Gen Z, Workplace Readiness, and Economic Anxiety

Nick: So because we missed a week, we’re going to cover two articles in short form. Two weeks ago, the Wellable Weekly newsletter had a great article on Gen Z, and the headline was pretty specific: Gen Z is dating less, and that’s making it hard for them to operate in the workforce.

The first thing I thought was, what’s the actual cutoff for Gen Z? I’m a millennial, so I always have to check where I land. The technical definition is 1996 through around 2012. So in terms of the workforce, anyone born in ’96 or after is Gen Z, which means the oldest Gen Zers are turning 30 right now. Older than I would’ve guessed. The reason that matters is it’s a substantial and growing portion of the workforce, and the article’s core stat is that 56% of Gen Z has never been in a romantic relationship. For comparison, that number is around 75% for other generations.

Geoff: I relate to anchoring generational perceptions to what you thought years ago — to me, a 29 or 30 year old still feels like a millennial, but that’s actually an older Gen Zer now. On why this matters: we’ve read that Gen Z will represent 30% of the U.S. workforce by 2030, about 50 million people. The obvious question with that headline is what dating has to do with workplace productivity. But I read the article as being about relationships broadly — romantic, platonic, all of it comes down to communication, compromise, giving and taking. If Gen Z is dating less, they’re also socializing less. We’ve talked before about them drinking less, doing fewer happy hours, having less general face-to-face interaction than any prior generation. Some of that traces back to the pandemic era, some to social media. Bottom line: this generation is getting less exposure to the foundational experiences that shaped how we, as millennials, learned to navigate people.

Nick: In summary, relationships are hard — and if they weren’t, they probably wouldn’t be that meaningful. That applies whether it’s romantic or just a close friendship. In the workplace, you’re going to have disagreements with people regardless of whether you have a personal relationship with them. Unlike a bad night with a friend, you can’t just cut someone out of your life at work — you see them again the next day and have to keep working through it. Learning to articulate yourself, especially on hard topics, is a skill like any other, and you have to develop it. This generation is underdeveloped in that area specifically.

More broadly, I think a lot of the Gen Z stats point to a “risk-off” posture, and I say that fully aware it can sound like an older generation judging a younger one. But any professional setting requires some willingness to take risk — a scientist takes risks running experiments, a salesperson takes a risk every time they pitch. Driving is another example: Gen Z drives less, partly because when I was 16 I couldn’t wait to get behind the wheel to go see my friends and get some freedom. If you don’t have that same pull to go socialize, you don’t need a car as much — and driving, beyond teaching you to drive, teaches broader life skills. I think some of that is missing heading into the workforce.

Geoff: That tracks with something I hear from younger friends and coworkers. The modern approach at a bar, if you see someone you might want to talk to, is often to check dating apps first to see if they’re on there — if they are, maybe that’s a signal they’d be receptive; if not, maybe you don’t approach at all. You could call that an overly cautious approach to a conversation that might go nowhere or might go somewhere, but it’s very much that same risk-off mindset, protecting against rejection. And that instinct spills into the workplace too — a hard conversation with a boss, a peer, a client all carry some risk of pushback or rejection.

Nick: The bar story is honestly foreign to me — I wasn’t big on dating apps, and I don’t see how it’s that effective. In a city like Boston, what are the actual odds? There’s always a risk-reward calculation: how much time do you spend scanning for someone on an app versus just spending five minutes finding out in person? That said — what does an employer actually do with this data?

I think this touches the return-to-office debate, which is polarizing on its own. But if a company is going to have a growing share of Gen Z employees, the first question is: how do you help catch up that development if they’re underdeveloped in this area? I think the best answer is in-person work. If you’re remote, working through Teams or Zoom without even video sometimes, that divide makes it harder to build these skills — not impossible, but slower. Part of building any relationship is working through interactions with people you don’t always get along with, and in an office you can’t just walk away or go “do not disturb” the way you can remotely. I think the solution to that — and to workplace loneliness, a separate topic — is on-site or in-office work.

Geoff: Agreed. There are a lot of connection points between relationship-building, loneliness, and whether you’re mostly remote or coming into an office — and also how intentional companies are about making office time meaningful. If you’re asked to come in but your team isn’t there, or the interactions aren’t substantive, you’re not getting the benefit. There’s something to be said for the employer doing its part too. But it does seem like one of the more obvious ways to address challenges facing a Gen Z workforce that came up through the pandemic era and faced workplace arrangements unlike any previous generation.

Nick: One last thought, from one generation to the next: treat this as a skill. Whether or not you’re currently developed in it, you can always improve — myself included. But developing it requires going through some uncomfortable moments, exposing yourself to situations that reveal the gaps. That discomfort is part of the growth. On that note — let’s shift to the next topic, which I’d call economic malaise.

The Wellable Weekly newsletter ran one article on this, but there’s a whole set of data reflecting real frustration and anxiety in the current economic environment. One stat from a SimplyHired article: 27% of people who took a new job took a pay cut to do it — meaning they left their old job, got a new one, and are now earning less. About 16% landed at the same pay. The flip side is the majority did get a raise, but historically, changing jobs almost always meant a pay increase, so a number this high, even under 50%, is a real point of concern. There’s more data around it too.

Geoff: Right — the ones you mentioned there show low or no net job growth, a large share of employed workers not feeling their job is safe, and even among people actively seeking and successfully changing jobs, almost a quarter aren’t seeing a pay increase. Those are pretty staggering. The last one especially stands out — in tech and knowledge-worker industries, changing jobs to get a pay bump used to be almost a given, with plenty of opportunities to do it. Clearly that’s not the case anymore.

There’s a related stat from a Gallup report around employees who are “thriving” versus “struggling.” For the first time since Gallup’s been tracking that life evaluation index, a higher percentage of employees report struggling than thriving. That matters for employers because struggling employees are more likely to miss work, more likely to be job hunting without success, more likely to have health issues, and generally show lower engagement.

Nick: This is a tough one to cover, honestly — mostly negative economic news, and the generic advice (“upskill,” “AI requires new skills”) is true but obvious. What I’d try to tie a ribbon around is: how do you find the positive here? If you’re job hunting right now, roughly half of employees are actively looking or watching for new roles, and the reality is that for most of them, landing a new job still means a pay raise or at least holding steady. My advice when people think about leaving a job: figure out why you’re leaving. Run toward something, not away from something. If your only reason is “I need to leave this job,” you often end up somewhere worse. But there are absolutely situations where taking a job — even one with a pay cut — puts you in a genuinely better and happier place, and that’s a win regardless of the pay difference. Discover what you’re actually running toward, then make sure you have the skills to succeed there.

Geoff: That’s probably a good place to wrap. Upskilling is always relevant, maybe more so now than ever. And even if it’s not the strongest time to job search externally, it may be a good time to look inward — figure out what new skills you can build and apply them to enrich your experience at your current employer.

Thanks so much for joining and listening to the Wellable Weekly podcast. You can subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, and be sure to follow the Wellable Weekly newsletter and check us out on LinkedIn. Thanks.