Most Gen-Z Employees See Traditional Career Paths Coming To An End

This article was written by Bruce Crumley and was originally published on Inc.com.

Many employers and co-workers have voiced exasperation at Gen-Zers’ reputed resistance—if not defiance—to conforming with traditional workplace roles and demands. New data indicates the workforce’s youngest members not only don’t plan on bending to that criticism, but even view the long-held business models those gripes are based on as doomed.

That view of traditional work and career paradigms being destined for the ash pile of history appears to explain many why many Gen-Zers are behaving in ways that alternatively confuse and annoy older colleagues. According to the latest Next Gen of Work report by freelance job platform Fiverr, its survey of 12,000 workers born between 1995 and 2012 found a majority saying the model of working one’s way through the corporate ranks will soon be sleeping with the fishes alongside cradle-to-grave employment. That view explains why many cohort members are not only disinclined to comply with workplace expectations and demands, but think conforming to a mold in order to keep a long-term job has become a road to nowhere.

As a result, a mere 18 percent of Gen-Z respondents cited ascending a profession with a single employer as a smart way of getting ahead in the world. Bolder still, over half of survey participants—or 54 percent of the total—predicted traditional employment itself will become obsolete in coming years. And only 14 percent of Gen-Zers questioned listed working for a well-known corporation as one of their career ambitions—furthering the cohort’s break with the tenets that dominated post-war employment.

Not illogically, many Gen-Zers who view career paths that older generations adhered to as living on borrowed time are instead creating alternatives to the 9-to-5, five-day week, working for a single employer models. As part of that, many of them are turning to income stacking—or generating multiple sources of revenue by juggling several professional activities. Fully 67 percent of Fiverr survey participants said they considered having an array of revenue sources as essential to attaining financial security.

But in addition to Gen-Zers’ (in)famous determination to blaze their own trails tailored to their personal interests—often at the expense of workplace conformity and harmony—there’s another factor driving their multi-activity alternative. The survey found many cohort members are haunted by worries that a single job and income won’t allow them to get by.

“Faced with economic uncertainty, Gen Z is experiencing what we’re calling ‘single-paycheck panic’—they’re diversifying income streams because relying on one job feels too risky,” said Michelle Baltrusitis, Fiverr’s associate director of community and social impact in comments on the survey results. “Instead of waiting for stability, they’re betting on themselves by embracing freelancing and building financial resilience as the smarter path forward.”

But Baltrusitis stresses that “Gen Z isn’t rejecting work, they’re redefining it.” The survey found respondents often start doing that even before quitting the full-time jobs they consider doomed. Nearly 40 percent of survey participants said they had or currently were taking on freelancing work in addition to 9-to-5 jobs they held down.

The reason for that transitioning? Nearly half of respondents cited not making enough money as their biggest career worry. In addition to whatever presumably insufficient salaries they were earning from full-time positions, many Gen-Z survey participants said external costs like high rents, increasing prices, and paying off student loans have made working just one job too risky.

And as they shift from a single job to the independence of juggling multiple gigs full-time, a large portion of Gen-Zers are adapting their use of artificial intelligence at work in ways that are also beneficial to their outside activities. Nearly 60 percent of respondents said they trust the tech to assume some of their professional responsibilities. Meanwhile, 20 percent or more of survey participants said they used apps for help in brainstorming their multiplying workflows, generating content, and improving creative ideas.

But even as they define what they consider post-modern work paradigms, the survey found Gen-Zers remained conscious of—and a bit hacked off by—the ways former and future co-workers viewed them.

Nearly a quarter of respondents said older colleagues were off base in considering members of the younger cohort as lazy. As an apparent reflection of their willingness to toil away alongside previous generations, just 17 percent of respondents listed early retirement as a career ambition.

That attitude may well earn Gen-Zers more respect from older colleagues, but they’d get even more props—plus heartfelt thanks—if they’d do something about the stare.