Gen Z, millennials struggle with ‘adulting’ more than their parents did: poll

Young adults are having a hard time embracing the “adult.”

A new survey revealed that Gen Z and millennial adults are facing more difficulties than their parents did when it comes to achieving milestones in the workforce.

Of the 1,039 young adults surveyed, aged between 18 and 34, 55% said it’s “much harder” to buy a home, 44% said it’s harder to find a job, and 55% said it’s harder to get promoted, according to a Youth & Money in the USA poll by CNBC and Generation Lab.

However, 40% of those people said it’s easier for them to seek out economic opportunities that don’t rely on traditional employment.

“This is purely a snapshot of what young people perceive their lives to be like compared to their parents,” said Cyrus Beschloss, founder of Generation Lab, an organization that built the largest respondent database of young people in America.

But the non-traditional opportunities aren’t necessarily a negative outlook. It might not provide stability, but it can offer “glimmers of optimism … in spite of pessimism about the nation and the world,” Beschloss added.

It’s largely believed that younger generations hop around from job to job — but the study found that that’s not the case, with 43% feeling loyal to their employers.

“We have this perception of the Gen Z worker sort of cynically trudging into work, cashing the paycheck so they can have a good quality of life and ‘quiet quit’ and do all these other things,” Beschloss said.

About 50% believe that inflation will affect their finances in the future, which could be a result of the current economic climate.

However, while a majority (63%) have faith in the stock market, the 37% who think otherwise are likely swayed by their childhood, which may have “blazed a huge crater in their brain when it comes to their confidence in the stock market,” Bechloss said.

“Experiencing the financial crisis in 2008 as a child is probably a very formative experience,” Blair duQuesnay, lead advisor at Ritholtz Wealth Management in New Orleans, added. “I’ve spoken to Gen Z investors who remember their parents losing their job or losing their house.”

But Beschloss said that despite the concerns, there is “hope in this data.”

Sixty-eight percent of respondents believe they have less than $20,000 in overall debt, and 65% said student loan debt isn’t preventing them from getting married, starting a family or buying a home — which duQuesnay said is “promising to hear.”

While it might seem as though these generations are struggling solely because of the outcomes of the COVID-19 pandemic, duQuesnay said that the nature of the working world was changing before that.

“The baby-boom generation went to work for a corporation and, for a lot [of] cases, stayed in one job for their entire career and retired with a pension — that doesn’t exist anymore,” duQuesnay, a CNBC Financial Advisor Council member, said.