“Is it paid?” was the first thing a 24-year-old friend of a friend said, when I messaged asking for two minutes of their time. I was hoping for an informal chat to get their thoughts on some comments Jodie Foster made about Gen Z in a recent interview. The 61-year-old actor remarked that Gen Z — those born between the late 1990s and early 2010s — can be “really annoying” to work with.
Foster implied Gen Zers make up their own work hours — “Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.” She also questioned their ability to write e-mails: “I’ll tell them this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like, ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
Foster isn’t the first to criticize their work ethic, and she won’t be the last. In 2022, a survey by King’s College London found the UK public were three times as likely to say that younger workers are less motivated and hardworking than older workers.
So is Foster right? Are Gen Z workers a bunch of self-righteous slackers?
Adwoa Owusu-Darko, a 26-year-old entrepreneur, argues this is an unfair stereotype. “Gen Z are vocal about what they want and are willing to advocate for themselves. That can come across as entitlement,” she says. “Not wanting to work all the time doesn’t equate to laziness, it equates to needing a break.”
Owusu-Darko thinks older generations could learn from this. After her mother, a social worker, was hospitalized due to work stress, she saw the repercussions of career burnout. “That’s not something I want to happen to me, or even get close to.”
Of course, people throughout history have viewed the generation succeeding them as lazier and less diligent. I worked two weekend jobs simultaneously throughout my teens, but a single moan that I was tired and my dad would tell me I didn’t “know the meaning of hard work”. His dad said the same to him.
But there does seem to be something a little different about Gen Z. A quick browse of TikTok reveals all manner of new career trends: there’s “quiet quitting”, which means doing your job to the bare minimum requirement, which currently has over one billion views. There’s also “act your wage” — meaning adhere to your written job description and nothing more, with 650 million views. Then there’s “lazy girl job” with 43.5 million views and “bare minimum Mondays”. None of it paints a particularly conscientious picture.
“Not wanting to work all the time doesn’t equate to laziness, it equates to needing a break.”
From the Gen Z perspective, however, this is all about setting — and maintaining — clear boundaries. Responding to headwinds including the pandemic, inflation and unaffordable housing, this new generation is seeking to completely redraw its economic contract.
One friend, a 33-year-old communications manager, tells me of her surprise that all four of the under-25s she manages have never considered logging into work e-mails on their phone. Instead of chowing down a salad over their keyboards at lunchtime, they take a full one-hour break. At the end of each day, they clock off at 6pm sharp.
Katie Bailey, professor of work and employment at King’s Business School, says the narrative that younger people don’t work as hard is “a gross oversimplification of a very complex issue”.
Gen Zers expect a clear, established work/life balance and won’t risk sacrificing their mental health for the sake of their career, she points out. A survey by the Institute for Employment Studies found that three in ten young people had either left a previous job or are planning on leaving their current one as a result of its impact on their mental health.
Hybrid working comes out on top as a non-negotiable. Research from Deloitte says over three quarters of the Gen-Z population would consider looking for a new job if asked to return to the office five days a week. One 21-year-old graphic designer tells me that “having time during the week to get chores done, work out and make dinner is better for my mental health.”
There’s “lazy girl job” with 43.5 million views and “bare minimum Mondays”. None of it paints a particularly conscientious picture.
Gen Z also feel a lack of direction or incentive as a result of the cost of living crisis. While heightened costs have affected us all, Gen Z are feeling it the most: almost half in the UK (48 per cent) say they live payday to payday according to Deloitte’s survey. Employed Gen Zers are more likely to say their pay doesn’t give them “good quality of life”. They’re saving significantly less money than other generations, and taking on side hustles to make ends meet.
For many, less financial incentive means less effort. “Our parents had the goal of saving for a few years and being able to buy a house,” a 23-year-old mental health worker says. “We’ve grown up being told we’ll never be able to get a mortgage, and by the time we start working we’re already in debt. So what’s the point of burning ourselves out?”
While many see Gen Z’s diffident attitudes towards work as being oversensitive and underpowered, many businesses are listening: a recent study by LinkedIn found job adverts that reference a work-life balance have increased by 65 per cent, and entry-level jobs that reference culture and values by 154 per cent, in the last few years.
Tony Wilson, director of the Institute for Employment Studies, says employers have no option but to listen. By 2025, Gen Z will account for 27 per cent of the workforce in developed countries. “The youth labor force is significantly smaller than it was a decade ago,” he says. “Young people have more bargaining in the labor market than they did before, because there’s fewer of them.”
Maybe Gen Z are somewhat annoying to work with, but who isn’t? We roll our eyes at boomers for not knowing how to attach a PDF to an e-mail, just as much as we do at Gen Z telling us off for using the wrong recycling bin. Perhaps we fear Gen Z. Their refusal to sacrifice their personal lives for work and their fierce values and strong boundaries hold a mirror up to the rest of us. Just don’t ask them to use correct grammar in e-mails.
Roisin Kelly is a staff writer at The Sunday Times Style