Gen Z puts high priority on jobs with meaning, purpose, but sees daunting hurdles 

Seventy-nine percent of Gen Z want a job mainly focused on helping people or making a positive difference in others’ lives. But only about half of workers in that 18-29 age bracket who want such a position say they have one. 

Those are the findings of a new report from the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Making Caring Common project, in collaboration with Gallup and the Walton Family Foundation. The survey examines what members of Gen Z want from their work and how it affects their emotional well-being.

The data, taken from a representative sample of 2,436 people born 1997-2012, goes against popular stereotypes, according to Richard Weissbourd, faculty director of Making Caring Common and a senior lecturer at HGSE. 

“Gen Z is often characterized — in my mind, cartooned — as selfish and lazy, as not wanting to really invest in anything deeply. So I was really surprised, partly because of this misconception, to see that 79 percent of our respondents report that they wanted to have a job in the future that was mainly focused on helping other people,” Weissbourd said. “It was just a very high percentage. And it’s not just talk. Many Gen Zers are taking concrete actions based on their desire to do good, according to Deloitte surveys, such as choosing companies based on their social impact.”

In this interview, edited for length and clarity, Weissbourd explains why helping Gen Z find meaningful work could have a big impact both on the culture and in the lives of the young adults — and why there may be some good news on the horizon. 

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Gazette: What kinds of jobs do Gen Z find meaningful? 

Richard Weissbourd: We asked two different questions: whether they found their jobs meaningful, and whether their job was primarily focused on helping other people. 

Among Gen Zers who told us they found their jobs meaningful, about twice as many (84 percent) worked in jobs focused on helping people — such as jobs in healthcare, education, and the military, as those who did not work in these kinds of jobs (44 percent).

In response to an open-ended question about where they find meaning at work, we also found that many Gen Zers focused on those aspects of their jobs that helped others, such as a dishwasher who finds meaning in playing an important role in providing people food or a retail sales worker who finds meaning in helping people find clothes that make them feel good about themselves.

So I think two things are true. One is that a lot of young people want a job that’s directly helping others, like a job in healthcare or social work or teaching. But also, many young people are finding meaning in the aspects of their jobs that involve helping others, even if it might not be as obvious. 

This research only spoke to Gen Zers. So this can’t really tell us how Gen Z compares to other generations, is that right? 

That’s correct. From this and other data, there isn’t clear evidence that this generation is more altruistic or more socially active than other generations in general, but there certainly isn’t clear data showing that they’re less altruistic or less socially active. 

What’s different among Gen Zers who report feeling purpose and meaning in their lives? 

Over half of Gen Zers report mild (30 percent), moderate (18 percent), or severe (10 percent) anxiety and depression, and a whopping 70 percent of Gen Zers over 18 report mild to severe anxiety and depression. But those who say they have felt a sense of meaning or purpose in their lives in the past month are much less likely to report symptoms of anxiety and depression than those who do not feel their life has felt meaningful or purposeful. 

Meaning and purpose are the deep engines of our lives. They provide this deep gratification that’s beyond hedonism, beyond temporary joy. We can talk about banning cellphones in schools, which I think is a good thing, and providing more therapists, which I also think is a good thing, but my guess is that helping other people and making a positive difference in others’ lives is significantly more likely to strengthen Gen Zers’ mental health than those other strategies.

You found that just over half of Gen Z adults (56 percent) who want a job mainly focused on helping people have one. When asked about perceived barriers to taking those jobs, many of them said they perceived care-oriented jobs to be low-paying and emotionally draining. Are they right? 

They are right in the sense that a lot of these jobs aren’t affordable. I mean, if you want to be a childcare worker or preschool provider in a city like Boston or New York, it’s very tough. We need to figure out ways to pay people more, reduce housing costs, provide loan forgiveness for people in helping professions in under-resourced areas, et cetera.

Certainly there are helping jobs in ed tech, philanthropy, and other industries that pay well. But we should also be creating-less expensive pathways into careers in healthcare and education. 

The emotionally draining aspect is interesting to me. These jobs can certainly be emotionally draining, yet in our data, when people feel they’re making a positive difference in other peoples’ lives, they also report less anxiety and depression. Teaching, for example, can be very depleting, but it’s also very gratifying for a lot of people. Both of these are true. 

So is it fair to say that Gen Zers see helping jobs as a nice-to-have in principle, but only as long as they can pay their bills? 

It’s possible. Here’s one finding that speaks to that question. We asked people: “You have a job that provides you with a feeling of meaning and purpose. You’re offered a new job that has double the salary but will have significantly less meaning and purpose. Would you take it?” 

To summarize, people were roughly split: 46 percent said they would take the higher-paying job, 28 said they would keep the meaningful job, and 26 said it would depend on the specifics. 

Now, when we dug a little deeper, we found that perceived financial security clearly mattered. No matter their actual income, adult Gen Zers who felt financially insecure were more likely to take the higher-paying job (53 percent) compared to those who were living very well (41 percent). But a significant number of people with low financial security are also taking up helping jobs. So it’s a complicated picture.

With an aging population in need of care and potential AI disruptions to knowledge-economy jobs, is this a rare moment where this population’s desire for helping jobs could align with where the economy is headed? 

Yes. I’m not an expert in the economy, but I can say a very common view is that we’re shifting from an economy that values information and knowledge to an economy that values interpersonal skills, social-emotional skills, and the capacity to care for other people.

In healthcare, for example, you can imagine AI taking over a lot of the knowledge functions that a hospital might rely on, freeing up more people to do really high-quality patient care. The gist of it is that this is a time when what young people are interested in and what the economy demands may rhyme.