The millennials are officially the majority of managers – so prepare for a combination of professional exhaustion, vibrations of friends and borders

According to the Semedial Report of Glassdoor’s Professional Life Trends, the generation Y has become the largest part of the management workforce at the end of June 2025, going beyond the Xers generation, which has dominated leadership in the past two decades. To current aging trends, according to the projections of Glassdoor’s economist, Daniel Zhao, Gen Z will provide a larger share of managers than baby boomers at the end of 2025 or 2026. Already, Gen Z constitutes one in 10 managers.

Since it has become the most populous generation of the active population in the mid-2010s, millennials have regularly increased in the ranks, powered by a demographic inevitability, pensions between baby boomers and new attitudes towards organizational leadership. This ascent caps years of warning and speculation about how the millennium values would shape the workplace.

In an interview Fortune, Zhao said the millennials inherit a difficult situation, but that it could be worse. The workers overall “Do not feel in a good situation” at the moment, but Zhao noted that things have not deteriorated for workers since the last edition of the report in January 2025.

Although Zhao does not use this particular generation Z slang, the state of the workforce which is now managed by the majority by the millennials is halfway up. “At the very least, it does not seem that workers feel worse,” said Zhao. “I don’t know if you can call it a silver lining.”

Millennials managing through the in -law crisis of professional exhaustion

Millennials are largely credited to have pushed “empathy” and “well-being” in the foreground of management culture. They prioritize policies such as remote work, the advantages of mental health and the establishment of borders – but there is a reason why millennials stress mental health so much: they themselves know record levels of bullshit, stress and insecurity of work in 2025. Zhao conceived this line with anchors in Glassdoor journals.

Zhao, for his part, writes that the challenges of mental health facing the current workforce, “no sign of slowdown”. He writes professional exhaustion as an “crisis in progress”, with mentions in the criticisms of Glassdoor, doping of 73% from one year to the next in May 2025. “Critics on professional exhaustion often refer to the cumulative effect of several years of layoffs and infection on the employees who remain.”

Of course, the term “exhaustion” has become largely synonymous with the millennial generation in the viral article of Buzzfeed 2019 by Anne Helen Petersen on the subject, which has turned into a book and a deep vein of report for the coming years. Addressing the thesis of Petersen, according to which the millennials were born in a constant working culture and climate of working from an early age, the average number of direct reports by manager has almost doubled in recent years, stacking levels of stress in exhaustion on the generation of professional exhaustion, just as they become the majority of managers.

Zhao refused to comment directly on Petersen’s thesis, but on the subject of professional exhaustion, noted more generally than many millennial managers, in particular those of the forties and the end of the thirties, age in the “sandwich generation”, with responsibilities that have been typical for generation X: “Milleniaries are at this moment that are really career pressure. Zhao added that “in one way, they are stuck between a rock and a hard place”.

Despite their ambitions, many millennium managers declare that they receive little or no official leadership training, often not feeling prepared for the complexities of team management through several generations and by responding to rapid organizational change. This is required to aggravate with double the reports of the historic average. And although they underline empathy, millennials are the generation that invented the term “ghost” for their avoidant behaviors on social networks, and many fight with the assertion and management of front work conflicts. Finally, millennials are the generation of the “participation trophy”, and some dead Tiktok videos argued that the millennium bosses have a toxic tendency to try to be friends with all their direct relationships. “Wolves in sheep’s clothes,” they were called. Ouch.

The reverse of emotional intelligence

Zhao said Fortune That the well -used photo on the fact that generation Y managers are known for their concentration on empathy have a setback. Glassdoor has seen a change in the way people are talking about management in the past five years since the pandemic, he said: “Critics that discuss management are increasingly highlighting the terms related to emotional intelligence, as well as boundaries”, “being empathetic”, “ promoting employees, the expectations increased: “the bar on the bar”.

This does not mean that the millennials are intrinsically gifted on emotional intelligence, said Zhao, just that it is a expectation of their relationships, whether the other millennials, generation Z or perhaps even generation X or baby boomers. Zhao referred to the research according to which the expression “emotional intelligence” really began to resume in the 21st century. What is ironic that the population that maintains emotional intelligence when it has entered the labor market is now responsible for managing it.

Although millennials generally seek to strengthen trust and recognize, generational divisions persist: a notable minority of employees, in particular generation Z, remains neutral or uncertain of the recognition they receive. According to a complete Deloitte survey, the millennials themselves want more comments, mentoring and growth possibilities, both for their teams and for their own career.

This is perhaps the reason why the millennials are struggling with a dreaded nickname: the so-called cool boss. Recent reports and viral content of social media have fueled criticism from generation Y managers to blur the border between the manager and the friend – sometimes a harmful effect. The sketches and accounts in the first person highlight a stereotype of the director of the millennium who is impatient to be considered as a hip, adopting a relaxed attitude, occasional communication and a friendly relationship with direct reports. Critics argue that this style can be toxic to creating a “false feeling of warmth” which masks underlying the dynamics of power. In terms of results, the Boss cool law leads to incoherent or unclear expectations, fueling anxiety among the staff. And when a negative feedback is necessary, the cool boss dropping the mask can be a shock for their subordinates.

Many millennium managers report difficulties in setting clear limits with their teams while they are struggling to go from the code of friendship to authorization, situations require. The fixing of limits is still complicated by generational changes: young employees, in particular generation Z, also promote the limits of fluids and a flat hierarchy, sometimes intensifying ambiguity around roles and expectations.

Although Zhao did not directly comment on the so-called even Boss cool, he said that the millennium managers were walking an “extremely difficult line at the moment”. The millennials are supposed to be at the top of their careers, but many also take care of children, parents and even older family members. “On the aspect of care,” said Zhao, “there have been a lot of discussions, especially from the pandemic, on gaps … in the American economy today.”

Are you a millennium who is a manager, or do you have a millennium for a manager? Fortune I would love to hear from you: contact nick.lichtenberg@consultant.fortune.com.

For this story, Fortune Used a generative AI to help an initial project. An editor checked the accuracy of the information before the publication.