Why are so many Gen Zers unemployed?

A look into why this generation is struggling to find employment

Apr 04, 2025

Welcome to Gen Z Translator, where I break down trending topics on Fridays. If you’re new, you can subscribe here and follow me on Instagram. Views are my own. Happy reading! (Edit: I removed some information I didn’t have the ability to fact-check).

According to Fortune, more than 4 million Gen Zers are jobless.

“Many have become frozen out of the increasingly tough job market where white-collar jobs are becoming seemingly out of reach,” Preston Fore writes. “In the U.S., this translates to an estimated over 4.3 million young people not in school or work.”

Gen Z is known for hitting major milestones later than other generations. First kisses, moving out, marriage, and so on. In January, CBS News reported that “roughly 45% of people ages 18-29 are living at home with their families. That's the highest figure since the 1940s.”

Bloomberg reported that “Gen Z is right to have negative feelings about the economy. Not only were its oldest members entering the workforce as the pandemic struck, but those in their early to mid-20s are also now bearing the brunt of a labor market that’s largely been frozen in place for the past two years.”

Many conversations I have with people around my age is about how difficult the job market can be right now. People spending months – sometimes even years – applying and interviewing for positions, unemployed not due to a lack of trying.

With their permission, let me share a quote from an anonymous fellow Gen Z friend, who spent between March 2023 and August 2024 in job limbo. My friend applied to jobs mainly from LinkedIn, but also Indeed as well as job postings discovered from TikTok and Instagram.

“Looking for a job right now is a full time job. It is so mentally draining and degrading. I worked hard for my accomplishments,” they said. “I graduated college in the top 10% of my class, had years of experience, and many many references, but I was unemployed for an entire year. Resume checkers, job counselors, recruiters, I tried it all. It wasn’t me. It was the market I graduated into, but in the moment it didn’t feel like that. It felt like I wasn’t good enough and it broke me. It felt like everywhere I turned I faced rejection.”

Michael Schuman wrote for TIME in 2012, “The crisis facing the world’s young people has been brewing for some time, but the Great Recession has elevated youth unemployment from an unfortunate social ill to a major threat to future economic and political stability in many parts of the world.”

This story, titled “The Jobless Generation,” would have been written in regards to millennials, as someone 25 at the time would now be 37. The way I see it, Millennials walked (suffered) so Gen Z could run (suffer more). And now there’s AI to consider, too. What jobs could AI successfully “take?” What happens to people trained in those fields?

The pressure to find a job right out of college comes from the stigma of being that person who lives in your parent’s basement playing video games. It’s more common in places like Europe or Asia to remain with your family after your studies, rather than get kicked to the curb.

America is an individualistic society as opposed to a collectivist society, where it’s more culturally common for communities to stick together (think multiple generations of families living together) whereas individualism puts the brunt of self-actualization on oneself.

Collectivism tends to be associated with honor-shame culture, which can stifle creativity, authenticity, and independence. On the other hand, individualism can be lonely, exhausting, and demoralizing as we constantly pursue increasingly inaccessible achievements. In a way, America is fostering a very all-or-nothing mentality among Gen Zers and their families, made worse by the difficulty of the job market.

With shows like Severance, Succession, and The Boys putting a spotlight on the ills of corporatism, it’s not hard to see where Gen Z’s contempt for long-standing company structures come in.

The fictional company in Severance, Lumon, entices its employees with branded snacks, special office supplies, and sometimes even a little bit of a party, then pulls out the binder-long performance review when things go wrong. It poses the question Gen Z has asked since joining the workforce – to what extent are the “rewards” worth the work?

“With the cost of everything rising, more people are looking for work, but every industry has become oversaturated. Most companies are not paying a livable wage, but require degrees and years of experience. Entry-level positions are no longer ‘entry-level,’” my anonymous friend said. “They require years of experience, when entry-level should mean you don’t need experience to apply. There are way too many companies posting ‘ghost listings.’ More than 50% of the jobs I applied to I never heard back from.”

Gen Z has also set better boundaries with “free labor” than past generations. Business Insider described it as a “work to live” mentality rather than a “live to work” mentality. Boundaries, however, can feel shocking to those who haven’t experienced them before, particularly at long established organizations.

This generation’s standards for their employers are higher. Gen Z isn’t as willing to take crappy gigs just to say they have a job, especially if they have their families as a safety net. There’s a reason “lazy girl jobs” are popular, as well as telework and other flexible, contract-type work.

Gen Z experiencing unfortunate employment circumstances is not entirely unfamiliar, but it is more spotlighted as social media fosters instant communication about the job market, not to mention other generations perpetuating the “lazy snowflake” stereotype.

There’s more to say on this, I’m sure, but for now I’ll leave it at that.