This is not a trait exclusive to Gen Z and I think the author of the article just wanted to be inflammatory, as they tend to do when pointing out these perceived generational differences.
The manufacturing industry I work in has a distinct lack of Gen Z applicants. Those that do apply tend to be 35+ and about half of them either don't show up for the interview or last about week and vanish. I work between three shops and there's a single Gen Z'er that I know of. He's someone's younger brother and seems temporary while he finishes school.
What none of these article authors seem to want to expose is how employers dug themselves into this situation by treating their workforce as a disposable commodity. If Gen Z is really ghosting as much as this article implies (for which I have seen zero evidence of in my Gen Z son and his friends, who all work) then I would question why Millennials and Gen X didn't do the same because let's face it; employers thinking we need them more than they need us is not a new problem by any stretch of the imagination.
If this is true (I would think it might be) it leads to an interesting questions: when the decisive moment comes, will they choose long-time relationships and property or freedom?
What do you mean by "deferred" pain? It's not like you can have illnesses, old age and death first so that you can enjoy your youth and middle age comfortably.
It's interesting that you would frame it as freedom rather than financial independence. Neither my wife nor my house has ever felt like a shackle to me.
Financial independence is the ultimate freedom; it's why everyone wants to be rich basically. Spouses can go either way on being dependents, children are more of the issue. Certainly equity in a house is a good thing, but getting onto the housing ladder gets ever harder and mortgage/taxes need to be continually serviced.
As others have pointed out, economically they may not have the choice of property.
& ""ghosting"" employers is undoubtedly driven by the requirement to do lots of applications. You hear of people with hundreds of applications in flight; keeping track of them is a job in itself.
93% ghost interviewees, although I would say that the number that interview and have then started to lead on either myself or someone I know before ghosting is probably higher.
87% randomly terminate employees, not based upon performance.
Hopefully they are not surprised when they get treated with contempt, but apparently it's only about 30% on employers who recognise that they treat the workforce badly.
I always love these corporate PR posts. "No one is loyal to us anymore, boohoo"...as if it started with the employees or as if 100,000 tech workers just decided overnight to be overemployed and quit.
I regularly see job postings for my position at rates that are 30-35% of what I earn. They don't disappear, I wonder if they are just harvesting personal data. In any case, I was once entertain the idea to apply just to see what kind of people they are and what conditions potential employees have to work under.
Posting jobs the company has no intention of filling should be considered felony fraud and prosecuted as such. It'll only take a couple of prosecutions before HR and hiring managers lose interest in playing that game. You don't even have to make the definition expansive; it can be narrowly focused, and most will still be unwilling to take the risk as whatever benefit they're currently receiving from it is magnitudes smaller than what they're stealing from candidates.
For those who think that's a bit excessive, consider the value of the cumulative time wasted by job applicants for positions that don't exist. If you embezzled that much money from your employer, it would be a felony. If an employer does it to job candidates, it's all honky-dory. It doesn't matter if the value to the employer was small, the value stolen was large.
And in this scenario is it also a felony for applicants to interview for jobs they have no intention of taking? Consider the value of the cumulative time wasted by employers.
Employers can afford to waste time. It’s their business. There has always been an asymmetry between employment seekers and employment offerers. It’s rare that a company will lose it’s lease when a job interview turns out to be a waste of time. But homelessness can be a real outcome for a seeker.
No, the legal system operates from what we decide it to. More importantly one of it’s roles is to help alleviate assymmetries of power, any use that does the opposite, I would argue, is a form of corruption. Now, someday labor may have more power than capital, and on that day I will make arguments siding with capital in this context.
Also it is a very bad faith argument to equate poor interviewing etiquette with theft of property.
> No, the legal system operates from what we decide it to.
Okay, so let's not decide that hiring managers should go on trial to prove the reason they didn't interview anyone for a job is not felony fraud but because they got busy, priorities changed, the right candidates didn't apply, they lost the budget for the position, etc. Morality about the power imbalance aside, it's wholly impractical to consider it punishable.
There are many benign reasons you might place a job ad and move on from it, just like you might get on a dating app and not respond to anyone. It sucks, but we the rejected can't be so fragile that we do anything but consider it a bummer and move on.
Anyone who has looked for a job knows the feeling of going through an interview and then never hearing back from the company. It's fine when the company wastes your time, but never ok when you waste the company's time.
I'm old enough to remember when the newspaper polemics were about how this new cartoon character of Bart Simpson indicated that GenX was strange and mysterious and didn't show enough respect for their parents.
That was Boomers complaining. These days, the majority of Boomers have reached state pension age, so they're probably not part of this specific issue.
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 72.7 ms ] threadThe manufacturing industry I work in has a distinct lack of Gen Z applicants. Those that do apply tend to be 35+ and about half of them either don't show up for the interview or last about week and vanish. I work between three shops and there's a single Gen Z'er that I know of. He's someone's younger brother and seems temporary while he finishes school.
What none of these article authors seem to want to expose is how employers dug themselves into this situation by treating their workforce as a disposable commodity. If Gen Z is really ghosting as much as this article implies (for which I have seen zero evidence of in my Gen Z son and his friends, who all work) then I would question why Millennials and Gen X didn't do the same because let's face it; employers thinking we need them more than they need us is not a new problem by any stretch of the imagination.
Big "my bank says I can't afford $1200 a month for a mortgage so I pay $1750 a month in rent" energy
& ""ghosting"" employers is undoubtedly driven by the requirement to do lots of applications. You hear of people with hundreds of applications in flight; keeping track of them is a job in itself.
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2021/10/05/rising-...
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2019/11/06/marriag...
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/11/19/growing-s...
https://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2023/childfree-study-confirmed...
93% ghost interviewees, although I would say that the number that interview and have then started to lead on either myself or someone I know before ghosting is probably higher.
87% randomly terminate employees, not based upon performance.
Hopefully they are not surprised when they get treated with contempt, but apparently it's only about 30% on employers who recognise that they treat the workforce badly.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/google-lays-off-thousands-mor...
> No one is loyal to us anymore, boohoo
Indeed, trust goes both ways.
Oh no!
>..with 75% of workers
Wow!
>..saying they’ve ignored a prospective employer in the past year.
Oh.. who cares.
For those who think that's a bit excessive, consider the value of the cumulative time wasted by job applicants for positions that don't exist. If you embezzled that much money from your employer, it would be a felony. If an employer does it to job candidates, it's all honky-dory. It doesn't matter if the value to the employer was small, the value stolen was large.
(AI will of course make this worse on both sides)
Also it is a very bad faith argument to equate poor interviewing etiquette with theft of property.
Okay, so let's not decide that hiring managers should go on trial to prove the reason they didn't interview anyone for a job is not felony fraud but because they got busy, priorities changed, the right candidates didn't apply, they lost the budget for the position, etc. Morality about the power imbalance aside, it's wholly impractical to consider it punishable.
There are many benign reasons you might place a job ad and move on from it, just like you might get on a dating app and not respond to anyone. It sucks, but we the rejected can't be so fragile that we do anything but consider it a bummer and move on.
Well, not so much slaves to work, but get so little leeway from corporations that own us. It's not like we like it.
We need a shift in our relationship with employers and they will help us.
Newsflash: boomers treating everyone with complete contempt and disregard get feelings hurt when treated the way they treat others. Boo fucking hoo.
That was Boomers complaining. These days, the majority of Boomers have reached state pension age, so they're probably not part of this specific issue.