Latest news with #GreatRecession
Yahoo
7 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Millennials vs. Gen Z: Who's More Financially Prepared for the Future?
When it comes to money, no one's having an easy time right now, but are some generations navigating the chaos better than others? Gen Z came of age during economic instability, record inflation and the explosion of buy now, pay later debt. Many millennials hit adulthood during the Great Recession and are now managing careers, kids and rising costs in tandem. Both groups are under pressure. Read Next: Learn More: Data from the 2025 TIAA Institute-GFLEC Personal Finance Index shows both of those generations are falling short when it comes to financial literacy, but Gen Z is in a more precarious position. While neither generation has mastered money management, there are clear differences in knowledge gaps, risk comprehension and day-to-day financial pressure. The study found that the average U.S. adult scored 49% on the 2025 P-Fin Index, which consists of 28 questions on financial literacy. Gen Z, however, came in at just 38%, the lowest of all generations. Millennials (referred to as Gen Y in the index) fared a bit better at 46%. That gap may not sound huge, but it's meaningful, especially when viewed alongside financial outcomes. The index tests eight core financial functions, including borrowing, saving, insuring and comprehending risk. Gen Z scored lowest in every area, and their weakest spot was insurance, where they fell far behind older cohorts. Check Out: Gen Z holds more personal debt than any other generation at $94,101 on average, according to Newsweek. That's much higher than millennials, who average $59,181. Over half of Gen Z respondents said debt is on their minds most or all of the time. Yet only 23% of Gen Z in the P-Fin Index say they're 'debt-constrained,' meaning their payments stop them from covering other financial priorities. For millennials, that figure is 39%. The gap may reflect timing, as Gen Z is younger and may not yet face the same financial pressures. But the warning signs are there. The TIAA data showed that 41% of Gen Z couldn't cover a $2,000 emergency, compared with 30% of millennials. Low savings and high debt rarely end well, and Gen Z is already on the back foot. The data shows that financial knowledge doesn't necessarily improve with age, especially when it comes to risk. But Gen Z is underperforming across the board, failing to keep up even in areas where experience should help, like saving and budgeting. Millennials may not be in top shape either, but they're edging ahead. Their slightly better understanding of core financial concepts could mean more stable outcomes over time, especially if the knowledge gap keeps growing. Both groups have work to do. Financial education isn't widely taught in schools or workplaces, so the burden falls on individuals to build up knowledge, and fast. That means getting clear on how compound interest works, understanding loan terms, building emergency savings and knowing what financial products cost over time. Free resources exist, including nonprofit credit counselors, online literacy programs and community finance workshops. Gen Z may be starting further behind, but with the right habits, the gap isn't permanent. What matters now is who takes action. More From GOBankingRates Mark Cuban Warns of 'Red Rural Recession' -- 4 States That Could Get Hit Hard How Much Money Is Needed To Be Considered Middle Class in Every State? 25 Places To Buy a Home If You Want It To Gain Value This article originally appeared on Millennials vs. Gen Z: Who's More Financially Prepared for the Future?
Business Insider
11 hours ago
- Business
- Business Insider
The tech job market is rough for entry-level workers right now. Here's how Gen Z is dodging the downtrend.
Recent years of rolling layoffs in tech have some Gen Z tech workers stressed — but not deterred. "I feel like everyone feels a bit stressed that there are layoffs," said Merc Heredia-Ferran, a 26-year-old brand marketer at Google who joined the company last year. "I get sent articles that Google laid off people that I didn't even know about, like I'm reading that in the news." The job market has hit Gen Z hard. While older millennials faced higher unemployment rates following the Great Recession compared to Gen Z now, Gen Z experiences unique challenges such as increased Big Tech cost-cutting and AI upending the workplace. BI spoke to more than a dozen Gen Z tech workers and job seekers about their experiences as they hustle to start their careers and as artificial intelligence and changing corporate and immigration policies transform early-career workers' introduction to the workplace. A SignalFire report found that entry-level hiring in Big Tech is down more than 50% from pre-pandemic levels; at startups, it's down more than 30%. The percentage of graduates from top computer science programs employed at Big Tech companies has halved since 2022, the report found. As tech companies pull back hiring across the industry, it's become a tighter job market for Gen Z. The New York Fed reported that unemployment for recent college graduates who majored in computer science was 6.1%, compared to 5.8% for recent college graduates overall. Layoff concerns also weigh heavily in the tech field. Over 28% of job seekers age 18 to 24 and over 21% of those age 25 to 34 say they were laid off in their last job, a ZipRecruiter survey from the first quarter of this year found. Tech still remains a popular career choice for Gen Z in part because of its schedule flexibility, which is prioritized by 90% of graduates, said Sam DeMase, a career expert at ZipRecruiter. Tech jobs often pay more compared to many other careers. "Agencies, you can be cut at any time," Heredia-Ferran said. "You don't even see it coming. Here I feel like, with the high salary, if it happens, I have a cushion now, and the Google name, I can maybe land something if it happens." Expectations vs. Reality A software engineer at Amazon says he "got lucky" in landing his full-time job at Amazon. When the 26-year-old India native interned at the e-commerce giant in 2023, the timing was anything but ideal: Their offer coincided with a hiring freeze. "After September 2022, Amazon just stopped hiring interns for that year," the engineer told BI. They completed their internship and received an "inclined to hire" evaluation in August 2023. Due to the freeze, they didn't start their full-time role until June 2024. Compared to the thousands of laid-off employees across tech and at Amazon, among them, peers still looking for work, they're grateful. "I can't give much advice to someone who is looking for a job. I myself can't crack exactly how I landed the job. I just got lucky in that," the engineer said. Expectations don't always match reality. Nearly 40% of rising graduates believe an internship will help them land a job, yet 9% of recent grads said their internships helped them do that, ZipRecruiter found in a 2025 survey of 3,000 recent and rising undergraduate students ZipRecruiter found that rising graduates believe they'll earn a salary of $101,500; recent grads earned an average of $68,400. "The expectation versus reality gap is quite high," said DeMase. The AI boon and bust for Gen Z If young workers do get the tech job they seek, a complicating factor is the growth of AI. A Hult International Business School survey found 37% of HR leaders say they'd rather use AI than hire a recent graduate. Young workers say AI has helped them and left them feeling uncertain. "In terms of work, it's gotten to a very interesting place because a lot of things that used to take me a day to do, I can now do them in one hour, but that hasn't translated into my work decreasing. It's just more work," the Amazon engineer said. "I don't know if we'll reach the point when AI is doing everything I'm doing and finally replace me," they continued with a nervous laugh. Gen Z job seekers face a tough market Upon graduation in 2022, Jonathan, a now 26-year-old software engineer, set about applying for tech jobs. He applied to about 300 roles and received 12 responses, some of which were coding tests, before finally landing a full-time job after three months. Nine months later, he was laid off when his tech company closed the office where he was based, meaning he was once again on the job hunt. This time, he applied to about 600 roles, and he heard back from five. "I was talking with some other former classmates and people graduating in the same year," said Jonathan, who asked to withhold his last name due to company policies on speaking with the press. "Most of us were in the same boat. We just graduated, never found anything, and had just gotten laid off from another position. We were all weighing our options. Should we go back and get our master's? It didn't seem like anyone was hiring early-level positions." Tyler Creach, a 26-year-old senior business development manager at software company Freshworks, also said she found the job market difficult before landing her role, which took about four to five months. The tech industry can be "hard to predict" for young people, and it's tough to "see yourself in it for a long time, she said. "Young people are struggling to find stable, relatively well-paying jobs," Creach said. "That's creating a lot of resentment or frustration, possibly from young people. Instead of getting a start right away, they're punting it down the line." The ZipRecruiter survey found that over half of tech job seekers age 25 to 34 and nearly 44% of those age 18 to 24 say they received zero job offers in the past month. ZipRecruiter found that a majority of job seekers in these age demographics say they've been ghosted by an employer during their job search, an experience that has become more common for Gen Z. Over 30% of them say their job search is going "poor" and over half say it's just going "fair." Creach found she had to compromise her job expectations, particularly in location. She previously had all-remote roles and ended up taking a job that required going to an office. She hopes to eventually do something more creative in her career or move into management. "Now it is super difficult to get a job for those remote roles," Creach said. "I had to think about how I could start getting more interviews. Once I started looking at more jobs based in my area, whether hybrid or fully in-office, I started to get more responses and make more progress." Jonathan landed his current job after three to four months. It did require moving states, and he now works in defense tech and not his preferred industry, video games. He says he's trying to get any experience he can. "My dad said when he graduated, it was difficult for him to find a job," Jonathan said. "In the early 90s, there was a mini-recession. To some degree, it has gotten harder over the years to land anything. Everyone tells you to get into computer science. That's where all the money is at, that's where the jobs are at. It's a lot harder than they make it out to be." Don't count Gen Z out Despite the job market slowdown, many Gen Z tech workers are still optimistic about working in tech. Justin Dobey, 27, pursued a master's degree in 2020 as the COVID pandemic began. After graduation, his job search just took about a month since there's a "deep lack of electrical engineers" where he lives in South Carolina. He works in a federal government engineering job that has rolled back hiring, though he hasn't been affected by cuts. Dobey said his friends with non-engineering degrees are struggling more to find work than his peers in engineering. "We might not all be in our dream jobs, but they are doing all right, last time I checked." Dobey said he's optimistic about the future of STEM jobs. "If you want to live comfortably and not want to work your whole life like, be a doctor or lawyer, get a STEM degree in computer systems, cybersecurity, AI," he said. Job-seeking tips DeMase, the ZipRecruiter career expert, said it's important for tech job seekers to learn more about AI and use it ethically. She also advises using their network, getting to know more people in the industry, and tailoring résumés to better align with target roles, which can even include skills from volunteering or part-time work "When folks think about the roles they'll apply for, it's important to lean into their strengths and target roles that are hyperaligned with their superpowers," DeMase said. She also said it's important to speak clearly about the impact they've made in their work or in their projects. "Gen Z approaches the interview as an interrogation rather than a conversation," DeMase said. "It's a conversation, not an interrogation. Come prepared to have an organic chat. Don't be afraid to remember you're interviewing as well."
Boston Globe
a day ago
- Business
- Boston Globe
For Boston's budding biotechs, an uncertain future amid funding cuts
Early stage startups, operating without much financial cushion, are feeling the impact sooner than better-established companies. Advertisement Dépis, and many entrepreneurs like him, are looking for ways to get their science funded. For example, LabCentral, a biotech startup incubator, has a program that allows big pharmaceutical companies to invest in cutting-edge science without making long-term commitments. Pharma companies cover the costs of lab space for individual scientists for a year, providing an easy exit if the research doesn't prove promising. In its recent five-year strategic plan, the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council pitched the idea of a seed fund to support companies that graduate from the trade group's incubator program. Discussions are underway with MassBio's partners such as LabCentral and the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, a quasi-public state agency. Advertisement 'What's happened this year just validated our plans,' said MassBio CEO Kendalle Burlin O'Connell. 'We knew that we needed to support these early stage companies. We really, really feel it's imperative for Massachusetts to be an entrepreneur, founder-centric ecosystem.' Dépis — who is researching techniques to better deliver drugs to treat immune diseases — says such support is sorely needed. Earlier this year, he applied for a federal Small Business Innovation Research grant; then the government employee responsible for his application was laid off. Two weeks later, the employee was reinstated, but Dépis's application remains in limbo. 'I'm in a position where time is critical,' Dépis said. 'For me that translates into a higher chance to not have the funding in time that I need to survive.' And Dépis is not alone. Before the post-COVID biotech slump, companies accepted at LabCentral could typically secure funding and move into the space in a few weeks. Now, startups are taking six months to a year to move in — if they move in at all, said LabCentral CEO Maggie O'Toole. Startups at LabCentral are staying longer, unable to raise the money needed to grow their companies and expand into their own facilities, O'Toole said. The average length of tenancy doubled to about 36 months from 18 months, Some startups, affected by the Trump administration's grant cuts, have had to give up their LabCentral benches because they can't pay the rent. 'It was nothing to do with the promise of their science,' O'Toole said. 'They had received [approval for] funding that never came through.' Advertisement Robert Coughlin, a managing director at the commercial real estate firm JLL and former MassBio CEO, said the biotech industry is going through a downturn reminiscent of the Great Recession of 2008. Layoffs have spread across the sector. Earlier this month, Boston-based Vertex Pharmaceuticals said it would Moderna, the Cambridge biotech that soared with the success of its COVID vaccine, has gone through recent layoffs. In 2024, employment across Massachusetts' life sciences sector stagnated for the first time in more than 10 years, according to a report from the Massachusetts Biotechnology Education Foundation. Boston's commercial real estate sector has been hurt by the biotech slump. The vacancy rate for lab space has reached 32 percent, the highest among major metropolitan areas, according to JLL's most recent US Life Sciences Property Report. While conditions seem dismal, Coughlin said, he noticed a sense of optimism at the BIO conference. The annual convention not only attracted big crowds from established biotech centers, but also representatives from states and countries looking to invest in and build their own life sciences sectors. 'People want to get together,' Coughlin said. 'They want to collaborate, they want to talk about these challenges.' Marin Wolf can be reached at
Los Angeles Times
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
A pyramid scheme seemed like a good idea — until one of the Bishop sisters was murdered
Leave it to Megan Abbott to tap into the American zeitgeist and play on her readers' fears like a conductor leading a doomsday orchestra. As high school and college graduates across the country celebrate the completion of a major milestone, they — and their nervous parents — are looking ahead to a future marked by political uncertainty and economic insecurity. In an eerie echo, Abbott begins 'El Dorado Drive,' her 11th novel, with a graduation party at the beginning of the Great Recession. Though the party is not a lavish affair — just a gathering for friends and family in the backyard of a rental property on El Dorado Drive in Grosse Pointe, Mich. — it's more than Pam Bishop can afford, and every one of her guests knows it. Any party, no matter how modest, reminds Pam and her two older sisters, Debra and Harper, of all that they've lost. Born into a world of wealth and privilege thanks to Detroit's automotive-fueled postwar prosperity, the Bishop sisters — along with their parents, their peers and their children — watched it all disappear during the decline of the American automobile industry. Pam's ramshackle rental on El Dorado Drive, though several steps down from the home she grew up in or the mansion she moved into when she got married, is a symbol of the reckless pursuit of wealth that destroys those who can't see through the illusion. 'When you grow up in comfort and it all falls away — and your parents with it — money isn't about money,' Abbott writes. 'It's about security, freedom, independence, a promise of wholeness. All those fantasies, illusions. Money was rarely about money.' For Pam's ex-husband, Doug Sullivan, money is a game to be played in order to get what he wants, and he will stop at nothing to get it. But when Pam is brutally murdered in the opening pages, he emerges as a prime suspect. The first half of the novel backtracks from the discovery of Pam's body to the graduation party nine months prior, when each Bishop sister is struggling with serious financial hardship. Locked in an acrimonious divorce with no end in sight, Pam doesn't know how she's going to pay her son's college tuition or handle her rebellious teenage daughter alone. The oldest sister, Debra, is buried under a mountain of medical bills while her husband suffers through another round of chemotherapy and her son slips away in a cloud of marijuana smoke. Harper, the middle child, struggles to make ends meet while rebounding from a relationship that ended in heartbreak. The solution to their money problems arrives in the form of a secret investment club called the Wheel. Run for and by women who have fallen on hard times, the program is simple but sketchy. It costs $5,000 to join, but once the new members recruit five new participants, they are 'gifted' five times their initial buy-in. If this sounds too good to be true, you have more sense than the Bishop sisters. Such is their desperation they don't quite allow themselves to see this is a fairly basic pyramid scheme that depends on fresh blood — and their bank accounts — to keep the Wheel turning. The novel follows Harper, the outsider in the family, due to the fact that she's never married nor had children. She's not part of the community, either, because she's recently returned to Grosse Pointe after time away to mend her broken heart. The first half of the novel concerns the Bishops' dynamics and their found family in the Wheel, which operates like a combination of a cult and a recovery group for women who've lost everything. At a moment of vulnerability, Harper is buttonholed by an old classmate named Sue. 'It's called the Wheel because it never stops moving,' Sue said. Twice a month, we meet. A different member hosts each time, and the meetings were just parties, really. And at these parties, they took turns giving and receiving gifts to one another. To lift one another up. As women should, as they must.' Behind the rhetoric of sisterhood lurks avarice and greed. When Harper asks Pam if anyone ever left the group after just one turn of the Wheel, Pam — a true believer — can't fathom backing out of the group. 'Why would anyone do that?' she asks. The answer proves to be her undoing, and the second half of 'El Dorado Drive' follows Harper as she tries to solve her sister's murder. It's a classic whodunit story with Harper — who has plenty of secrets of her own — playing the role of the reluctant detective. Despite the book's suggestive title, the landscape is anything but illusory for Abbott, who grew up in Grosse Pointe and spent the first 18 years of her life there. Evoking a rich setting has never been a weakness of Abbott's stories. Her novels have a hyperreal quality and are often populated by characters churning with desires they cannot manage. Abbott is especially adept at rendering the hot, messy inner lives of young people and at making a book's backstory as suspenseful as the narrative engine that drives the plot. In 'El Dorado Drive,' however, the focus is on adults, and the past mostly stays in the past. The result is a novel in which the story is straightforward and the stakes are low. Nevertheless, true to her penchant for shocking violence, Abbott delivers a revolting revelation that sets up a series of twists that propels the story to its inevitable, but no less satisfying, conclusion. But then there's the matter of the Wheel. When we watch a video of people in a boat who are drinking, carrying on and disobeying the rules of the road, we don't feel badly for them when they end up in the water, no matter how spectacular the crash, because they brought it on themselves. The same logic applies to the participants in the Wheel. We can empathize with the calamities that prompted these characters to take such foolish chances, but we would never make those choices ourselves. Or would we? One could argue that our era will be defined not by whether the American dream lives or dies but by the questionable choices of our political leaders and, by extension, the people who elected them. We may not know where we'll be tomorrow, but Abbott knows wagering that the wheel of grift, greed and corruption will keep on turning is always a safe bet. Ruland is the author of the novel 'Make It Stop' and the weekly Substack Message from the Underworld.
American Military News
2 days ago
- Business
- American Military News
College degree no longer guarantees post-grad employment
Hope Anderson tracks her job search in a spreadsheet, highlighting the rejections in red. After more than six months and 40-plus applications, she's seeing nothing but red. 'I knew it was going to be hard, and I knew it was going to be a lot of work,' said the 21-year-old Eden Prairie, Minnesota, resident, who graduated from Iowa State University in May with an event-management degree. 'But I didn't think that I would have absolutely nothing after months.' A growing group of young, college-educated Americans are struggling to find work as the unemployment rate for recent graduates outpaces overall unemployment for the first time in decades. While the national unemployment rate has hovered around 4% for months, the rate for 20-something degree holders is nearly 6%, data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York shows. The amount of time young workers report being unemployed is also on the rise. Economists attribute some of the shift to normal post-pandemic cooling of labor market, which is making it harder for job-seekers of all ages to land a gig. But there's also widespread economic uncertainty causing employers to pull back on hiring and signs AI could replace entry-level positions. Employers added 139,000 jobs in May with unemployment unchanged at 4.2%, according to data the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released last week. But the report 'points to an economy and employment that is weakening somewhat and gives some cause for continued concern over the direction of stagflation,' said David Royal, chief financial and investment officer at Thrivent Financial, in a statement. 'There is underlying weakness in today's report with downward revisions to the prior two months and a decline in labor force participation, signaling a weakening employment picture,' he said. The struggle for recent graduates comes down to a mismatch between worker supply and employer demand, said Matthew Martin, senior U.S. economist at Oxford Economics. That's not going to change anytime soon, he said. 'What we're actually likely to see over the coming months is a weaker labor market, just as businesses in general are dealing with high levels of uncertainty, reduced demand due to tariffs, higher input costs,' he said. 'This issue for college graduates is only likely to get worse before it gets better.' College graduates historically have fared better in the job market than those without a degree, earning higher salaries and facing lower unemployment. 'At the same time, younger workers are those who are going to be a little less firmly attached to the labor force and will be especially sensitive to the labor market conditions that they experience when they go out and look for work,' Ryan Nunn with the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis said earlier this month. Entering the labor market in an economic downturn can limit career success. Many millennials who graduated into the Great Recession saw big drops in earnings and recovered more slowly than older workers, according to data from the Minneapolis Fed. The U.S. is not currently in a recession, though recent graduates are finding themselves in a similar bind. For some, that has meant rethinking the kinds of jobs they're willing to take. Mankato, Minnesota, native Rachel Kuzma, 31, earned an anthropology Ph.D. from Washington University in St. Louis a year ago. After hundreds of job applications, she has landed just two unsuccessful interviews. At this point, she said, she just needs a job. 'Any thought I had about a career trajectory is just gone now, because the market just won't allow it,' Kuzma said. Sophia Sailer, who graduated with a master's degree in marketing from the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management in May, recently accepted a part-time hourly job after months of networking and more than 60 job applications. Plans to move out of her parents' Eden Prairie home are on hold. It's disappointing, Sailer said, but not a shock: After graduating from high school in 2020, she's no stranger to derailed plans. 'It's just very interesting how every time I graduate, it's a new challenge ahead,' she said. Business schools nationwide were among the first to see the labor market shift in early 2023 as tech industry cuts bled into other sectors, said Maggie Tomas, Business Career Center executive director at Carlson. Tariffs and stock market volatility have only added to the uncertainty, she said. In 2022, when workers had their pick of jobs, 98% of full-time Carlson MBA graduates had a job offer in a field related to their degree within three months of graduation, according to the school. That number, which Tomas said is usually 90% or higher, dropped to 89% in 2023 and 83% in 2024. Part of the challenge, she said, is recent graduates are now competing with more experienced workers who are re-entering the market amid layoffs and hiring freezes. 'There are very few companies that are saying, 'We're no longer going to recruit this year,' ' Tomas said. 'They're still hiring; they're just hiring less.' After doing a lot of hiring in 2021 and 2022, Securian Financial in St. Paul is prioritizing internal hires, said Human Resources Director Leah Henrikson. Many entry-level roles have gone to current employees looking for a change, she said. 'We are still looking externally, it's just the folks that we are looking for externally tend … to fulfill a specific skill gap we may have at that moment in time,' Henrikson said. The company still continues to cast a wide recruiting net, she said, knowing the job market ebbs and flows. Securian is among local employers partnering with Metro State University on an apprenticeship program that recently resulted in a job offer for one participant and application opportunities for two others. After working a variety of jobs, from his parents' farm to the North Dakota oil fields, Securian apprentice Leonard Lange decided to pursue a data science degree in 2021 when the market was hot. The 33-year-old from Bloomington, Minnesota, is optimistic about his job prospects but recognizes the landscape has shifted. 'If you're a student applying, you really do need to do some research on the company and tailor your resume a bit more than, I think, if it was three years ago,' he said. For Anderson and her spreadsheet, the post-graduation job search continues to be a waiting game. She's doing informational interviews, filling out applications and crossing her fingers for something in her field. At the moment, she is not technically unemployed: She has returned to the part-time job at Scheels sporting goods store where she's worked every summer since high school. ___ © 2025 The Minnesota Star Tribune. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
