By 2025, Gen Zs and millennials will make up 27 percent and 75 percent of the global workforce respectively.
To provide an insight into their career desires and ambitions in the workplace, Deloitte conducted a Gen Z and Millennial Survey among 14,808 Gen Zs and 8,412 millennials across 46 countries.
In summary, cost of living, work-life balance and mental health were some of their key concerns, revealed the survey.
The survey noted the following:
- Almost half of Gen Zs (46 percent) and millennials (47 percent) live paycheck to paycheck and worry they won’t be able to cover their expenses.
- More than a quarter of Gen Zs (26 percent) and millennials (31 percent) are not confident they will be able to retire comfortably.
- Gen Zs are regularly stressed and anxious. Nearly half say that they feel stressed all or most of the time. Millennial stress levels are also high but are down slightly from last year.
- Currently, 49 percent of Gen Zs and 45 percent of millennials work remotely at least some of the time, while three-quarters of respondents say this would be their preferred mode of working.
Young workers in Singapore feel similarly
Gen Zs and Millennials in Singapore echo a similar sentiment of burnout and absence of mental health, citing a lack of mental health resources in the workplace.
In January 2022, Young NTUC conducted a study among 1,000 respondents between 18 and 35 years-old, to find out the impact of mental health on employees since the onset of Covid-19. It also sought to identify and address gaps in workplace mental health support.
The survey found that 40 percent of respondents cited poor work-life balance, long working hours, heavy workload and blurred lines between work and personal life, to be primary stressors at work.
It noted that 42 percent of respondents believe mental well-being support in their workplace to be insufficient.
In response to these findings, Young NTUC set up the Youth Taskforce in July to look into how to better support workers aged 18 to 25 in navigating their career paths.
According to NTUC, it is targeting 18 to 25 year-olds as they are at “a life-stage where they start planning how they want their careers to kick off and how that will fit into their overall work-life aspirations”.
NTUC will partner with government agencies, Institutes of Higher Learning, self-help groups, youth-targeted organisations and youth groups, among others, to engage more than 10,000 youths below 25 years-old in a year-long exercise.
Combating rising costs
In a recent youth survey by TODAY, a third of respondents admitted to feeling “mentally fragile” in the last three months, with the rising cost of living in Singapore as their main worries. This comes amid Singapore’s core inflation rising to 5.3 percent in September, reaching a 14-year-high.
NTUC is addressing this issue through their social enterprises, such as Foodfare and NTUC Fairprice.
It will also work with various industry partners and associations, to push for upskilling and retraining, so workers can remain competitive, in a bid to gradually increase their wages to keep up with inflation.
