Two girls are saving money in a piggy bank
Graduating gen Z students express fear about the economy and job market; Photo by Rockaa, iStock

Media Contacts: Matthew Bragulla, Matthew.bragulla.004@my.csun.edu, or Carmen Ramos Chandler, carmen.chandler@csun.edu, (818) 677-2130

The house, the white picket fence, multiple kids and the garage to hold the two cars. This, as cliche as it may sound, has been the picture-perfect concept of what many consider to be the American Dream. 

It’s a concept, however, that many Gen Z college students struggle to imagine as achievable anymore. The dream of someday buying a house seems even further out of reach as inflation continues to rise. Recent college graduates worry whether they’ll be able to find a job with a livable wage. 

California State University, Northridge marketing professor Kristen Walker assures that these “ebbs and flows” in the economy happen and the worries of today’s college graduates are similar to those of graduates in years past.

“It’s those urban legends that always exist for college students,” said Walker, who teaches in the David Nazarian College of Business and Economics. “In my lifetime it was that I wasn’t going to get a job, that jobs are scarce, and that unemployment is high.”

Walker said the new concern for today’s college students is the idea that they’ll get a job, but it won’t pay enough. She encourages Gen Z’ers stepping into the job market to be patient and to consider there are successes to be had at a job they may not enjoy. 

“You won’t necessarily enjoy your first job but persist,” Walker said. “Do it and do it well. Do it for the reference and look for a job in a year or so while you have the job,” Walker said. 

Walker said one of the reasons students are worried about achieving a supportive job may lie in a shift in spending habits. 

She said there’s easier access to borrowed funds, like credit cards, which she notes is “easier to get today than back in the day or even 10 years ago.”

Walker noted the abundance of commerce exchanging apps like Venmo could be preventing people from feeling the cost of the purchases they make. 

She said people are not carrying cash or writing out a check. She wondered if this is affecting students’ expectations of salaries when they enter the job market. 

“This generation didn’t grow up with a checkbook,” Walker said. “So there hasn’t been the kind of financial literacy and financial skills that earlier generations had where you physically have to write the payment out.”

Walker said social media platforms like Instagram have changed the way students self-represent, whether that be through purchasing food, clothes, or even concert tickets. She theorized that this different kind of external self-representation has added to spending. She suggested that if someone didn’t feel the need to have those kinds of expenses “for the gram”, they wouldn’t have as much dissatisfaction with the salary they’re offered. 

Walker is adamant that she is not blaming Generation Z, noting that the COVID-19 pandemic changed how people think, especially young people. She said that the pandemic has forever changed Gen Z students and has caused them to miss out on certain experiences and has affected the way they think about the future. 

“We cannot think it’s not influencing how people feel when they go out into the job market,” she said. “It has to, in my opinion, make this stage of life scarier.”

Walker suggested patience and recommended that Generation Z expenses be viewed in terms of short versus long term investments, imploring them to ask for help if they “want something or need something.”

She encouraged newly graduated students to count the successes they gain when they start their first job, and that it “all adds up.”

“You’re practicing for the job you love,” she says. “You aren’t doing your best work now. Your best work will be ahead of you.” 

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