A survey by PwC, one of the “Big Four” consulting firms that periodically weighs in on all things workplace and future of work-related, found that a quarter of employees globally want to shift jobs in the next 12 months. Gen Z workers, aged between 18 and 26, make up about 35% of those wanting to quit, while millennials (aged 27 to 42) are another 31%. The common reason cited by 44% of the workers considering quitting their jobs is overwork.
Anthony Abbatiello, partner and workforce transformation practice lead at PwC, told Fortune that there’s a shift underway. “I think what we saw at the beginning of the Great Resignation, I would say we saw [quitting happen] more by industry or role.” Quitting was more about the type of work being done instead of a generational attitude, he said. But that’s changing.
When the Great Resignation first kicked off, Zippia, a recruitment and job insights platform, found that a bulk of those who quit were in the 18 to 29 age bracket, which includes a mix of old Gen Zers and young millennials. After surging in 2021 quit rates fell last month back down to pre-pandemic levels of 2.4% across industries, pointing to an end of the so-called Great Resignation. Even the professor who coined the term predicted it would end this year. But not for Gen Z. Abbatiello says the new findings show a generational shift is underway.
“The data is showing us that the Gen Zs are considering this more,” Abbatiello said. “Whether or not they actually follow through and quit their jobs is another question,” he added, “but they are certainly considering it.”
The millennial legacy of ‘I quit’
Gen Zers are not the first ones to challenge the workplace as we know it.
Millennials were the first to earn the title of “job-hoppers”—referring to workers who are not held back by employer loyalty and prefer to move around more often than their older counterparts.
At one point, changing jobs regularly was an unusual concept, as reported by Fortune all the way back in 1953 with “The Transients,” a feature story that became a best-selling book called “The Organization Man” by former editor William H. Whyte. It covered the midcentury mentality of loyalty to one’s company for one’s entire career, especially at the managerial level. Organization men appeared throughout pop culture, for instance memorably in Billy Wilder’s 1960 classic, The Apartment. Although countless changes hit the economy and the workforce in ensuing decades—from the “Great Inflation” of the 1970s through the “Masters of the Universe” 1980s turbocharged by finance—the idea of staying loyal to one’s employer never quite wavered.
In retrospect, perhaps a slight change was notable in the Gen X era of the 1990s, when major shifts got underway, particularly the signing of NAFTA, which led to massive job losses, especially in manufacturing. Ennui about work surfaced in pop culture, memorably in the Gen X workplace classic Office Space. By the time millennials entered the workforce in the 21st century—around the same time as another late ‘90s policy revolution took place, China’s entrance into the World Trade Organization—the middle class was in the grips of decline and companies were rapidly losing loyalty to workers. The era of mass layoffs truly began in the 1970s but the battle scars of the Great Recession in 2008 were kindling on a bonfire. So millennials responded in kind.
Data bears this out; research firm Gallup found that in 2016, 21% of millennials said they wanted to switch jobs, three times higher than non-millennials at the time.
Leigh, a data scientist, and personal finance content creator, who requested anonymity for safety purposes, said that Gen Zers have grown up observing how being employed in the same job for years impacted their parents. The 26-year-old, who has switched jobs four times since graduating from university in 2017, told Fortune that the younger generation is jaded by what they’ve seen. “While their parents may have demonstrated admirable work ethic and loyalty, they often didn’t have much to show for it in terms of personal fulfillment and financial stability.”
To be sure, younger workers have always been more inclined to switch jobs. Even though millennials earned a reputation as the job-hopping generation that killed worker loyalty, Pew Research Center found in 2017 that Gen Xers had been just as likely to hop around when they were young adults. In other words, the convulsions of the 1990s were obvious by the next decade, but Gen Xers may not have gotten credit as the original job-hopping generation, making Gen Z the third line of “generation quit.”
Seeking greener pastures
Now, job hopping is one of many things that’s been said about Gen Z workers—whether about their ambition or their shrinking attention span, or the need for work-life balance. And while the desire to act on their priorities is stronger among this generation, they don’t always do it.
Think trends like “quiet quitting,” which originated on TikTok and became a phenomenon that many Gen Zers resonated with and found themselves in the center of—82% of them even said the idea appeals to them in a survey last year. But that number hasn’t translated into actual quits.
There’s also something to be said about the way Gen Z entered the workforce: The oldest of this generation is still early in their careers and has been impacted by the disruptions to work and education caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Those who entered the workforce during this time were imprisoned in endless virtual Zoom meetings. That, added to Gen Z’s urge to seek out their identity beyond the traditional 9-to-5 job, may have amplified their disengagement from work. Some of them are even being taught professional etiquette from scratch because of how the pandemic warped their relationship with work.
“Entering the workforce during the pandemic caused Gen Z to often rely on video interviews, miss out on internships, be the first generation to view ‘work-from-home’ as normal, and also work at in-person roles that were deemed essential,” Jack Dorsey, a Gen Z expert, and founder of The Center for Generational Kinetics, told Fortune.
Douglas Boneparth, president at Bone Fide Wealth, which specializes in advising young adults on financial matters, told Fortune that just like how much of the millennial generation bore witness to the Great Recession of 2008, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic was surely a big factor shaping Gen Z’s view of the workplace.
“[Millennials] got to look [at] how corporate America reacted to that event, and here’s Gen Z—they’re looking at the way corporate America was very accommodative during COVID with work from home,” he said. That has motivated many younger workers to work remotely and prioritize other parts of their life while remaining productive. And if the circumstances change, they’ll likely want to quit and find a more accommodative workplace.
It all coincided with a time when inflation began to soar, which could also be influencing the professional decisions of Gen Z employees. “Globally, employees are increasingly feeling cash-strapped as a cooling economy and inflationary challenges continue to impact workforce wallets,” PwC said in its report.
Many Gen Zers workers are barely making ends meet—30% of them have taken up two or more jobs, according to HR and payroll services company Paychex. A separate Deloitte report has found that the cost of living is a top concern for Gen Z, and half of them are getting by paycheck after paycheck—making higher pay a top motivator in the job search process.
Millennials and Gen Z both lack the safety nets their parents and grandparents had, Boneparth says. “So, if you’re no longer rewarded or being taken care of for working at the same place for 30-plus years, then where’s the motivation to really stick around?”
