Gen Z was born from 1997 onwards. They only started entering the post-college workforce in 2018-19. As the WaPo article notes:
“With the brief exception of the early pandemic, when record unemployment was papered over by record government unemployment checks, Gen Z has experienced only a market with more jobs than workers to fill them.”
That’s very different from “rough economic times”. It’s never been easier to change jobs, and employers have therefore been very accommodating to workers, and pay has risen sharply, especially for entry level workers.
Back in the day, “rough economic times” meant unemployment. Or as Harry Truman put it “It’s a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it’s a depression when you lose yours”
The problem is, their wages don’t stretch very far in this economy. My 23 and 26 year olds are both financially very successful for their cohort, but an inordinate amount of their income goes toward rent here in California. If they had student loans, they’d both still be living with us. Because of the cost of living, they’ve kind of stopped aspiring to the things we Gen Xers consider success- a house in the suburbs, a couple of kids, a new car in the driveway.
The ability to find a job now (and I know plenty of people who are having issues with that still, except for low wage non-professional jobs), is not the only way a person would know about tough times. Did they not live in families that ever struggled? Not experience the 08 crash as kids or teens? Not live through the pandemic, not worry about climate disaster?
This is not a generation of pampered babies. They college kids I taught the last few years before I retired two years ago were well aware of how tough the world is.
May I never get old enough to dismiss the realities of those younger than me.
But as was pointed out earlier in the thread, living independently with a “lazy girl job” is largely confined to UMC kids with supportive parents. And if those kids had loans, then presumably they wouldn’t have needed to pay them for the last few years.
The amount of support depends on where you live: it needs to be a lot more in an expensive coastal city than in Belleville, Ontario (per the original WSJ article). My D is now living in a very cheap Appalachian state (she’s a ballet dancer, so far from lazy), and can easily survive on less than $2K per month in a nice shared 2 bed/2 bath apartment (they pay $700 each per month).
Awe, my D17 was a dancer too.
My S15 is paying $2,300 a month in rent in Los Angeles county. My D17 is paying $1,200 a month in rent on the central coast. She doesn’t have the kind of bonus structure or perks her brother has here, so we’re still subsidizing her medical and car insurance, cell phone. It’s just very tight financially for them. They don’t want to live with their parents, and I admire that, but they just don’t think houses in the suburbs are things they’ll ever be able to afford. An entry level house in our community is about 800k, you might get into a small condo for 600k. It’s just not like it was for us starting out 30 years ago.
These are the sorts of experiences that make you think less about the future and more about living for yourself in the present. So in that sense they are reinforcing of the “lazy girl job” trend. Likewise if you can never see yourself buying a home or don’t trust corporations to provide you with a good career.
We’ve talked on other threads about how many young adults seemingly don’t want to have kids (the ultimate stake in the future which you build your life around), because they are worried about ecological disaster.
This is exactly it. They’re no longer invested in a system they don’t think will provide them with what we would deem the good life, so they’re finding other ways of defining happiness and success.
GenZ have seen some things. Their lives started with 9/11. Then we basically have been at war their entire lives. We have the Great Recession(thank you dumb bankers). The cost of college is going crazy and a good chance their parents weren’t able to save enough so that means loans. Healthcare costs are going through the roof. And we all know what is going on with housing and rent costs because corporations are buying up everything as well as Tom, Dick and Harry think they are a real estate mogul on AirBnB. Then there is the pandemic. And lets not forget the school shootings they grew up with. And even though they are accepting of their peers who are minorities or part of the LGBTQ communities they are seeing them discriminated against and rights taken away. Plus half of GenZ lost bodily autonomy. Then one party is trying to make it harder for them to vote while on their campus.
So yes they can get jobs, but wages have been so stagnant for so long and not keeping up with inflation for the last 20-30 years many of them are throwing in the towel before they even start.
Also because of technology plenty of companies are expecting you to answer questions off hours.
I can easily understand why my kids don’t want to play the game and get married buy a house with a white picket fence and have 2.1 children.
Many of them are losing hope.
What you describe is spot-on for how my kid (just graduated HS) and a lot of his friends feel.
They are motivated to go to college and work hard enough to earn money to afford a standard lifestyle. But there is definitely a cynical and fatalistic bent to how they view their futures. They don’t foresee themselves having the same standard of life that their middle-class parents do, let alone improving on it. I hope that’s not the case, but there’s not a lot of evidence to give them hope.
I watched the movie Office Space with my son this week, and he’d never seen it before. He was totally delighted by the whole thing because he already sees himself in the characters. Just laughed and laughed and laughed.
Again, these are kids whose experiences of working life started in about 2018. The contrast between what my kids earned in part time college or pre-college jobs 5 years ago and what they can earn now in similar retail and hospitality jobs is remarkable, they’ve seen about a 50% jump in hourly pay. That’s not to say they aspire to that sort of job long term, but it’s become a much more lucrative option for kids who are otherwise supported by their parents.
But the starting point of this thread was people opting out of “work[ing] hard enough to earn money to afford a standard lifestyle” (and in most cases therefore relying on support from others). So that “cynical and fatalistic bent” can perhaps manifest itself in different ways, depending on whether they believe they will have to support themselves financially or not. But in both cases it may stem from a rejection of the current economic system in the US.
I see a lot of magical thinking here, but since politicians of both parties seem only too happy to avoid taking difficult decisions about long term spending priorities, it’s hardly surprising that many in the general population will do likewise.
Basically it’s my family’s touchstone movie.
All kinds of goalpost moving going on. Just because one or two people in this one article might have been supported by parents, we all know this is only UMC white girls supported by their parents who eschew corporate climbing. When poster after poster have discussed disaffected younger folks who are not interested in the rat race, though supporting themselves.
And, because we know this is all about UMC white girls only, we also apparently know that none have ever lived in a family that experienced rough economic times.
Highly unlikely.
Rethinking the get ahead, drive at any cost, “lean in” mentality is not a mindset that belongs to one, stereotyped, demographic. But it’s easier to ridicule if you think it is.
I don’t think people are ridiculing as much as pointing out the obvious…gig work typically does not provide health or disability insurance. Having a fun, low stress job which gives you lots of time for your other interests work great if you live with family, a significant other, roommates etc. But likely won’t work if you need to set up an independent household.
I know many women in their 50’s and 60’s who have made the painful discovery that the " just for fun" job (decorator, party planner, yoga instructor, personal shopper) that was satisfying and energizing when they were responsible for raising kids and generating their own fun money, really stinks when the alimony barely covers rent, let alone allows them to stay in the family home. Many of them feel cheated in some way…as if the women who made different professional choices have somehow stolen the lifestyle they thought they’d have in retirement.
Yes, the ex had better lawyers. But educated women with college degrees no longer get alimony for life.
Just something to consider. It’s easier to ratchet down professionally in your 60’s than ratchet up.
I don’t see Gen Z worried about any of that, frankly. Their older siblings may be, though. They do not remember 9/11, were barely or not at all aware of the war, and at the oldest age at of 24-25 think marriage/home ownership/kids is years away, so do not devote any thought to it. Jobs are plentiful, employers far more flexible, and as a cohort they have no financial duties or constraints other than themselves. They feel capable of moving anywhere they wish and do sometimes have inflated ideas of their value in the marketplace.
Yes, I do think it stems from a rejection of the current US economic system, at least for my own kid. He believes he can support himself because he’s studying engineering. Were he bad at quantitative stuff, he might worry about even being able to afford what I called a “standard lifestyle”. I don’t think he plans to own a car or buy a house, perhaps ever. So his idea of a standard lifestyle is probably below that of most. He has expressed at least some concern that he’d have to move back home even though he doesn’t want to.
I don’t envision him “leaning in” to his career. The descriptions in this thread of people working just enough to afford what they consider essentials, and then spending their time and energy on stuff that makes them happy: that’s what I see him trying to do. And I think that had he been born in a different generation, he might be more ambitious.
I think the somewhat fatalistic and cynical attitude is a product of the current situation. But I’m totally fine with his level of ambition. He knows what he wants and needs (not much money but loads of down time and sleep) and he’s been working hard to try to ensure that for his future. So maybe a lazy-girl job? Or maybe just disaffected and not wanting the rat race like @garland says.
More power to him. And I sincerely hope that none of the myriad catastrophes of life ever affect him. Some of us just worry more, I suppose.
I have received texts showing a clip of the "cover sheet on TPS report " scene during meetings. Love having to bite my cheeks to avoid the guffaw!
Oh, sure. He’s had some of his own catastrophes already (health problems). He’s a neurotic and cautious person by nature, quite risk-averse. That’s why staring down the barrel of his future in the current culture is kind of scary. He doesn’t want to get his hopes up.
He’ll work hard at a job where he gets good insurance. He’s already got money in an IRA. He saves and doesn’t spend and has low standard of living preferences. But he also gets migraines when he doesn’t sleep enough and is an anxious mess when he doesn’t have enough down time. He has watched his own parents work themselves to the bone for not much reward, and he has no intentions of doing the same, as long as he can pay his modest bills and put money in savings.
If he has life catastrophes, he won’t be any worse off than his parents are, and we’re okay. There’s only so much one can do to insulate themselves from such things. A life well-lived is one strategy! Money can buy a lot of stuff but not everything.