Last Sunday, the New York Times published insights gleaned through a 12-person Gen Z “focus group.“ Now, I do question whether the insights of 12 people should be considered representative of a population of more than 50 million, let alone newsworthy.
Nonetheless, much of what was reported echoes what I’ve seen in my research of tens of thousands over the past decade, as well as what I’ve heard from my Gen Z colleagues and students: feeling hopeless and that the system is simply against them.
But the article misses the real story, stopping short of asking the harder, more important questions: Why is this happening, and what can actually be done about it?
While I could write a book on this topic, I’m going to leave it at three things that I believe are worth knowing.
This is not to dismiss Gen Z’s frustrations, but to give them and the people who hire and teach them something useful to work with.
1. The Doom-Scroll Trap
Both in the job market and in how they see their broader financial future, many Gen Z workers have bought into a narrative of doom. And it’s hard to blame them. It’s everywhere — in their social feeds, in their group chats, in the algorithmic content designed to keep them scrolling.
But here’s the thing: tough job markets are not new.
When I graduated in the early 1990s, as a Gen Xer, I walked into the aftermath of a recession. Jobs were scarce and many, including me, took what we could get and built our career from there. The economy was shaky, but unless I turned on the nightly news or picked up a newspaper, I didn’t hear about it much. It was tough, but it wasn’t an obsessive loop.
Then there’s Millennials. They graduated into the worst job market since the Great Depression — mass unemployment, corporate bankruptcies, home foreclosures on a staggering scale. But even then, the media cycle was different. News cycles were more focused on the broader economic meltdown than on the career anxiety of a 22-year-old. Social media was tethered to a laptop and had yet to become the 24/7 doom engine it is today.
Gen Z has come of age in a genuinely turbulent era. I don’t minimize that. But the media environment has changed the experience of that turbulence in a profound way.
The hunt for attention-grabbing headlines and the obsession with generational culture wars have turned a difficult job market into what feels like an apocalypse. When every scroll brings another article about how your generation is doomed, it’s easy to internalize that story. And once you internalize it, it becomes hard to muster the energy and optimism that a real job search demands.
This isn’t about telling Gen Z to “just think positive.” It’s about recognizing that the information environment itself is making a hard situation feel impossible. Stepping back from the doom scroll might just be one of the most practical career moves.
2. The Dating App Mentality
The vast majority of Gen Z job seekers I talk with tell me the same thing: “I’ve applied to hundreds of jobs and heard nothing back.” I see this same story over and over in articles like the Times piece. But that’s only the surface.
What does “applying” actually look like?
For many Gen Z (and other generations for that matter!), applying is little more than the equivalent of swiping right on a dating app. One click. Maybe a quick glance at the job description. Resume uploaded. Move on to the next. On repeat. It feels like effort, without the discomfort and risk of actual human interaction.
And just like on dating apps, this mindless volume approach yields high numbers, low intent, and a growing feeling that nobody wants you.
Getting hired today requires some old-school tactics. That doesn’t mean dusting off a typewriter and going snail mail. But it does mean replacing volume with targeted intent.
Instead of 200 blind applications, pick five jobs and pursue them like a courtship. Go after the job like you actually really want it. Figure out who the hiring manager is. Use your network to find people who work at the company now, or who have in the past, even friends of friends count. Research the company well enough that your outreach is personal, not mass-produced.
As one 28-year-old in the Times piece put it bluntly: getting hired today comes down to “who you know.” That’s not new. What’s new is that most candidates don’t make the effort to figure out who they may have connections with, or to build those relationships in the first place.
By shifting from a transactional “swipe” to a relationship-driven approach, job seekers can bypass the AI resume filters and build the kind of trust that actually gets people hired. But, I wonder if this kind of effort — targeted, personal, relentless — is the “hustle” mentality that many in the Times piece seemed to reject.
3. A Different Kind of Entitlement
This one is going to be uncomfortable, but it needs to be said.
AI is eliminating jobs that enable mediocrity. At the same time, Gen Z has come of age in an educational system that has become less demanding. These two trends are on a collision course.
The softening didn’t happen overnight. Educational institutions, already reshaped by the helicopter parenting tactics of the millennial era, had been loosening standards for years. COVID accelerated it dramatically. Grade inflation surged while expectations around rigor, deadlines, and accountability dropped.
Concern about student mental health — legitimate concern, worth taking seriously — was sometimes used as a reason to lower the bar rather than to build better support systems alongside high standards. It doesn’t help that instructors are increasingly evaluated on student feedback, creating the same perverse incentive we see in medicine, where doctors rated on patient satisfaction scores may prioritize keeping the patient happy in the moment over delivering the harder treatment that actually heals them.
The result? Many students are leaving college less prepared than they realize. They’ve been told they’re doing well. Their grades say they’re doing well. But the gap between what their transcript promises and what the job market demands is wider than ever.
This isn’t just a university problem. It runs through K-12 as well. But at least in K-12, students and their families generally aren’t paying tens of thousands of dollars a year for the privilege.
None of this is the fault of individual Gen Z students. They didn’t design these systems. But they are the ones living with the consequences, and they deserve to know the truth about the gap they’re facing so they can become part of the solutions in helping to close them.
What Now?
The NYT focus group captured something real: a generation that feels locked out of the economy they were promised. That feeling is valid. The job market is genuinely hard for entry-level workers.
But articles like the New York Times piece too often stop at the emotion without pushing into what’s actually driving it, and more importantly, what individuals can do about it today.
Stop swiping. Start courting. Step away from the doom scroll.
Speaking as someone who now works inside a university: we need to take a hard look in the mirror. I see the gap every day between what we think students are ready for and what the working world actually expects. And those demands are shifting fast. Students can’t judge the quality of their preparation until the working world tests it. That’s on us. Closing the gap starts with educators, many of whom haven’t spent enough time on the other side to see how wide the chasm has gotten.
Gen Z, you’re not powerless here. Seek out the honest feedback your institutions may not have given you. Find mentors who will tell you the truth. Build skills on your own, not because it’s fair that you have to, but because the people who close their own gaps are the ones who pull ahead.
There are real problems, but no generation has ever gotten ahead by waiting for the system to fix itself. To become part of the solution, Gen Z needs to take some pages from the old playbook. Not to go backward, but to get to the other side.