Gen Z is ready to leave their jobs in the dust.
Sixty-five percent of the generation plans to quit their job this year, according to new report by talent acquisition platform Lever that polled 1,200 full-time employed adults. That's way higher than the 40% of overall employees in the survey who plan to leave in less than a year.
It might be because Gen Z prioritizes different values at work. The survey also found that 42% of Gen Zers would rather be at a company that gives them a sense of purpose than one that pays more, while more millennials (49%) and Gen X (56%) would rather work for a company that pays more.
It's evidence of how Gen Z is entering the workforce on their own terms, demanding change with a new sense of boldness not seen in previous generations. As The New York Times' Emma Goldberg wrote last year, they're doing everything from delegating to their boss to working less once they've accomplished tasks for the day. Some of it is part of a "slow-up," a purposeful shift in slowing down productivity with the aim of a better work-life balance. And if it's not working for them, Gen Z has had no qualms about quitting their crappy jobs in favor of a better one.
The era of remote work gave Gen Z the upper hand in amplifying demands for workplace autonomy, Lauren Stiller Rikleen, president at Rikleen Institute for Strategic Leadership, previously told Insider. She added that their lives were turned upside down during an impressionable time.
"They had so much taken away from them in terms of access, you can go on and on with what has been lost," she said. "That reframes your thinking ... you start to think about what's important to you and how to express [that]."
Such rethinking explains why Gen Z is leading the way in what LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky called a "Great Reshuffle" back in October. His team found that job transitions on LinkedIn have increased by 54% year-over-year, with Gen Z's job transitions increasing by 80%.
The findings echoed data released earlier in 2021. In late July, a Bankrate survey found that nearly twice as many Gen Z and millennial workers than boomers planned to look for a new job in the coming year. In August, a study by Personal Capital and The Harris Poll found that two-thirds of Americans surveyed were keen to switch jobs. The majority of Gen Zers felt that way (91%), as did more than a quarter of millennials.
The recent data from Lever indicates that these trends won't be slowing down anytime soon. And there will be plenty of jobs waiting for them considering that openings ticked up in December.
It's a positive sign that Gen Z feels empowered to reshuffle, considering it once looked like the Class of 2020 might follow in the footsteps of the oldest millennials who graduated into a recession. Younger workers were hit hardest when the pandemic hit, entering an economy marked by a 14.7% unemployment rate, and 2021 grads had the hardest time finding a job last summer.
But fast forward two years and one short-lived recession, and Gen Z is seizing the workforce in a way that shows they've already bounced back.
