This is for those of us who tend to recruit and work with the Gen Z. Also, for parents of Gen Z trying to motivate them or as a brand trying to sell to them, this could be of interest. For the uninitiated, Gen Z, short for Generation Z is defined as “the generation born in the late 1990s or the early 21st century, perceived as being familiar with the use of digital technology, the internet, and social media from a very young age.” It also helps that the article is written by a Gen Z, so we get to hear it in first person. Whilst the article is written in the American context, this is a global phenomenon. If you are in India, try sitting in coffee shops overhearing Gen Z conversations and you will know this is real.
We have been writing about how automation and AI are destroying jobs driving unemployment and how gig economy is the future of employment. Turns out it is not entirely out of the compulsion of lack of jobs but also out of choice.
“According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate for Gen Z is around 11 percent, which is more than double the national unemployment rate of 4.3 percent.
Some have blamed AI, arguing that the companies no longer need the paralegal, researcher, and customer service representative positions that young people have always filled because AI does the work faster and better. Others say young people are entering the job market at a time when the labor market is essentially frozen, and no college degree or niche skill can fix that. But here’s the thing: Gen Zers don’t want entry-level jobs. They don’t want middle-management roles either, with nearly 70 percent of my generation dismissing them as “high stress, low reward.””
By definition, Gen Z spends the better part of their lives online:
“There are thousands—maybe millions—of Gen Zers who watch influencers on Instagram or TikTok and think to themselves: Maybe that could be me. The top influencers make serious money doing things we all do as part of daily life: renovating our apartments, taking a workout class, laughing at videos online, eating dinner with friends, walking in the park. From the viewer’s perspective, they are being paid to exist. The only difference is that they are documenting it.
“A lot of young people like me get frustrated seeing influencers making content that isn’t even interesting or funny and earning upward of six figures,” Hayon told me.
“Influencers being so open and honest about making four times as much as their old nine-to-fives, and having such flexible lifestyles, has opened my generation’s eyes into what’s possible,” Hayon said. “It makes you feel completely disillusioned, and it’s made Gen Z nihilistic about working.””
Of course, it is not for not trying. Lack of jobs trigger this in many cases:
“One Zoomer I spoke to, Jessie, spent two years after graduation applying for 200 jobs in her chosen field—communications—with no luck. Not having a full-time job for all that time was financially stressful, she said, but she didn’t want to “suck it up and get a boring corporate job.” In other words, Jessie preferred to not work at all than to be unhappy in her job.”
We older generations tend to label it as an attitude issue for not having to go through the grind:
“Yes, you boomers and Gen Xers: I can sense your eyes rolling right about now. We know what you think of us Zoomers: We have an attitude problem. But the conversations I had with fellow Gen Zers for this story suggest that it’s not so much an “attitude problem” but an Instagram-induced delusion.
You see, when you spend hours each day watching someone on the other side of your screen making money by seemingly dancing through life without much effort, you start to lose sense of what it takes to succeed in this world. If my generation tends to think that so-called “real jobs” are beneath us, it’s not because we’re lazy or are egomaniacs. (Well, okay, some of us might be.) It’s because “the top” doesn’t look so out of reach. Watching people earn a living with such seeming ease is breaking my generation’s perception of what kind of job—and life—is attainable, normal, and desirable.”
How do these careers look like? Here’s one example:
“Sophie Cohen, 27, is one of the people who has turned influencing into a profitable career. She began posting her outfits on Instagram when she was in high school, before influencing was a thing. After graduating college and moving to New York, Cohen worked as a buyer at Bloomingdale’s when she started to feel torn between her nine-to-five and her social media presence.
“My colleagues at Bloomingdale’s had been there for 25 years. It’s their whole career,” she told me. “I was starting to be like, ‘I don’t know if that’s me. I don’t see myself in these people. I don’t know if this is my dream or my goal anymore.’ ”
Cohen started to get “brand deals” (in which companies pay someone to post a photo or video with their product) and decided to take influencing more seriously. She took her savings and poured it into her new pursuit.
Once Cohen gained enough traction, she turned to influencing full time, paying her rent with the money she’d saved from her first brand deals.
“It wasn’t until the end of the year when I looked at all my finances, and I was like: ‘Whoa. This is a legit career.’ I’m making more than I did in a good corporate job.” Now, Cohen says she makes thousands of dollars for posting content promoting brands, whether it’s Nordstrom or Aperol or Crocs. “Sometimes it could be an hour of my time for $5,000 to $10,000,” she said. “That’s a month’s rent. That’s a vacation.”
Cohen said she’s now living the life of her dreams. “I make a great living. It’s a dream lifestyle. I fully work for myself.” She used to be embarrassed to admit her job was “content creation,” but not anymore. “It has become this very aspirational career, because there’s all the glamour of it, like the events and the free stuff. But I think the biggest luxury is not having to work a nine-to-five. And I think, in this day and age, for many young people, that’s what they want to be doing.”
In many ways, we blame the comfort and security of a monthly paycheck as a hinderance to taking risk and create something meaningful. The gig economy solves for that. It is a creator economy even if you might not agree with the ‘creations’ but someone’s consuming them. And this could evolve to boosting creativity to solve humanity’s more pressing problems than finding fashion online.
“Gen Z is not interested in climbing the corporate ladder either, because a senior position at a big corporation doesn’t provide fulfillment or even pride. Going to Pilates at noon does. The aspirational life we dream of feels one viral post away, making traditional jobs seem like a fool’s errand. In other words: It is about doing the least amount of work for the most amount of money.
“Our attitude problem has to do with seeing all the people doing normal, day-to-day things online and making money from it. It disincentivizes you from working hard. And it definitely disincentivizes you from taking a corporate job when you watch someone earn more money from sharing their morning routine than you do in a month or even more at your nine-to-five.””
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