From mortarboards to more creative careers

Gen Z graduates seek pathways into work marked more by values than material considerations.

The Monitor's View

Scores of studies have cited concerns over COVID-19’s impact on young people’s mental health and academic development. Yet in their own voice, those graduating from American colleges and universities across this spring tell a different story. It is one of resilience, tempered optimism, and enterprising creativity.

“There’s a Gen Z mentality of: OK, throw it our way and we’ll make it work,” Ben Telerski, who received a degree from Georgetown University last week, told CNBC.

This year’s graduating class is a unique marker of an emerging generation. Some members are among the first to be born after 9/11. They arrived on campus before “social distancing” and “Zoom dating,” yet within six months became pioneers of remote learning. Their values have been molded by constant change and crisis. Almost nothing about them is predictable. Perhaps because of this, their concerns and aspirations are already changing workplace norms.

The unemployment rate for young workers is the lowest in 70 years, according to the Economic Policy Institute, yet nearly 40% of Generation Z workers already in or entering the workforce cultivate a side hustle. That partly reflects the cost of living: Most young people worry they won’t make enough in one job to make ends meet. But that’s not the only reason. Many prioritize values-based factors over salary – like diversity in the workplace, mental health benefits, and flexibility to develop creative projects they see as important to their quality of life and future well-being.

“Work is a source of identity for many,” Meredith Meyer Grelli, a business professor at Carnegie Mellon University, told the BBC. Gen Z workers resist that. “Passion projects,” she said, “serve as a way for young people to find value.”

That desire for creativity and spontaneity, according to a recent Wunderman Thompson Intelligence survey of young workers in the United States, Britain, and China, is driving many to give up a technology that was perhaps the single most defining influence of their early lives. It found that 67% of Gen Z members believe technology – the tool that has made their generation the most globally connected in human history – makes them feel more detached.

“When I think of joy, wonder, magic, I think the physical world still has an advantage over the digital world,” Momo Estrella, head of design at Ikea China Digital Hub, told the study’s authors. “The digital work suffers a lot from distractions.”

Gen Z is recharting other social pathways, too. A survey by the Walton Family Foundation last October, for example, found that while Gen Z students showed declining interest in careers in government, more than 70% participate in volunteer and other local civic activity. “They feel the people and communities who are closest to the problems can drive more equitable civic engagement and impact,” the study found.

An emerging generation is starting to reveal itself. Through an emphasis on inclusivity, collaboration, and independence, it is turning disruption into durable purpose.