Gen Z Zeitgest: Work to Survive
Lieben und arbeiten: “to love and to work.” Such is the way Freud responded in German to the question of how we find meaning, connection, and psychological stability in our lives.
The notion that one’s work should provide a “cornerstone of humanness” equal to love, as a Freud scholar put it, would likely strike the modern Gen Z worker as utterly absurd.
The Gen Z cohort—people born between 1997 and 2012—in fact view their current and future jobs as transactional, a mere means to survive, without any expectation that the work will be fulfilling.
Rather than seeing work as central to their identity, more than half of Gen Zers prioritize “life satisfaction” over career ambition, with a demonstrable pessimism about long-term career prospects, according to a 2026 Deloitte study.
How did this happen and who are these people? Where do they live?
As noted in a July New York Times article, the most recent U.S. Census Bureau population survey shows almost half of adults ages 18–29 live with their parents.
The inability to ever own one’s home is routinely cited as a key cause of anxiety for Gen X, as well as for many older Americans.
Gen Zers—born between 1997 and 2012—view their current and future jobs as transactional, a mere means to survive, without any expectation that the work will be fulfilling.
But Gen Z workers have trouble renting without parental help.
“Delayed adulthood,” a label first pinned on millennials and now ascribed en masse to Gen Z, unfortunately assumes that young adults actually prefer to stay in Mom and Dad’s basement where they’re comfortable and well fed. It’s a cruel stereotype when you consider that for many, the primary alternative is having four roommates, one bathroom, and sky-high rent. That’s the case in major American cities, but increasingly in smaller ones as well.
What about college graduates, who take on tens of thousands of dollars of debt to earn a degree that often guarantees little to no job security after graduation?
According to the College Monk, a higher-education resource platform, a student starting college in 2026 attending one of the top 50 U.S. colleges will pay a “sticker price” of $100,000 to $150,000 at top public universities (depending on in-state vs. out-of-state tuition) and $240,000 to $320,000-plus at private universities for their four years of education. Private colleges discount heavily for family income under $100,000, but there are few bargains for the middle class, and certainly not at public colleges.
For Gen Z, the specter of paying off student loans until they die is outstripped only by the stark reality of applying to hundreds of entry-level white-collar jobs via online applications routinely screened out by AI before a human ever lays eyes on them.
Many of the entry-level white-collar jobs vulnerable to AI are in the tech, finance, insurance, business services, and marketing fields.
Statistics from the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) indicate that the Gen Z labor force (ages 16-29) comprises about 18% of the state’s population, with over 1 million Gen Z residents.
Early-career Gen Zers (25 to 29 years old) score high on labor force participation rates—at least 75%. Almost one-third of those young workers, however, are in education and health services, followed by construction, at 14%.
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As DEED notes, the construction industry offers “strong apprenticeship pathways,” i.e., no college degree required. The worry that the knowledge you’ve paid and sweated to accumulate is worthless to employers because a chatbot is cheaper just deepens the cynicism.
As an August New Yorker article put it succinctly: “The actual ability of AI to replace knowledge fields almost doesn’t matter, because nearly every corporation and university will have someone on staff warning that if the [institution] does not replace fallible and whiny employees with robots, it will die a quick and humiliating death.”
In his new book, Agency, psychologist Martin Seligman examines the weighty topic of human progress throughout history. He cites three capacities someone needs in any era to advance: efficacy (the confidence that you can accomplish a specific goal right now); optimism (the expectation that your efforts will pay off far into the future); and imagination (the breadth of goals you can envision).
Gen Zers would be the first to sorrowfully admit: Agency in their work lives seems out of reach, and, because of that, ambition—a belief that you have control over your future—isn’t worth the effort.
