‘My generation’s not working, AI will soon take all of our jobs‘ – The Times

It’s not just me. When I spoke to a friend about her first job working as a receptionist at a bank, she told me how difficult she found taking off mental health days. “After a period of incredible anxiety caused by forces outside my control, mostly the constant influx of terrifying global news, I finally convinced myself that I should take one,” she said. “But when I eventually took the day off, I felt so guilty that I couldn’t relax and help myself. When I wanted to go on a walk in the fresh air, I was so terrified that one of my colleagues would see me that I spent the day in bed even more anxious than I was before, perpetuating this cycle of stress.”

Although she worked up the courage to tell her boss about the issue, like many in her position my friend still felt embarrassed and didn’t want her co-workers to know.

A similar sentiment is shared by a lawyer friend of mine, who believes that companies need to normalise the use of mental health days. “There’s a stigma around mental health, especially in my industry, so when employees feel overwhelmed or emotionally unwell they often use physical health issues as a cover or don’t take the time off at all,” he explains. “This allows the problem to fester and can lead to people having to take an extended period of time off.”

Shame around mental state is not limited to corporate jobs. We live in a world where new portfolio careers such as influencer are mainstays of our generation yet so much of that work is undefined and hard-won. Although it’s creative, it makes people question their worth (notched up in visible likes) and compare themselves.

• Demystify the workplace for anxious Gen Z

Another friend, who is a freelance artist, explains how hard she finds not being able to “clock in and out”. “When I’m not productive I can be incredibly hard on myself,” she says. “There’s no one I have to directly answer to, except for me, but this can be extremely overwhelming and cause me to become anxious.”

This is something I can relate to myself. In addition, we enter the workforce armed with the knowledge that we are already redundant as the threat of AI taking over our jobs looms. For many in our parents’ generation, employment signified stability, financial independence and the promise that one day you’d be able to afford a home to raise children in. Now the standard timeline of adulthood (without the need for significant financial assistance) feels like a distant dream.

‘I blame the internet’

Charlie Aslet, 24

Every week, it seems, a study comes out about the lethargy of Gen Z in the workplace. First we didn’t want a job. Now when we’ve got a job, it’s too difficult for us to keep. While I sympathise profoundly with the plight of the Gen Zer worked to the very bone as they work from home, spare a thought for the Gen Zer like me who sits at the side of the road handing out CVs to each and every passerby. When’s it my turn to get a job?

This comes after a study by PwC found that 10 per cent of the overall workforce are considering leaving the job market altogether. Gen Z was the group most at risk of giving up on work for good, with mental health issues a “major driver” for young people being out of work. Those aged between 18 and 24 are 40 per cent more likely to cite mental health concerns than older respondents. Now the government plans to crack down on minor mental health benefits claims too.

Having graduated from university last year I have taken some time to try and figure out what I want to do with my life. At 24, I’m lucky that I live at home and have not yet been evicted by my parents. I tutor so that I can buy the occasional drink and I pay my rent in household chores. But now that I have finally realised what I want to do, I’m applying for media jobs like a madman. It has become a bit of an obsession. I don’t eat, I don’t sleep. I am king of the cover letter.

So I’m slightly baffled that there are young people who have jobs but don’t actually want them. In fact, not only do they not want them but they have also been so traumatised by the experience of working that they have decided to crash out of the job market altogether. Give them to me, for Pete’s sake. I’ll do it!

• Social media is too toxic and addictive, say Gen Z

I have friends (consultants, trainee lawyers) who tell me to enjoy my freedom. The working world is a cold plunge after the comfort of university. But frankly I’d rather take my chances in the workplace. I appreciate their solicitations but it’s about as reassuring as being told after a break-up that they were ugly to begin with and there are plenty more fish in the sea. I’m in no state of mind to be told to enjoy my freedom — I need structure and I need to be able to tell people at parties that I do something.

Of course, in the most Gen Z manner possible my TikTok has caught up with me. My feed shows me videos of people weeping about getting rejected from working at Tesco when they have a PhD or complaining about the horrors of ATS, the AI software that automatically (and seemingly arbitrarily) filters your CV before a human eye glances at it. At least I’m not alone.

As with many things, I choose to blame the internet. It has created a paradox of choice for the young person. It’s easier than ever to apply for jobs through the likes of LinkedIn’s Easy Apply, which can send your CV off in a couple of clicks. This creates the false impression that the jobs themselves are easy to get. But let me tell you, they ain’t. Or maybe that’s just a “me” problem.

That’s obviously not to say that you have to enjoy a job when you get one or that you can’t complain about your overbearing boss. But having experienced the Sisyphean task of sending out endless job applications, I know I’ll never complain about having an actual job.

‘We’re dismissed as vain and silly’

Lotte Brundle, 25

My generation lack drive. We are lazy, can’t commit to anything and wouldn’t know the meaning of hard work if it slapped us across the face. You can stop right there because I have heard it all before.

People of all generations have been bashing Gen Z since we hopped on to the scene with our TikTok videos and our mocha frappuccinos. We have been dismissed as vain, silly and ridiculous by none other than the generation that raised us. People of all ages love to play the blame game. It helps us get by to think that there’s something strange, bizarre or even deviant about the cohort that came before or after us. It takes away accountability.

So a quarter of Gen Zers consider quitting work entirely. You’re telling me that if we hooked 100 people from my parents’ generation, the baby boomers, up to lie detector machines and asked them if they’d even considered jacking it all in and living off the state, they’d honestly say no, even if they thought they genuinely could have done so?

They are a group of people who universally love to work 9-5 each day without question, then … not one of them even a little bit of a dosser? Not one of them struggling so badly that the option to quit would have been a game-changer? I don’t think so.

In fairness, perhaps back then quitting work because of your mental health was done less — it wasn’t as societally acceptable. But it is not my generation that is lazy. We’re just being blamed, as usual, for living in a different society from that of our parents — just as generations of young people before us have been blamed by those who thought they would have done things differently. It’s the natural pecking order.