Gen Z Battles the Widening Pay Gap, 1 TikTok Post at a Time
Younger workers are taking to social media with details about their income--and tight budgeting--to battle secrecy about how much companies pay.
When people are asked how much they earn, most respond with some version of the indignant, age-old reply, "None of your damned business." Many budget-strapped Gen-Z workers are now making their income other people's business--and a social issue to boot. They're doing that by posting details about their wages, and budgeting to show how they do--and don't--cover their monthly expenses, in popular social media videos calling attention to the nation's yawning pay gap.
Members of the Gen-Z cohort--whose outlooks and attitudes have been shaped by the twin traumas of the 2008 financial crisis and the recent pandemic--have distinguished themselves from other age cohorts as they've entered the labor market. Some of those differences--including their relationships with superiors, engagement with work, and job expectations--have clashed with the habits of employers and older colleagues. Now, Gen Z's openness about income and personal finances is broaching questions in public that were once private, if not explicitly confidential. The consequences may benefit people of all ages who experience pay and wealth disparities.
The TikTok cadre of Gen-Z workers who've taken to the social media platform to detail their incomes and efforts to cover recurring expenses were featured in a Washington Post report Saturday. While those posts laying bare personal finances tend to surprise and shock older generations accustomed to keeping that information confidential, the paper described the videos' "radical pay transparency" content as intended to achieve two practical goals.
The first is to help other, largely lower-earning followers learn to budget limited incomes to cover monthly outlays--and, when possible, help save enough to set aside for extras or retirement.
The second is to provide comparative revenue information to people with few other means of gauging where their wages lie within widening U.S. pay differentials--a disparity that has increased, in part, thanks to longstanding social taboos against revealing salaries. Women and people of color are most prevalent among individuals both posting content and responding to creators, The Post said--reflecting how gender and race are often major factors in a lower payment for the same work.
One online contributor is Los Angeles resident Kristy Nguyen, who works as an Aldi supermarket manager, night security guard, and thriving content creator. She uses her own income, budgeting, and savings practices to help people manage theirs. The 23-year-old told The Post that Gen-Zers' decisions to reveal what they earn online is second nature, and that they do it to raise awareness about pay discrepancies in ways that would have never occurred to older, tighter-lipped cohorts.
"A lot of that shift has to do with the fact that we, as a younger generation, are more open on social media," Nguyen, 23, told The Post. "We feel like if we're more open and vulnerable about it, it can make a difference for other people."
But Gen Z's native ease with online disclosures--and what elders might consider over-exposure on social media--has also coincided with government actions to increase pay transparency.
Following Colorado's groundbreaking pay disclosure law in 2019, nine other states and several municipalities like New York City have passed similar legislation requiring companies to stipulate the salary range for each position opening they post. Some of those also demand businesses provide fuller wage and salary information applicable to job, gender, age, and ethnicity categories should labor authorities request it.
According to studies by labor market data company Revelio Labs, most companies have been good about complying with the laws. Analyses also found no evidence the measures had resulted in fewer job listings being published--an indication that companies might have been sidestepping external pay transparency by simply recruiting more internally.
Better still, some Revelio Lab findings suggest increased pay transparency laws led to more women being hired to management positions in states that passed them. Additionally, gender pay gaps for similar positions were also found to have decreased slightly in those states.
Back online, The Post noted not all people posting their income details, budgeting advice, and hacks for spending less are Gen-Zers, no modest earners. Some are middle-class or six-figure salaried Millennials whose own embrace of social media makes them less reticent about revealing details about their pay and financial lives--especially if that helps struggling people improve their own.
The report also cited General Mills marketing manager Ana Thompson, who got burned at a previous job when she accepted a lower salary than she deserved amid prevailing social discouragement of discussing pay. That experience has driven Thompson's ongoing efforts to promote greater transparency ever since, including through posts explaining to other people how she accumulated "a six-figure net worth at 25 ... by investing early and living below my means."
That's secret sharing even pre-internet generations can applaud.
Still, there's something distinctive to Gen Z's efforts to move the pay transparency needle--especially through social media. While it's true that the trend dovetails with the growing number of states and cities passing pay transparency laws, Andrea Johnson, director of state policy and strategy at the National Women's Law Center, says taking the disclosure effort to TikTok and Instagram marks a new, sharpened form of pressure to reduce pay disparity.
"Gen Z is saying, 'This is what we expect. We're not even going to apply to your job if you don't list it,'" Johnson told The Post. "Employers are realizing that this is where we're going."
In demographic terms, that's literally true. Because as Baby Boomers, Gen-X employees, and even Millennials head toward retirement with their more secretive attitudes on income in tow, greater numbers of Gen-Zers will be making sure what they're paid becomes everybody's damned business.
Photo Credit: Getty Images.
