3 in 4 Gen Z Do Not Want Fully Remote Work—A Temple Economist Explains
Only 23% of remote-capable Gen Z employees prefer fully remote work, compared with 35% of Millennials, Gen X, and Boomers, according to a 2025 Gallup report.
Surprisingly, more than three in four (77%) of the generation most closely associated with work-life balance and flexibility actually prefer some form of return-to-office arrangement—though not full-time in-office work.
Two major drivers behind this shift, according to Axios reporting, are:
- Loneliness: 27% of Gen Z professionals report feeling lonely at work—double the rate among Gen X.
- Limited career advancement opportunities.
A recent academic analysis of 50 million European job postings from 2018 to 2021 found that remote roles demanded 25% more skills on average, along with greater experience and higher credentials, than in-person positions. This places Gen Z at a dual disadvantage: they are more likely to feel isolated and stalled in their early careers while also facing steeper barriers when applying for remote jobs.
Is Remote Work Damaging Entry-Level Jobs?
As organizations continue to treat remote work as the default and champion flexibility, it is worth examining the full costs. Fully remote arrangements can support well-being and productivity for some employees, yet they carry clear downsides—particularly for early-career professionals. That helps explain why more than three in four Gen Z workers want to spend at least some time in the office.
Last week I spoke with Dr. Joshua Mask, an economist at Temple University and former recruiter. He recently published a study that separates the effects of AI on entry-level careers from those of remote work. AI-exposed jobs and remote-suitable roles often overlap because both tend to fall into white-collar categories, making it difficult to isolate causes. Mask therefore focused on data from 2020 to 2023—before AI began significantly disrupting the labor market—to measure remote work’s specific impact.
He found that teleworkable roles were associated with roughly a 2% decline in starting pay or salaries. That effect largely disappeared when workers later changed roles. Digging further into his findings, Mask shared this concern:
“What I do truly worry about is people starting out their career. Taking on more remote work, or a role that is 100% remote—I worry about the gap in training, the gap in socialization. There’s a lot you learn in the first few years that these students might be missing. Because of the socialization, more than anything else. And I say that in part because if AI automates tasks, it will be the work that doesn’t involve us interacting with one another.”
I asked what employers should keep in mind when creating openings to protect the pipeline of future talent.
What Employers Need to Consider Before Hiring Remotely
“The first thing they should recognize is that you want a pipeline,” Mask said. “In a former life I was a recruiter—that’s what got me into labor economics. I did it for about five years. Finding people is hard. Do not look at AI and think, ‘I can replace my whole business,’ because that’s not going to happen. Establish a pipeline.”
For organizations that still need to hire fully remote talent, Mask offered practical advice:
“Be mindful about how that pipeline is built. If you want the socialization piece, it doesn’t have to mean coming into the office every day, but it does require getting people in the same room together—retreats, for example. Not just for culture, but especially for new workers.”
Reflecting on his own experience, Mask recalled starting as a professor at Temple during the pandemic: “My colleagues weren’t here. Most were teaching online, so everybody was at home. My first experience was largely remote. I didn’t feel comfortable for about a year because I didn’t know anybody. It was very different from every other job I had.”
CEOs, he argues, should ask whether new employees can truly feel settled if they form no meaningful relationships. Employers must also close the training and feedback gap that remote work creates for younger workers.
“There’s going to be a gap in training feedback,” Mask noted. “You need either better ways to monitor tasks so you can give timely feedback, or more structured oversight from senior employees. These things happen naturally in an office: a junior worker gets stuck, walks over to a senior colleague, and figures it out together at the desk.”
These considerations are not minor. Responsible employers must deliberately design remote roles, structure support for early-career hires, and maintain enough in-office presence to mentor younger professionals. At the same time, Gen Z workers entering the market should set clear expectations about what they need from employers, how they plan to use their first opportunities to grow, and what trade-offs fully remote work may carry in the years ahead.