
Then we can determine what has changed in corporate culture and why Gen Z’s sentiment toward careers, and why the struggle to maintain employment may not be cultural, but instead the new landscape.
Gen Z Loves Transparency, Corporations Don’t.
Behind every earnings call for shareholders is the invisible hand of upper management. Raising prices to increase margin, laying off workers to increase profits, boosting C-Suite salaries to retain boards, and leaving the puny workers who rely on their jobs to pay rent and raise their families at the hands of state unemployment offices.
Look no further than technology layoffs like Amazon, Meta, Google, in the multi-thousands, and companies like Sherwin-Williams pausing 401(k) contribution matches.
Studies show that what matters to Gen Z is the ability to grow their career, make money, and be in a good culture.
This is exactly what I hear from my generation. “Pay me well, and I am there.” Unfortunately, this is a struggle. As well as finding purpose, “Give me something to grow towards, to achieve,” and finally, good culture, “don’t give me a manager who is a dick.”
Nothing has made me as mad as the recruiter who asks me how much I want to get paid when there are allocated pay scales that they are relying on to salary the position.
Most hiring managers simply leave their allocated salary range in the dark. Employers love it when you lowball within their salary range and then give you $3,000 more than you asked for just to act like they are the ones helping you out. It’s all a game.
Turns out when I ask for $75k minimum, they say ‘sure thing, we’ll do you one better and give you $78k,’ as if I’d be excited about it. That just means their range was higher. Turns out the pay range maxed out at 99k.
Thank you so much for paying below the mid-range salary when you could easily have given me $80k.
Gen Z appreciates salary transparency up front. If I ask my Gen Z co-worker how much they are getting paid, many will be upfront. With other generations, we’re afraid to even ask that question without being scolded. Except for some Millennials, but apparently for Gen X and older, the salary question is a big no-no. They’d rather keep it between the corporation and themselves.
Gen Z Hates the Performative Corporate Games.
I’ve met so many talented and dedicated Gen Z workers who get the job done in a very timely manner. If something is asked, they do it. But why am I going to work a 10-hour day when I could just work my scheduled 8 hours and finish it tomorrow?
Yes, I’ve been on time-crunched projects, and I myself have been there working 7 am-7 pm while getting paid for 8 hours just to deliver to a client. But Gen Z knows that there is no prize for working long hours, and that there is no glory or honor in overworking yourself outside your salaried time.
Last time I worked extra hours, I was given a $20 Uber Eats gift card. What a way to thank your employees, cheap gifts, not salary. Yet corporations are still out here charging clients $120/hour for my work, and I get a $20 gift card, thank you.
Long hours are performative.
“Work Emergencies” aren’t real half the time, and no one benefits from long hours. Little did I know that in the beginning of my career, working these 12-hour days off the clock with my manager would get me nowhere. In fact, the same manager I was in the trenches with would join the Human Resources meeting weeks later and lay me off.
To no surprise, the manager who laid me off, and who also had a one-year-old baby, would also get laid off in just months' time. There is no reward for working extra, and there never has been. Nobody notices or cares, so why would Gen Z fall into this game? We work 9–5 because that is what we’re paid to do. Unless you’re giving me overtime, don’t expect work or even answers outside those hours.
It's not laziness, it's balance. We stick to what we’re paid for.
Gen Z is Inexperienced, but what Generation was not?
The biggest issue I hear from my underemployed college-educated friends is that ‘no one wants to hire them.’ When they tell me they didn’t have internships, had mediocre GPAs, and a degree from a middle-tier university with an irrelevant subject focus, it doesn’t necessarily surprise me that their ambitions might not be on par, but when you see the sheer numbers of underemployed college graduates working in unrelated fields to what their “dream job” is or was. It is truly astounding.
They may not be the only ones to blame, though. Most underemployed graduates will take any job offering them decent pay.
The other side of this story is the lack of corporations that want to train employees or take hiring risks.
My friends who went to Ivy League schools or were high school valedictorian, or who studied in advanced engineering and law degrees, had much less trouble with employment. But honestly, even all the achievements didn’t get them much farther than someone like me. Hell, I was working next to Cornell and Dartmouth Computer Science graduates who had the same job title and pay as I did.
It makes sense that young, ambitious folks get the jobs more easily, but to what point does one have to be top-of-the-class ambitious to land jobs? Why do my friends with MBAs and business degrees struggle this much in our current job market? Where is the risk-taking on a talented individual on the corporate side?
Corporations lack the desire to acquire and train talent. They’d much rather someone who has 1–3 years of experience within the exact field they are hiring for. I mean, I don’t fully blame them, but when you talk to Gen X about how they got into their career fields, the stories of having no experience, being mentored and trained, and then thriving in an industry, are something we’ve lost.
Corporations don’t take risks on people, and that is hurting a lot of younger people's dreams and ambitions.
Outside of nepotism and referral networking, cold applying online has been a disastrous reality for those new to the job market, with little prospect of finding a fulfilling career.
In other news, companies even continue to lean into this fantasy of “AI productivity,” and that cheaper “offshore” hiring somehow is not a disaster.
Gen Z Appreciates and Takes Advantage of Perks. Of Course, we do…
Any time I ever told an older person I had ‘unlimited PTO,’ they were astonished it was even a thing. However, in true Gen Z fashion, we can see over the wall of lies. Below-market-rate salary gets subsidized with snacks, coffee, lunches, extravagant parties, mental health apps, and unlimited time off. Which is usually just a facade.
If we take too much PTO, we’re seen as ‘gaming the system’; if we don’t take PTO, no one will bat an eye. PTO is a reward for work in most companies, accumulating over time, and Gen Z loves our travel or staycations, so yes, we’ll take the time that was earned, promised, and deserved.
I know managers who have so much PTO accumulated that they can’t even earn more time off. Yet they still don’t take time off. They have families, and they would still be paid to leave. Instead, they think they are needed, and they're dedicated to their companies.
Gen Z has promised themselves not to be like that, to take the time and not live to work, but to work for a living. So when the Gen Z worker accumulates PTO, you best believe we’ll take what we earned.
Gen Z is not Loyal. There is no reason to be nowadays.
Back when my parents and grandparents worked for smaller or mid-size companies, where you knew the managers. They were actually taken care of. Their families knew each other, and they shared dinners and Christmas bonuses. There was community, and the CEO was not a public figure but a friend. Now, with the monopolization of corporate America, this has become few and far between.
In this economy, larger employee bases and mass layoffs are the new reality.
It is not just our generation seeing this now; I know many workers in their 50s and 60s who dedicated 20+ years of their lives to a company who are being laid off before retirement.
“Unfortunately, we are restructuring, and your skillset no longer aligns with company goals, so we’ll have to let you go. Please sign this NDA to never talk about us if you want your full severance pay. Also, don’t tell the state government anything, or our legal team will be in contact.”
Oh, and by the way, “Thanks for helping on that major proposal for us the other week. Hopefully, that will rake in a couple of million dollars for the shareholders from your hard work.”
A worker who has rent to pay, medical bills, and families are often easily abandoned by their employer. That's too bad, they say.
I guess we should be grateful we have a full 2 weeks of pay to find a new job.
“If you want to keep your company-provided insurance for 6 months? You’ll have to pay $700/month, but don’t worry, you’ll get $1,800/month in state unemployment, so you can definitely live off of $1,100/month in a major city, right?”
When a corporate job does this to you, there is nothing more radicalizing. This is why Gen Z loves stable jobs and often cites the goal of unionizing or landing government roles.
“Together workers bargain, divided workers beg.”
When everything is between an individual and a company, instead of the collective employee base, the individual is always bound to lose. However, the system has trained us to think unions are bad and reward laziness.
Gen Z is not Accountable?
This one for me is a grab basket of experiences, but it is not a Gen Z thing; this spans generations instead. Some workers just aren’t accountable, and you’ll find this in every work situation.
There are co-workers you can rely on to get stuff done, and others you have to make sure get work done, and there is no defending those who can not fulfill their job descriptions.
However, this is not a low-level employee issue; this also spans to managers all the way to the C-Suite, who lack accountability for bad outcomes, a bad work ethic, and a bad culture.
How does one build a good culture at work when you can’t even trust the work of those around you? This question has plagued corporations since the beginning. There is no statistic to show that Gen Z is less accountable than any other generation.
I’ve seen VPs and Directors build out projects that lost companies millions and still get a bonus.
And I’ve seen entry-level workers audit budgets and workflows to save companies millions with no bonuses or promotions.
It is no wonder there is less risk in corporate America when the safest bet is to stick to your job description and do everything as-is.
Without question. Accountability is hard, and there is no direct answer to the question.
Accountability is not a generational divide; it's a question for the ages.
Gen Z Can Admit When They Hate Their Jobs.
I have many friends who have gone into accounting and banking, only to realize everything they were ever told about it is true. They can make a crap ton of money, but it sucks.
When you try to corner artists into pushing Excel sheets or stress about investment management, of course, they are going to start to hate their lives unless they grow to love it. The hard truth is that it takes a certain person for these jobs, and most don’t have it.
Gen Z will be the first to admit it at these jobs. They don’t love the work. They are stressed, and all in all, it was never worth the education and pay.
I thank God every day that I chose an enjoyable career path because talking to the accountants, lawyers, and bankers of the world, you can tell their hearts are not in it a lot of times. When I tell people I’m a designer, it is always, “I wanted to do that, how did you get into it?” Never, “that sounds boring.”
And I’ll also be the first to say being a designer is not meant for everyone either, but 90% of my friends would love to have my job, and that's how I know I picked the right career. But on the other hand, I worked hard for it, I dedicated years of my life specifically to the role I have, and I had a passion for it all along the way.
“Gen Z doesn’t want to work” is far from the truth; these 20-year-olds are out here putting in hours in jobs they hate. But at the same time, they’ll admit if they do hate it. We were promised, “go to college for something important, get a six-figure job, get married, buy a house, and live the American dream.” Gen Z realizes there may be more to life, and even if we do want this outcome, why spend 8+ hours per day working somewhere you hate?
I see my generation struggle, working as servers, baristas, and bartenders with 4-year college degrees, drowning in debt with little money to their name. Still, they find time for friends, travel, workouts, and rent.
Gen Z has made it their mission to enjoy life with what they have, and not hate life for what they could have. We know corporations are nothing but empty promises in the modern age. Bowing to shareholders and profits before anything else.
When the world promises them nothing, it is no wonder that depression and anxiety skyrocket. Debt goes through the roof, and the boomers in their million-dollar homes, which they bought for pennies on the dime, blame the work ethic. No, it was never about work ethic. Gen Z can outwork any older employee in circles, but for what? To be miserable and scared?
Gen Z can’t hold employment cause we’ve clocked out of the games. Many are gainfully employed, others are not so much. The generational rift isn’t as drastic as it may seem. But when we can’t even afford a 1-bedroom apartment in most cities on the median income, why sell our souls just to hate what we do 8+ hours a day?
How does one stay motivated with a low salary and little career growth?
In one of my first jobs, I was promised that if I fulfilled my yearly goals, I’d have a clear path to promotion. I did everything asked of me, but was held back by the fact that the company didn’t even give me the opportunity to even complete my goals.
Instead, the clear path to promotion ended up being a lie, and although I had my promotion papers filled out and ready to go with manager and director support. I never reached the artificial qualifications to file them. The path they showed me was all a promise made but never kept by the employer.
A company will turn to its employees and ask, “Why aren’t they motivated?” Then turn a blind eye to their requests.
Is Gen Z Entitled? We were promised the world and then handed late-stage capitalism
I’m from Massachusetts. Recently, a study showed that the median single-family home price in Massachusetts is $615,000. How is that attainable for the 20 or 30-year-old making $60–100k/year in the state when they have to pay income tax, rent, food, and other necessities, which are skyrocketing? The answer is it's almost unattainable and requires debt even for married couples, which means a 30+ year mortgage.
We were told to go into debt for college, and it will pay itself off. Go into debt for a house, and house prices will keep rising. Now, with high interest rates, the unaffordability level of most things is off the charts, and the younger generation with small net worths is stuck. Trapped.
When a generation is struggling to even maintain employment, the life we were promised seems out of reach for many, leaving fewer and fewer to thrive.
I am not one to bash hard work and capitalism. But in the same breath, I will say it is very obvious why my generation feels left behind when we only see increasing house prices, food prices, political divides, more debt to pay, and stagnant salaries in return.
There is a crisis in the country, and although I agree we are living better lives than the generations before us, it's hard not to see that late-stage capitalism is taking its toll.
Is Gen Z entitled? That even though we have it good, we can’t see it through, or has the world truly turned the page away from what we were told we could accomplish in our careers?
Ross is a Digital Content Producer writing pay-wall-free articles using his own voice, not AI.
