Move over, boomers: America has a new generation of burnouts

How excited are you about your job these days? If you're feeling pretty bleh, you're right in line with most of your colleagues. Every year, Gallup surveys tens of thousands of Americans about their jobs, and the latest results reveal an exceptionally bummed-out workforce. Only 31% were engaged at work last year — the grouchiest reading in a decade.

That alone is worrying news for employers, who need their armies to be motivated. But there's an even more alarming detail in the report: The slump is driven by a deep disillusionment among young employees. That's a startling development, given that eager-eyed rookies are usually much more enthusiastic about their jobs than grizzled veterans. In fact, morale among those under 35 has tanked so much that they're now less engaged than their older colleagues — an inversion that hasn't happened since 2007.

The question is why. Two years ago, when the engagement gap first began to narrow, I argued that the main driver was likely the sudden spike in working from home. You'd think Gen Z would be the most remote-friendly generation, but survey after survey shows that 20-somethings actually have the lowest preference for working from home five days a week. Fresh out of school, they're more likely to rely on the office to make friends. They're also in need of the most mentoring, which doesn't happen as much over Zoom. Left to flail on their own, I concluded, they're less enthusiastic about their jobs.

Since my original story, though, I've begun to wonder if other factors are playing a role. For starters, the workplace feels increasingly chaotic and unfriendly these days. Employers have initiated deep layoffs, ordered remote workers to return to the office, and eliminated DEI programs designed to make work feel more equitable and inclusive. The whiplash has sown confusion: In Gallup's survey, only 40% of those under 35 say they know what's expected of them at work.

Adding to the uncertainty is the rise of AI. In a separate survey released this month, Gallup found that 78% of adults under 30 think AI will have a negative impact on job opportunities, compared with only 45% of those 65 and older. Such anxieties are bound to be demoralizing: If you think chatbots are going to usurp your job, why put in the effort to get better at it?

But I suspect that the biggest factor fueling Gen Z's engagement slump is something deeper than all of the turmoil of the past few years. What if young people are simply more clear-eyed than older generations about what they can expect from their jobs — and what work can't provide them? Maybe it's not that they're lazy or entitled. Maybe they're just unwilling to endure all the shitty stuff that comes with a job in return for an elusive payoff decades down the road.

Of course, work has always been a drag — difficult, dull, and demanding. That's why they call it work. But for previous generations, there were enticements that made the daily grind seem worth it. For boomers, the prize was a lifetime of job security. For Gen Xers, it was the prestige of a corner office. For millennials, it was fulfilling your true potential and making the world a better place. Whatever their dreams, each generation worked for years before they discovered that the rewards they'd been promised in return for their effort often turned out to be a mirage.

Gen Zers, on the other hand, seem to have grasped the transactional nature of work from the very outset. They don't have any of the naive expectations about employment that I did when I was their age. They've seen their parents work for years in soul-deadening jobs, only to wind up without enough to retire. They get that hustle culture is a one-way ticket to burnout. And they know that no amount of putting up with shit at work will protect them from being shitcanned. They're disengaged at work because they don't trust that they'll be rewarded for working.

That's why so many Gen Zers are focused on side hustles: They're so fed up with their employers that they'd rather be their own boss. It also explains why they're captivated by FIRE, the viral movement that's short for financial independence, retire early. Just a few years into their careers, they're already dreaming of the day they'll be free of them.

So what should employers do, given Gen Z's startling level of disengagement? First off, don't order everyone back to the office. As I wrote two years ago, research shows that RTO edicts only demoralize everyone even more. Instead, employers need to be more intentional about designing jobs to meet the needs of their junior staff. They can't leave things like mentoring and networking to chance, the way they did when the office forced everyone into proximity. They also need to provide employees with more predictability and stability, rather than swinging from extreme to extreme the way they've been doing with remote work and diversity initiatives. And to ease the AI anxieties of their young employees, companies should focus on implementing technology that assists their staff, as opposed to replacing them altogether.

All of these steps would help. But to truly engage their youngest workers, companies need to give them a concrete reason to be excited about their jobs. They can shape assignments to each employee's interests and goals as much as possible, and ways to vary the tasks within each role, so an employee isn't stuck doing the same thing over and over. They can crack down on toxic managers, and offer employees a little more freedom to choose how they do their jobs. And they can cultivate a corporate culture that encourages even entry-level employees to contribute ideas and provide feedback — something that will happen only if managers actually listen to everyone's input.

This isn't about catering to the whims of Gen Z. These are the tried-and-true ways, backed by decades of rigorous research, to create more engaging jobs for everyone, regardless of age. Making jobs more interesting will motivate the entire workforce. And there's nothing fluffy about making employees happy: A disengaged workforce is linked to all kinds of factors that hurt companies, including higher turnover, lower profits, and even customer dissatisfaction. Last year, Gallup estimated that low engagement is already costing businesses $9 trillion a year in lost productivity worldwide. If companies don't do something soon to address the brewing disengagement crisis, that's going to wind up feeling like chump change.

Aki Ito is a chief correspondent at Business Insider.