Uncertain, confused, unstable—just a couple of adjectives that describe how workers likely feel right now.

This is especially true for young workers—namely Gen Z and Gen Alpha—who’ve only ever known this whirlwind of a workplace and will, along with millennials, make up 80% of the labor market in advanced economies by 2034, according to the World Economic Forum.

The future of work will be the reality for these generations—but it doesn’t look too shiny, experts shared with HR Brew.

“There’s widespread anxiety,” Jon Carson, co-founder of the College Guidance Network that works with high school students and parents on college admissions, told HR Brew. “I heard about a parent whose kid, out of the blue, texted them, and said, ‘I’m really stressed. I don’t know how I’m going to live the kind of life that you’re living.’”

What to expect from Gen Z and Gen Alpha. Much has been said about Gen Z and Gen Alpha’s unique preferences, but generational differences aren’t new. Researchers like Sean Lyons, a leadership and management professor and associate dean of research and graduate studies at the University of Guelph in Canada, have been studying generations in the workplace since the 1990s.

“People aren’t really different. They’re just reacting to different times, and they’re reacting to those different times at a specific stage in their life,” Lyons previously told HR Brew.

Gen Z and Gen Alpha have spent the majority, if not all, of their lives with smart phones and social media. This has contributed to mental health issues, which worsened during the isolation of the Covid-19 pandemic. Now, Carson said, we see “downstream effects” in how they show up to work.

Experts are already observing shifts in “fundamental expectations,” Ryan Jenkins, generational expert and author of The Generation Z Guide and The Millennial Manual, told HR Brew, because “they’ve just grown up in a completely different environment.”

There are also differences in how these generations communicate and use technology, Jenkins said. They expect to use different tools (ask any high school student if they’re using ChatGPT), speak in trending colloquial phrases (some, like “6–7,” cannot be fully explained), and work at a different speed (likely a byproduct of growing up with a device always in hand).

Despite these differences, Gen Z has a strong desire for “human connection,” Jenkins said, and Gen Alpha likely will, too. “No generation is a cyborg just yet,” he said. “We’ve all got blood running through our veins, and human connection is one of our most significant needs.”

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