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By Suzanne Blake
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Gen Z has been accused of not wanting to work. But behind the familiar complaints about entitlement and poor work ethic, the numbers tell a different story.
Gen Z workers are entering the labor market under strikingly different conditions than millennials did, and new data suggests it is paying off. Despite lower labor force participation, Gen Z adults are facing lower unemployment and are earning more than millennials did at the same age, according to a new labor market report from resume platform Zety.
“Every generation remembers how hard we worked when we were young. We remember the long hours and the struggle. Somehow we’re a little less good at remembering all the complaining we did at 22,” Michael Ryan, a finance expert and the founder of MichaelRyanMoney.com, told Newsweek.
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“Gen Z isn’t lazy. They’re different. They’re more willing to question whether the old bargain of ‘work hard, keep your head down and eventually you’ll be rewarded’ still makes sense.”
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Zety’s Early Career Labor Market Report analyzed Bureau of Labor Statistics data on adults ages 20 to 24 during two comparable periods: millennials from 2005 to 2008 and Gen Z from 2021 to 2024. Median weekly earnings for full-time Gen Z workers averaged about $756, versus $674 for millennials after adjusting for inflation, a gap of roughly 12.3 percent. Unemployment averaged 7.5 percent for Gen Z, compared with 8.9 percent for millennials at the same age.
The Market Did the Heavy Lifting
“One could argue that with fewer Gen Z workers participating in the traditional workforce, the lower supply of available workers means wages have to be a bit higher to attract them,” Kevin Thompson, CEO of 9i Capital Group and host of the 9innings podcast, told Newsweek.
“For years, we’ve heard a repeated stereotype from older Americans that Gen Z doesn’t want to work, but this data suggests otherwise,” said Alex Beene, a financial literacy instructor at the University of Tennessee at Martin to Newsweek.
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Gen Z’s advantage comes despite lower overall workforce participation: 71.1 percent, versus 74.5 percent for millennials at the same age. The employment-population ratio also trailed, at 65.8 percent versus 67.9 percent. Fewer Gen Zers are working or looking for work, but those who are tend to come out ahead.
“Gen Z has allowed themselves to fight back against lower-than-average wages and, in some cases, will accept going into debt or forgoing purchases rather than chasing materialism simply for the sake of it,” Thompson said. “I don’t think that means they are unmotivated. Their motivation just doesn’t seem to be centered around money in the same way it may have been for previous generations.”
So why is this happening? Unlike millennials, who entered the workforce ahead of the Great Recession, Gen Z came of age in a historically tight, post-pandemic labor market, with employers battling shortages across industries and younger workers finally holding real leverage.
“Some of that advantage reflects very different economic circumstances. Millennials entered adulthood around the Great Recession, while Gen Z benefited from a post-pandemic labor market that produced unusually strong wage growth,” Beene said. “Gen Z isn’t necessarily working harder or millennials less effectively. Young people are approaching a fundamentally different labor market, and those succeeding in it are doing considerably better financially than the familiar ‘lazy Gen Z’ narrative would suggest.”
Digital fluency hasn’t hurt either. A generation raised on technology and social media aligns neatly with what employers now want. Add retiring Baby Boomers and a wave of vacancies, and conditions tilt further in young workers’ favor.
“Give any cohort of workers a tight market and they’ll command, and get, higher pay. Hand them a recession and they’ll spend a decade, or a lifetime, digging out,” HR consultant Bryan Driscoll told
Newsweek. “The only variable that matters here is the balance of power between employers and workers, and employers spend billions doing everything they can to keep it tilted their way.”
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No Victory Lap Yet
None of this means Gen Z has it easy. Soaring housing costs and living expenses remain real burdens, while affordability and career stability still top the list of anxieties for young workers, even with fatter paychecks than their predecessors had.
“Gen Z has lower unemployment among people participating in the labor force, but fewer young adults are participating or employed overall. So this isn’t a clean victory lap,” Ryan said. “To me, the bigger lesson is that generations respond to the economy they’re handed. Millennials adapted to one labor market. Gen Z is adapting to another.”
Whether that advantage holds is an open question. A cooling labor market could erode Gen Z’s gains, while AI may reshape entry-level work altogether in the years ahead.
“I’m seeing the tide move,” Driscoll said. “The market is cooling and employers are clawing back, spending more on lobbying than what it would cost to just pay people more and cover benefits. What we’re seeing is the reality of concessions, extracted under pressure, now retreating. Workers only keep what we can defend.”
Gen Z wasn’t handed an easier path, just a different one. So far, they’re working it smarter, not harder.
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