The oldest members of Gen Z are only 26 years old, but the generation is already changing what it means to shop, live, and work in America in 6 key ways
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- Gen Z represents about 25% of the world's population and $7 trillion in purchasing influence.
- They will comprise 27% of the workforce by 2025.
- They are vocal about their likes and dislikes and are changing how America shops, lives, and works.
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Generation Z is the most diverse generation in US history in terms of race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation.
They are vocal about their likes, dislikes, dreams, feelings, and ideals.
They represent about 25% of the world's population and $7 trillion or more in purchasing influence and will comprise 27% of the workforce by 2025, per a report released on February 7 by US consulting firm Oliver Wyman.
All of which is to say: They may be young, but they have clout. Keep reading for a look at six ways in which this generation is changing life in the US.
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For the first time in history, the workplace consists of people from five generations:
- The Silent Generation, born between 1925 and 1945
- Baby boomers, born between 1946 and 1964
- Gen X, born between 1965 and 1980
- Millennials, born between 1981 and 1996
- Gen Z, born between 1997 and 2012
For quite a few of us, our first jobs — and first bosses — taught us a lot about the workplace. We picked up behavioral cues from our colleagues and our customers.
Gen Z, the oldest of whom is about 27 now, entered the workforce during a pandemic that shut down the world's offices and forced employees to work remotely.
And that's why managers — especially millennial managers — might find it confusing and mystifying to manage Gen Z reports, as Insider's Rebecca Knight recently reported. After all, this is a generation that's questioning norms, establishing boundaries between work and life, and looking to work smarter, not harder.
Gen Z is also speaking up about how they want to be managed: Insider's Reena Koh, a Gen Z who just entered the workforce, recently wrote that she doesn't subscribe to hustle culture and does not dream of labor, especially in the face of stagnating wages, rising living costs, and unaffordable housing.
She also says younger workers won't fret over job-hopping for a better offer — and more so if a company sees her as disposable during mass layoffs.
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It's not just management styles that are changing. Gen Z is also changing office jargon.
That means you might be seeing far fewer emails with outdated, complicated, and unnecessary jargon like "close the loop," "have the bandwidth," or "circling back," Insider's Koh wrote.
Doing away with workplace jargon doesn't mean we'll be shrinking workplace vocabulary — we're just going to get used to newer slang, like "ick," "naur" and "slay."
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Employee stress levels are rising, according to an annual wellbeing survey insurance giant Cigna published in November — and younger workers like Gen Z are worse off.
For the survey, Cigna spoke to 11,922 people between the ages of 18 and 65 in 15 countries including Australia, China, Saudi Arabia, and the US.
While 84% of people polled said they were stressed, that percentage rose to about 91% for Gen Z and about 87% for millennials, per Cigna.
About a quarter, or 23%, of 18- to 24-year-old respondents said they felt unmanageable stress. Almost all of them — about 98% — said they were experiencing work burnout symptoms.
A Gallup study in November showed that about 68% of Gen Z and millennial poll respondents reported feeling stressed.
They are also decoupling from work: The Gallup study found that about 54% of the younger respondents felt ambivalent about their work.
Cigna noted in its report that in choppy economic cycles, employees tend to increase time spent at work. But the COVID-19 pandemic seems to have caused a shift in accepted patterns. About two-thirds, or 65%, of all the employees they polled said they were reevaluating their life priorities compared to the pre-pandemic period.
This change of heart seems more prevalent with Gen Z and millennials, where 71% and 73% of them, respectively, wanted to reevaluate priorities.
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A record number of Americans — just over 47 million — voluntarily quit their jobs in 2021. That number ballooned to about 50 million in 2022, according to the US bureau of labor statistics.
Younger workers are leading the way out: They are driving the Great Resignation and the "Great Reshuffle," and are being referred to as "Generation Quit."
They are also reimagining how work fits into their life, rather than the other way around, and are treating their lives as their full-time jobs and their jobs like their side gigs.
An Oliver Wyman survey of 10,000 people aged 18 to 25 in the US found that Gen Zers are less likely to stigmatize job-hopping and do not have hang-ups about quitting jobs without a backup plan.
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Recent data from the US Census Bureau shows that nearly half of young Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 are living with their parents. That's a historical high not seen since the Great Depression era, Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in a December note.
That's great news for luxury retailers because all that saved rent is freeing up disposable income for discretionary spending.
The luxury market's consumer base is projected to reach 500 million by 2030, per Bain & Company, and 80% of global luxury purchases will be made by Gens Y, Z, and Alpha, who are likely to become the biggest luxury buyers by 2030.
Gen Z's pull is so vast that some businesses — like athletics giant Adidas — are launching a collection specifically targeted at younger customers.
Insider's Dan Latu and Kelsey Neubauer spoke to four 20-somethings who live at home about the tradeoffs they made to move back in with their families, in exchange for financial flexibility. While they invested and saved large amounts, they also splurged on designer handbags, meals at fancy restaurants, bottle service at nightclubs, cameras, and trips to Europe, the reporters found.
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Gen Z is more likely to find financial advice and financial literacy tools online compared to previous generations, Insider's Leo Aquino, a certified educator in personal finance, wrote in May 2022.
"The younger you go, the more that they look toward online resources. So YouTube, TikTok, Instagram Reels, talking to other people on chat rooms like Discord," financial literacy influencer Humphrey Yang told Insider in May.
They'll also only go to a financial planner after they've done their own research, in part because they simply have less money to save and invest than older generations did, Aquino reported.
Suzanne Schmitt, the head of financial wellness at New York Life Insurance Company, told CNBC Make It that Gen Z is more savings-focused than older generations, as they may have witnessed the impact of poor financial management and economic crises from older generations.
On average, Gen Zers in the US saved about $5,800 in 2022, CNBC reported on February 10, citing data from a Wealth Watch survey of 4,410 Americans conducted by the New York Life. That number compares to an average of just over $6,000 for millennials and about $4,000 for Gen Xers.
The younger generation also has clear goals for financial independence.
Gen Z workers want to retire at 59, according to a 2022 planning and progress study by financial services provider Northwestern Mutual. That's almost 12 years earlier than the Baby Boomer generation, which pegged the retirement age at 71. The study surveyed 2,381 Americans aged 18 and older in February 2022, with oversamples of Gen Z.
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