Why Gen Z is getting fired after being hired | The Excerpt

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:04]A recent headline is raising questions about the youngest workers in the [music] labor force, Gen Z. Some employers say they're hiring Gen Z employees only to let them go within months, citing [music] gaps in communication, professionalism, and workplace readiness. But this kind of criticism isn't exactly new. Previous generations faced similar labels when they first entered the workforce. even as the nature of work itself was shifting. So, what's really going on here? Is this a Gen Z problem or a workplace problem? Hello and welcome to USA Today's the Excerpt. [music] I'm Dana Taylor. Here to dig into Gen Z and how they can be successful in the labor force in the age of AI is Susie Welch, professor at NYU's Stern School of Business. So, good to speak with you, Susie.

[00:00:51]>> Thanks for having me. The unemployment rate for recent college grads per the latest data released by the Federal Reserve of New York at the end of 2025 is 5.7%. That's roughly a point and a half higher than it is for other age cohorts. Why do you think that is?

[00:01:09]>> Well, uh it's fluence of events. Um I was with a student who came to my office the other day. She's got a degree in computer science. She's very good at math and she cannot find a job and she was in such a state of despair. There's a I just want to put a human face to these numbers. And she was a very talented young woman. And I said to her, I think you're going to have to open your aperture about the jobs that you're looking at. She's looking for what the conveyor belt would typically dump her at. You know, there's a conveyor belt when you've got a certain degree and the conveyor belts went to certain jobs and there's just so there's softness in those jobs as employers are reluctant to hire thinking that AI might um be able to do these uh entry- level jobs and so they are moving more slowly and then they have been um a bit burned by their AI by their Gen Z hires as we know and so I think that there's a lot of there's structural reasons and there's very modern reasons about what's going on. I want to turn now to Jenz's ability to keep jobs once they've been hired. A recent survey by intelligent.com that made headlines says that six and 10 employers say they're letting Gen Z hires go within months. What does that stat actually tell us and what's missing from it?

[00:02:17]>> I think that stat tells us the truth.

[00:02:18]What's going on? And I have a I have an interesting perspective on it perhaps um which is that um I have interesting research that might shed some light on it. I teach two classes at NYU. One is management, the the classic management class that you would have at any business school. And then I also teach a class called uh becoming you, which is a class that helps students figure out what they should do with their life, which my timing on teaching that class was quite preient coming out of the pandemic. For this class, the premise is that your purpose in life lies at the intersection of your values, your aptitudes, and your interests. So with that as I said I'll say that I end up end up creating a tool called the values bridge which um uh discerns and rank orders individuals values from 1 to 16.

[00:03:00]It's fully scientifically validated test and in the past year about 200,000 people have taken it and so we are able to cut this very large data set by generation and I um cut the the data to find out what gen's values were. Um, and once I had that list, I did a second survey interviewing hiring managers, um, 25,000 hiring managers over the ages of 40 who manage more than five people. And we asked them, what are the values that you're looking for in the Gen Z people that you're hiring? And I got that list.

[00:03:31]And then I cross referenced that data.

[00:03:33]And what it showed is that only 2% of Gen Z has the values that hiring managers want and are looking for. So what ends up happening in my um estimations is a staggering number, 2%.

[00:03:46]Staggering. And I think when people say, "Oh, this has happened in previous generations." The young folks come along and the old folks say, "That's not the way I was." Yeah, that's true, but not at this magnitude. 98% um do not have the values that hiring managers are looking for. Only 2% do.

[00:04:04]That's crazy uh magnitude. And so what's happening is they're getting them in.

[00:04:09]They're seeing if they can change them.

[00:04:10]when they don't change them, they say had enough of this and out they go. Um, and I think that's what's what we're seeing. So, just to be more specific, Jenz's top three values. Number one is uh what we call um in the in the survey udimonia. That's self-care. It's the Greek word for flourishing. When I use the word self-care, usually people's heads explode. So, I just use this more neutral name udemonia, but it does mean self-care, personal flourishing, recreation, and leisure. Their second value is voice, which is authentic self-expression. They want to be themselves at all time. and uh they want to um be very authentic in the workplace. And their number three value is um helping others, which is a beautiful and noble value. For hiring managers, the number one value that they're looking for is achievement, the desire to win. The number two value that they're looking for is work centrism, the desire to work. And the number three value that they're looking for is scope, which is theire desire for learning and activity and adventure, which would generally I would translate in the workplace as travel. So, um, uh, you that's a gigantic mismatch in values.

[00:05:10]And that's what we're seeing play out.

[00:05:12]And because the market is favoring the buyer, uh, the employer right now, not the seller, the employee, the buyer is saying, "I'm not liking this. I'm returning it to the store and I'm going to go look for a model that I like better." So, when we look at employers, what they're saying Jenzie workers aren't doing, aren't meeting expectations, what are they specifically pointing to? What's the gap that Gen Z needs to or maybe this is on employers as well, but what's the gap the common gap that you're hearing about?

[00:05:46]>> The gap is just look at the numbers again. The gap is that employers want workers to care about winning and working and Jenzie employees care about self-care and individuality. So that's the gap and it shows up every day in kind of minor ways is like the bosses are at the office early and they stay late and they care if they win or lose a client and they uh are worried about competition and how money is spent and Gen Z's uh basically saying I don't like those rules. Those were your values and I they didn't work out so well for your generation. I'm not going to buy them.

[00:06:19]My parents had those values and they got unemployed at age 54. One thing I will say is that my area of of research involves values expression which is how these values play out in the real world and I am not a specialist at all in values formation. So I don't I I can only report these statistics. I can't tell you how Gen Z came to their values but I teach Gen Z day in and day out.

[00:06:42]And so I asked them, hey, why is it that achievement, okay, the achievement is the value and work centism is are is another value that employers want for Gen Z, achievement is number 12 as a value and work centrism is number 13.

[00:06:57]All right? So they do not value these things that the oldsters like myself and and most hiring um managers want. And look, I want to say I love Jenz. I I I teach them. I I know them personally. I I uh I there's wonderful wonderful things about them. I don't want I'm not part of the hate genz um you know dynamic out there. Um but there definitely is a a gap between the ways they want to act at work and the ways their managers want them to act. Jinzy is a first generation to enter the workforce after the pandemic which was of course a major disruption in their education as well as to how we work. How much has that shaped things like communication, confidence, or expectations?

[00:07:40]>> I don't know how much the pandemic had to do with it. To tell you the truth, I really don't. I mean, the pandemic was a gigantic disruption, but so was the bombing of London during World War II, and people got back to it. So, I do think that, you know, my area of specialty is um not values formation.

[00:07:56]But I do think that one thing that happened during um the pandemic was people got this in the zeitgeist like why would I postpone joy thing why would I postpone self-care the world could just blow up at any moment and um they also got um accustomed to living their lives in front of their computer and not being in the workplace and so then uh when work then said well hey we'd like you to postpone joy and pleasure and leisure and we'd like you to come into the office they were like but I the other way. Um, and I don't want to uh I don't want to conform to these uh old uh rules.

[00:08:33]>> We're hearing a lot about what Gen Z needs to do to improve. What are employers getting wrong right now when it comes to hiring and supporting young workers?

[00:08:43]>> Let me just back up for one quick second to your question, which is I want to say I don't recommend anybody try to change their values. So, I don't think that Jenzi is quote unquote getting it wrong.

[00:08:52]I would never tell somebody go change your values. go get the value of achievement. Your values are your values. And so I think that what they need to do is adjust their expectations about where they're going to work. So if they keep their values, which they should, they are those are their values.

[00:09:06]Nobody should change their values. They have to understand there's consequences and they're not going to have the kinds of jobs that perhaps their college degrees prepare them for. Now, as for what employers should do, it depends if employers want to employ the 2% or the 98%. So the very good firms want to employ the 2% and as as CEOs um I heard from a lot of CEOs after my article ran in the Wall Street Journal about this data um and they all said well it's a cage match isn't it for the 2%. And so companies are going to fight to the um tooth and nail to get that 2%. And the other companies I don't know if they're going to conform. It's very hard to compete when you've got employees who don't care about competition and it's very hard to get work done when you have employees who don't want to work. And so maybe they'll conform, but I I think as long as it's a buyer market, which it is, uh, with unemployment numbers the way they are, I don't know. So you mentioned AI, and I want to dig into that a little more deeply and look at how it's playing into this equation.

[00:10:03]There's a lot of reporting that for Gen Z, including recent graduates, entry-level jobs have been replaced by AI. And so there's a fundamental lack of opportunity to learn the soft skills that a white collar employee needs. Do you think that's true?

[00:10:18]>> Well, AI is definitely a foot in terms of like being able to do everything that entry level or many things that entry level employees did. I mean, I had a I have a person from my own team who created an agent that did her job and uh a data scientist literally created an agent who now does her entire job.

[00:10:35]Luckily, we had other work for her, but um I have a company that I um that I run myself and so that's what I'm referring to, not as a professor. So I do think this this is uh this is a gigantic structural problem that we're going to face into. And it's true that when you're in these entry- level jobs, you do learn some soft skills. You learn collaboration. You learn communication.

[00:10:55]And so but it's also the the working remotely. I ask my students every semester who wants to work in the office 5 days a week, I get two people. And then when I get down to four days a week, that's like five people. And then finally when I'm sort of like who wants to who wants to be remote? Um, it's almost, you know, it's it's 80% of the people and if you're not, you know, talking to people and going out to lunch and somebody comes into the office and they don't look the same. They've got kind of a cast of their face. You you don't see that and you don't go into their office and say, "Hey, is everything okay? I noticed you're not yourself." Yeah. Hey, I just found out that my dog's sick and you know, you just don't develop all of these skills that you need to advance. And it's uh and yet uh that's a very hard case to make to Jenz. Like when I say to Jenzie, you've got to be there. you got to be in the office. They just say not anymore.

[00:11:42]You know, there's there's really no reason for it. You you dinosaur you. Uh and that's their view.

[00:11:48]>> For companies that are successfully hiring and retaining Gen Z employees, what are they doing differently? They're hiring the 2%. That's what they're doing. Those companies, that's JP Morgan, that's Goldman Sachs, that's Bane. I mean, they're h they they're looking for the 2% and they're hiring them because then they don't have the values disconnect. Okay? They just don't. Um, and so they are right off to the races. I I I uh I think that's what's happening. So you see the companies that are doing it, they're they're it's all in the hiring. They know exactly what they're looking for.

[00:12:20]That test that I mentioned, the values bridge, I can't tell you how many of these good companies are using it as part of the hiring process. They are looking and ascertaining. I can't decide how people have used the test. Anybody can take it. But I mean more and more we are seeing uh you know these large banks and these large companies using it during the interview process. So they're they're hiring very carefully for values.

[00:12:41]>> Susie, for Jenzers who are listening to this conversation right now, what's your biggest piece of advice to be successful in today's job market?

[00:12:51]>> Well, do you mean to get hired or to be successful? I mean like >> successful.

[00:12:56]>> Well, I mean the thing is that Jenz has a different definition of success than we do. So um they uh don't have a high uh they don't have a high value on on achievement or work centers. So their definition of success is closer sex work by balance and you know a life where um they have a lot of flexibility and so I think it's just choosing the company in the career that allows you to have that there's going to be a trade-off in wealth accumulation that's but that many of them are willing to make it. And so I think understanding your def own definition of success which is not your parents definition of success and in some cases not the society or cultures um sort of traditional definition of success is going to be important and to understand there's trade-offs. I think right now Jenzie is very young and when we were young we didn't understand trade-offs either. uh you know I the very commonly when students take the values bridge test they find out that their number one value is self-care and their number two value is affluence wealth and they say to me professor Welch is this a problem and I say it's going to be um but you'll have to work that out and figure that out on your own and they'll have to make some decisions about how they want to live just like we do >> Susie thank you so much for joining me having this conversation >> my pleasure thanks for watching I'm Dana Taylor I'll see you next