Suzy Welch says that generation Z and millennials are exhausted because older generations worked just as hard, but they had “hope”
A generational fracture on professional exhaustion has less to do with the intensity of work and more to do with decreased expectations for career awards, according to the commercial author and professor of New York University, Suzy Welch. The 66 -year -old man from Portland obtained his MBA as a Harvard Business School Baker scholarship holder and spent seven years as a management consultant at Bain & Co. before joining Harvard Business Review in 2001, as editor. Speaking on the episode of July 24 of the Masters of the scale Podcast, Welch argued that young workers face the same demanding hours as previous generations, but do not have the fundamental belief that hard work will lead to significant progress.
Welch said that this idea came out of a conversation she had had with a 25 -year -old independent worker who asked Welch to create more content on workers’ fatigue among young people because her friends were “so exhausted”. When Welch told this worker that she worked “seven days a week” at this age and loved work – and would have done more if she could – the young woman offered a striking refutation: “But you had hope.”
“And I had hope. We all had hope,” said Welch Masters of the scale The host Jeff Berman. “We thought that if you worked hard, you were rewarded. And it is therefore disconnection. ”
A crisis of hope for young people, supported by data
Welch’s observations align with in -depth research documenting unprecedented levels of stress in the workplace among the young generations, which forces them to miss the work following physical and mental tolls. According to a Gallup survey in 2024, only 31% of staff under the age of 35 say they “thrive”, while 22% of staff under the age of 35 say they feel alone.
“I think the distance between people is greater than ever before,” said Jim Harter, chief scientist of Gallup in terms of work and well-being, said previously Fortune. “When people become physically further away, you become more mentally distant. This is what happened with young workers. ”
Millennials are in a particularly bad place, in general. About 66% of millennials report moderate or high levels of professional exhaustion, according to a recent AFLAC report.
“A possible explanation of higher levels of professional exhaustion in millennials could be their unique career pressure and expectations,” said the report, which includes “more demanding work environments than other generations, defined by constant connectivity, high performance expectations and a competitive labor market”. Generation Y workers are also part of the “sandwich generation”, taking care of aging children and their parents. According to a main financial report, more than 60% of workers juggling the two responsibilities are concerned about professional exhaustion.
The context of this crisis of professional exhaustion according to which young people are forced to navigate both several crises in the world: climate change, political instability, the continuous effects of the coco-9 pandemic, economic uncertainty and international conflicts such as the Russian-Ukraine war. The psychological impact is deep and measurable: research shows that distress linked to the pandemic and linked to the climate is linked to more symptoms of depression and anxiety and to reduce the quality of life related to health, while distress linked to war was associated with greater anxiety. In particular, according to Harvard researchers, almost half (45%) of young adults between 18 and 25 years old, think that their mental health is injured by a “global feeling that things collapse”.
The feeling of helplessness – to repel climate change, to deal with the effects of the political environment as a reduction in public health and armed violence, and more particularly to earn enough money to support lifestyles, family, housing and a future – has led to an erosion of institutional trust. Unlike baby boomers who have embraced existing institutions to become rich and live a comfortable life, the young generations do not think that institutions – which are perceived as bulky, hierarchical and a source of inequality and discrimination – can improve their situation. When combined with the economic realities Welch has identified, where hard work no longer guarantees progress, this explains why more than 50% of young people fear being poorer than their parents during their lives, according to the annual study of Leger.
Economic reality
Unlike previous generations that could reasonably expect the property and financial security through stable employment, young workers are faced with structural obstacles that have fundamentally changed career prospects.
“Gen Z thinks:” Yes, I looked at what happened to my parents’ career and looked at what happened to my older sister’s career and they worked very hard and they have always been dismissed “,” said Welch on the podcast.
Students’ debt represents an important burden, the Z generation paying on average $ 526 per month for loans, which doubles on an overall average of $ 284, according to Empower. Housing costs aggravated these pressures, which increased from 121% from 1960 to 2017, while median household income increased only by 29%. Currently, 87% of generation Z and 62% of millennials cannot afford to buy houses.
Employment challenges start immediately after graduation. According to a Kickresume report, around 58% of people graduated from last year are still looking for full -time work, compared to only 25% of previous generations. Only 12% of generation Z provides full -time employment per diploma, compared to 40% of previous graduates. Those who find work earn an average of $ 68,400 per year while transporting about $ 94,000 in personal debt, as Fortune previously reported.
The generational gap has significant economic implications, with work burn-out activities costing $ 322 billion per year in productivity, according to Gallup, and generating health costs between 125 billion and 190 billion dollars. While the role of generation Z in the world workforce continues to grow and evolve, Welch’s ideas on hope provide a framework to understand why traditional approaches to workplace stress can be insufficient for young American workers.
You can watch the full episode of the Masters of Scale with Welch below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prip6o-c_ki
For this story, Fortune Used a generative AI to help an initial project. An editor checked the accuracy of the information before the publication.
