In my technique class this spring, a scholar leaned again throughout a dialogue about automation and quipped, “Well, we aren’t going to get a job anyway because of AI, so who cares?” Laughter rippled throughout the room. It was fast, mild—even comforting. However beneath the jokes lay a tense actuality. This sense is the elephant within the room for a lot of younger folks: they sense the job market evolving below AI’s affect, and so they’re undecided the place they’ll match.
Once I requested a number of college students in the event that they ever discuss significantly about AI changing jobs, one replied, “Not really. If you think about it too much, it feels hopeless.” One other mentioned, “We just figure something else will come along. Or maybe we’ll figure out how to work with it.” Humor has turn into a coping instrument—a approach to acknowledge the menace with out dwelling on it.
This sentiment is grounded in information. A Goldman Sachs evaluation reveals that Gen Z tech employees are experiencing larger unemployment than older generations, with charges amongst 20-to-30-year-olds up practically 3 share factors since early 2024—over 4 instances the nationwide common enhance. Joseph Briggs, a senior economist at Goldman Sachs, warns that “those performing the most easily automated tasks—often the most junior employees—are naturally the most vulnerable.” But even amongst this panorama, roughly 42% of Gen Z employees have used AI to tell profession selections—the best of any era—and one in 5 say AI urged a profession path they hadn’t thought of earlier than.
Gen Z isn’t the primary era formed by turbulence. Millennials confronted the 2008 recession, Gen X skilled offshoring, and Boomers watched industries automate. However AI’s fast scope and attain set this second aside. A 2025 SHRM survey discovered that 80% of employers anticipate entry-level job descriptions to shift considerably inside three years due to AI.
Some college students are already hedging: gravitating towards fields that appear extra human-centric—psychological well being, expert trades, training—and others are diving into AI expertise, hoping to remain forward. A couple of are constructing aspect gigs early: freelancing, tutoring, and part-time inventive work. One scholar captured it greatest: “If AI really changes everything, we can’t control it. So I’d rather focus on what I can do now.” It’s a mix of pragmatism and fatalism that feels uniquely Gen Z.
However the danger is that humor can masks passivity. Laughing off the menace might ease the second however doesn’t arrange long-term preparedness. These identical laughs floor in TikToks about job interview awkwardness, tales of the “Gen Z stare” in service roles, and viral “workplace hacks” like CC-ing pretend attorneys to guard oneself from unhealthy bosses—shared as a result of they make actual work anxieties really feel relatable.
Is that sufficient? In accordance with economist Tyler Cowen of George Mason College, not solely. He argues that school curricula are overfocused on routine expertise—content material that AI can now deal with higher—and recommends dedicating as much as one-third of upper training to instructing college students use AI, perceive its limits, and domesticate vital considering and mentorship capacities that AI can’t replicate.
The problem is for educators, employers, and policymakers to construct on Gen Z’s humor, adaptability, and intelligence—not draw back from it. Laughter is a part of their cultural toolkit, a approach to defuse stress and construct connection, but it surely must be paired with clear-eyed preparation. Laughing by uncertainty isn’t inherently dangerous; in actual fact, it might probably sign resilience. But if humor turns into the one response, it dangers leaving deeper issues unaddressed.
Serving to this era see past the joke means displaying them translate fast wit into strategic considering. Which may contain embedding AI literacy into each self-discipline, encouraging college students to deal with rising instruments as collaborators slightly than threats, or designing office mentorship applications that assist younger workers join short-term problem-solving with long-term profession planning. It additionally means rewarding adaptability not simply when issues go fallacious, however when it’s used proactively to anticipate change.
AI will reshape work in surprising methods, touching industries from inventive arts to healthcare logistics. It might introduce solely new profession classes, whereas making others out of date quicker than any earlier wave of automation. The actual query is whether or not Gen Z’s mixture of humor, adaptability, and warning will assist them trip that wave—or whether or not they’ll discover themselves reacting too late, caught in its undertow. For now, the laughter continues. The work forward lies in ensuring it’s paired with the abilities and foresight to show uncertainty into alternative.
The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary items are solely the views of their authors and don’t essentially replicate the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.
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