Work hard and success will follow? Gen Z isn't buying it

Not because they're lazy or entitled, but because they no longer believe the deal applies to them says journalist Emi Nietfeld.

Work hard and success will follow. It's the promise many generations grew up with. But Gen Z isn't buying it, not because they're lazy or entitled, but because they no longer believe the deal applies to them, says journalist Emi Nietfeld.

In an article for the New York Times she contrasted her experience coming into the job market a decade ago, with those embarking on their working lives now.

Nietfeld wrote a memoir, Acceptance, about her struggles to establish herself in the tech world and is often invited to speak to students on campus.

Feature interview: Why Gen Z sees work differently

Nietfeld grew up in an rodent-ridden apartment thanks to her mother’s hoarding, had spells in foster care, and was homeless for a time living in her car. But she went on to get a computer science degree from Harvard, then her dream engineering job at Google.

She grew up instilled with a strong work ethic, she told RNZ’s Afternoons.

“This idea of work is good for work's own sake. This Calvinist work ethic that it's spiritually superior to always be striving.”

But the process of get a degree, work hard and it will pay off no longer applies, she says.

“I think that the young people are making a rational assessment of how likely sacrifice is to pay off. And they're seeing that nowadays putting in the work, it's not doing what it did for their parents.”

“So many people are describing this as the worst job market in decades, years. It is absolutely crushing for young people who are putting their resumes into these websites that are just screening them out with AI.”

She spoke to students who are applying for “literally hundreds of jobs”, she says.

“Often in things that they have already done. So, one kid, he had already been doing IT, working with computers all through college, and he applied to over 200 jobs looking for a full-time role.”

Despite the scarcity of jobs, Gen Z believe only a huge salary will set them up in life, she says.

“There's some polling data that shows that Gen Z-ers said that being financially successful meant earning almost $US600,000 (about NZ$1 million), which is more money than 98 percent of Americans make.”

Part of this may be social media driven, she says, part the cost-of-living crisis Gen Z finds itself in.

“You see people who a few years ago were affluent are now struggling to pay for groceries or making difficult decisions that they never thought they'd have to make.

“A lot of the kids I was talking to, some were 19 years old, and they're already worrying about how to support their parents.”

It is also a generation with entrepreneurial aspirations, she says, with two-thirds of Gen Z surveyed wanting to own their own business.

“I was talking to people who are training to be civil engineers or mechanical engineers. And when I asked them what they wanted to do in their future, they were all saying they wanted to open their own business. Not a single student I talked to named a company that they wanted to work for. “

She detected a sense of powerlessness in her research and interviews for the article.

“And what I found was that a lot of young people who are struggling right now feel really, really powerless. There's been a tonne of research into this.

“In 2024, a professor found that their students felt like they had the same amount of control over their lives as prisoners felt in 1966.”

Once a generation feels they have no agency in their future, that’s a hard mindset to change, she says.

“And I think that's really terrifying for the future.”