“Kids Today Don’t Want to Work” - In Defense of Gen Z

“Our youth love luxury. They have bad manners and despise authority. They show disrespect to their elders and love to chatter instead of exercise.” - Socrates (470 BCE - 399 BCE)

“Ugh, kids today.” - Socrates, probably

I hear it all the time from people hiring in our industry - “Kids today don’t want to work.” They want to play on their phones, they come in and expect to be promoted immediately, they don’t know how to work hard, they’re immature, they don’t communicate well.

If I were to guess, the people making these comments heard some similar criticisms of their generations when they entered the workforce - the Boomers were chided for being anti-establishment, Gen X got the “slacker” tag applied liberally, and my Millennial cohort was too busy buying avocado toast we couldn’t afford to hear whatever people said about us.

My hot take? The kids are alright. And they’re going to be just fine. But we do need to reckon with a couple things - numbers and values.

The numbers are simpler to understand, so let’s start there. The Boomers as a generation got that name due to the sheer number of babies that were born in post-WWII America. There are an awful lot of people who were born between 1946 and 1964. As the Baby Boomers retire, there are not enough Gen Z employees entering the workforce to keep pace. There are approximately 76 million Baby Boomers compared to about 67 million Gen Z’ers in the US. Assuming a constant labor participation rate of 62.5%, this leaves approximately 5.6 million jobs that are projected to go unfilled due to the shrinking workforce. This is a math problem, not a work ethic problem.

The other number that matters here is wage growth - or the lack thereof. Wages are not keeping up with inflation. Work has to be worth going to, otherwise a prospective employee will opt out or seek a higher paying job. That’s not being lazy, that’s being self-interested. See here for some data on wage growth since 2021. Yes, wages have gone up. But purchasing power has gone down due to inflation rising faster than wages. Anyone who has been to the grocery store in the last five years can see this for themselves.

Now let’s talk values. One of the guiding values for Baby Boomers in their careers has been stability. A good career often meant 40 years with one established, stable, company culminating with a celebratory cake and a gold watch and a well-earned retirement. Millennials and Gen Z, however, are more likely to value flexibility and independence. In an era of rapid technological change with mass layoffs to meet shareholder demands, younger employees no longer have the same sense of loyalty to their employer - and why should they? Again, they’re not being selfish. They are being self-interested. Job hoppers make more money than folks who stay put, and younger employees have figured this out.

I recently met up with a friend who owns Yucca Dump Junk out of the Atlanta area (no free ads but hit them up if you’re in Atlanta and need something hauled off). He is a young Millennial in his early 30s and hires 1099 contractors who are mostly younger than him when he has a job to do. These contractors have the ability to accept or decline a job that he offers, since they’re not technically employees. His hot take is that the younger generation so deeply values flexibility that the days of the W-2 employee are numbered. I don’t know that I fully agree, but I do think he makes an excellent point regarding the value that Gen Z places on flexibility and independence. His guys would rather handle their own taxes and pick and choose jobs than get locked into the demands of a traditional W-2 job.

And if you’re a young person who values flexibility and independence, the barriers to doing your own thing have never been lower. Widespread adoption of the internet, mobile phones, the gig economy (think driving for Uber or DoorDash), and artificial intelligence means that nearly anyone can do nearly anything from nearly anywhere. Charting your own course has never been easier.

New tools enable work in new ways - just ask Gen Z

Now back to the stone industry - how do we as employers handle this? Not every Gen Z’er wants to be a digital nomad slinging e-books and online courses from a coffee shop in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Some do want a reliable job with a steady paycheck that’s close to home. But I mentioned the numbers problem - there aren’t enough incoming Gen Z employees to offset all the retirements as the Boomers age out of the workforce. Economics 101 would dictate that when the supply of an item goes down and the demand for it goes up, then the price of the item goes up. So as an employer, you may need to pay more than you have in the past for labor. Our industry requires hard work - no doubt about that. But there has to be fair compensation for it otherwise you’ll be struggling to find and keep good, dependable employees. And with inflation outpacing wage growth, the definition of “fair compensation” may be quite different in an employee’s eyes than it was even a couple years ago.

We should also think about the values that are important to younger people and acknowledge that they may not be the same as ours. If flexibility is a core value, how can we as employers offer it while still meeting commitments to our customers and coworkers?

As employers, we need to recognize the changing numbers and values that we’re dealing with today. We need to adjust a bit to meet the younger generations where they are and understand what’s important to them, and they’ll come along and meet us partway as well. As Gen Z gets further along in their careers, I believe we’ll see more professionalism and more maturity - like all of us developed as we grew into our careers and matured. The kids are alright, no matter what Socrates says.