Why Gen Z Hates Working: On Meaninglessness Of Work

Let’s start with the obvious question:

Why do we work?

The unromantic answer is survival.

Unless you’re born into generational wealth, work is the thing that stops you from starving.

Somewhere along the way, work stopped being about staying alive and turned into performing importance.

Status updates. Passive-aggressive emails. Calendar Tetris. Jobs that exist mostly so other jobs can exist.

The rise of meaningless jobs

The biggest “ick” for Gen Z is work that feels meaningless.

David Graeber writes about this phenomenon in his book “Bullshit Jobs”.

In his book that the problem with bullshit jobs is moral and political.

The people at the top have worked out something quite simple: a population with time, energy, and a sense of agency is dangerous.

Give people free time and decent living conditions and they start asking inconvenient questions. They start organising.

So instead, we’re sold a different story. That work itself is a moral virtue. That grinding for most of your waking hours is proof you deserve to exist. And that anyone who won’t submit to this arrangement deserves nothing.

That belief is incredibly convenient for those benefiting from it.

I often think about how absurd modern work structures have become. Imagine being hired because you’re excellent at one thing — say, making cabinets — and then slowly realising your actual job is frying fish. Not occasionally. Constantly. Even though there are only so many fish that need frying, and most of them don’t need to be fried at all.

But instead of questioning why everyone is frying fish, the entire workplace becomes obsessed with making sure no one is avoiding fish duty. Resentment builds. Surveillance increases. Soon the workshop is overflowing with badly cooked, completely unnecessary fish — and no one is making cabinets anymore.

That’s an office culture for you.

I’m not interested in telling anyone who finds meaning in their work that they’re wrong.

But what about the awakened people who know their jobs are pointless?

How are you meant to feel dignity in your labour when, deep down, you believe the world wouldn’t be worse if your role disappeared tomorrow? How does that not turn into resentment?

So when people say “Gen Z hates working,” they’re responding appropriately.

Gen Z is making its voice heard loud and clear: they are rewrting the rules of work and getting in trouble at work for shaking things up.

The meaninglessness problem

Most Gen Z workers fall into one of three camps:

Person A: Living paycheck to paycheck. Work barely covers life. There’s no energy left to care.

Person B: Trapped in a job they hate because they have a mortgage, a kid, or responsibilities they didn’t plan for but can’t escape.

Person C: Genuinely lost. Working “for now” while trying to figure out what they actually want.

All three are stuck at the same level: safety.

When all your energy goes into staying afloat, meaning feels like a luxury product.

And this is the real issue.

The epidemic of meaninglessness at work isn’t just about bad bosses or broken systems — though there are plenty of those.

It’s about navigating those systems before you have leverage.

Because here’s the uncomfortable truth no one wants to admit:

You are going to spend years in jobs that feel hollow.

Previous generations had incentives that made this bearable. Show up for 30 years and you got a pension, property, security, and the feeling that it was all leading somewhere.

That bargain collapsed mid-Millennial and barely exists for Gen Z.

The corporate job you take at 25 might be irrelevant by 30 — or gone entirely.

Gen Z’s anger about work is justified. The system is objectively worse.

The generation that will actually change it won’t be the most cynical — it will be the one that can hold two truths at once:

This is unfair. I’m still going to learn everything I can from it.

That balance — realism without bitterness — is power.

And leverage is the only thing that makes work stop feeling meaningless.

Gen Z are disillusioned with work

There’s a quote that gets passed around a lot from The Free Press, where a 23-year-old sums it up perfectly:

Watching influencers openly make four times their old salaries with flexible lives has made Gen Z nihilistic about work.

And honestly? Fair.

If you’re 22 and your feed is full of people your age:

* quitting corporate jobs,

* making £10k months doing things no one taught you existed,

* travelling on a Tuesday because “work is a mindset”,

…it’s very hard to take a £28k job answering emails seriously.

Gen Z (born roughly between 1997-2013) came of age during a global pandemic that stole two years of social development, a housing market that feels mathematically impossible, the collapse of entry-level jobs, AI openly threatening white-collar work, and companies that will lay you off via automated email.

This generation didn’t reject work for no reason. They rejected a deal that no longer exists.

When work actually works

Work can be meaningful.

I recently read about Warren Buffett stepping down at 95. He worked for over 60 years — longer than most companies survive.

That level of commitment doesn’t come from obligation. It comes from meaning.

Studies consistently show that people over 55 report higher job satisfaction than younger workers. Not because their jobs are easier — but because their work is tied to identity, mastery, and purpose, not just survival.

This is the split no one explains properly:

Work for survival drains you. Work for purpose sustains you. I share practical prompts to help you figure out your purpose and the kind of work you’re actually suited to.

Purposeful jobs are what people talk about when they say “dream jobs.” Not jobs with beanbags and kombucha. Jobs where effort feels justified.

Gen Z’s counter-slogan — “I don’t dream of labour” — makes sense emotionally, but it’s also a dead end.

The frustration isn’t wrong. But it’s often misdirected.