A university professor admits: “There’s no reason to believe Gen Z will have financial security.”

m. class. Students in oversized hoodies scroll TikTok, half listening, half somewhere else. At the front, the professor puts down his marker, looks at them longer than usual, and says in a calm, tired voice: “There is no reason to believe that young people from Generation Z will have economic security.”

A few heads snap up. Someone laughs nervously. One girl in the front row stops typing and just stares at him, fingers frozen on the keyboard. The sentence hangs in the air, heavier than anything on the PowerPoint behind him.

He’s not shouting, not angry. Just… resigned. He starts listing numbers: housing prices, student debt, wages that haven’t moved in decades. In the back row, a guy quietly opens a job search tab.

The strange thing is: nobody argues.

“You’ll do everything right - and it still won’t be enough”

The professor later tells me he hates saying it out loud. “I’m supposed to motivate them,” he shrugs, stuffing papers into a worn leather bag. But he’s been teaching long enough to see the patterns: each new class works harder, gets better grades, and yet looks more exhausted.

They’re told to network, build a personal brand, start investing at 20, become “future-proof.” They juggle unpaid internships and side gigs that barely cover rent. The checklist grows longer every year. The safety net gets thinner.

He watches them do everything society asked for-and still feel like they’re standing on sand.

In his office, he pulls up a chart on his screen. Real wages for young workers, flat for years. City rents, climbing like a fever. Homeownership among under-35s, sinking fast. The numbers look almost fake, like a glitch.

Then he clicks to another slide: the cost of a degree compared to his own generation. The room feels smaller as we compare. He paid off his loans in five years on a junior salary. Today, some of his students will carry theirs into their forties.

On his corkboard, a postcard from a former student: “Moved back with my parents. Again. Still trying.” It’s not a failure story. It’s just… normal now.

He doesn’t talk like an economist on TV. He talks like a witness. There’s the broken promise of the “middle class” job that once came with stability: a permanent position, health insurance, maybe a mortgage by 30.

Instead, he sees resumes stacked with three-month contracts, “consulting gigs” that are basically glorified freelancing, and job offers that pay less in real terms than in 2005. The logic is brutal: the system still expects individual effort to solve structural problems.

When he says there’s no reason to believe Gen Z will have economic security, he’s not being dramatic. He’s simply following the data to its cold end point-unless something big changes, effort alone won’t buy safety anymore.

What Gen Z can actually do in a rigged-feeling game

In class, after his unsettling statement, a student raises her hand and asks the only question that matters: “So what should we do?” He doesn’t have a magic answer, but he has a small, practical one.

He tells them to build a “Plan A” and a “Plan B life.” Plan A is the career path they’re aiming for. Plan B is a realistic, unglamorous setup that would let them survive if everything goes sideways: a cheaper city, shared housing, low fixed costs, one core skill they can sell anywhere.

It’s not a dream. It’s a safety lane.

He suggests choosing one economic skill and going deep on it-something that travels well: data literacy, copywriting, coding, sales, design, project management. Not a thousand micro-skills that look cute on LinkedIn. One or two tools you can actually live on.

Then he asks them to practice saying out loud what they need to earn to live-not just to “get a job.” It feels awkward at first. Some of them have never said a number out loud.

On a whiteboard, he draws three columns: survival, decent, comfortable. They fill in the amounts together like a strange group therapy session.

On a rainy Thursday, he stays after class for nearly an hour. Several students linger too, asking quiet questions. One admits she lies awake at night running through worst-case scenarios. Another says everyone around him pretends to be fine, but spends most of their paycheck in the first week of the month.

As an aside, he gently points out the traps that make everything harder: expensive degrees with vague promises, living alone too early, lifestyle creep with every small income increase.

He doesn’t tell them to stop buying coffee. He talks about the real killers: long leases that lock you into high rent, cars you don’t actually need, the pressure to look “successful” on Instagram while your banking app is in the red. Let’s be honest: nobody really keeps that up every single day.

“I don’t want you to panic,” he says. “I want you to see clearly.” Then he adds something that stays with me for days.

“You are not failing. You are walking into a house that was already on fire and being asked why you can’t keep the curtains clean.”

He writes three simple lines on the board, almost like a survival note for Gen Z:

• Lower your fixed costs as much as your pride will tolerate.
• Learn one skill people pay for, even when times are bad.
• Stay angry at the system, but be gentle with yourself.

On the way out, a student takes a photo of the board. Another whispers, “I’m sending this to my brother.” The hallway outside feels strangely quiet.

Living without guarantees - and still building something solid

There’s a strange honesty in telling young people the truth: the old contract is broken, stability is no longer the default setting. It sounds harsh, yet it can also feel like a relief. The professor says the most common reaction he gets is not anger, but gratitude.

When someone finally names the fear out loud, it stops being a private shame. It becomes a shared landscape. From there, it’s possible to talk not just about survival, but about bargaining power, unions, voting, collective pressure, and new ways of living that don’t copy-and-paste the previous generation’s checklist.

The dream shifts from “having it all” to “having enough, and not being alone in it.”

Gen Z, for all its fragility, knows how to improvise. They grew up with side hustles, online jobs, patchwork careers. That flexibility can be a curse when it’s forced-and also a tool when it’s chosen.

The professor doesn’t romanticize struggle. He doesn’t tell hero stories about hustling your way out of a broken market. He simply suggests that economic security in the coming decades might look less like owning a house at 32…and more like having low debt, a portable skill, and a circle of people you can rely on when things hit the wall.

On a quiet campus evening, lights flicker on in the library, the cafeteria, the dorms. Inside, laptops glow with job boards, master’s applications, budgeting spreadsheets, and half-finished resumes. Behind all this, a silent question pulses: “Will it ever be enough?”

Maybe the most radical act for Gen Z is to stop pretending that individual optimization will fix a system built on precarity-to push for change while still playing smart within the current rules. To talk honestly with friends about money, fear, and what “a good life” might mean when the old milestones don’t fit anymore.

Economic security might not be promised to them. But the conversation about what they will accept-or refuse-is only getting started.

Key Point	Detail	Why It Matters to the Reader
The social contract is broken	More expensive education, stagnant wages, skyrocketing rent for Gen Z	Understand why the unease isn’t “all in your head”
Plan A / Plan B for life	A target career and a realistic backup version, with reduced fixed costs	Have a concrete framework for getting through uncertainty
A monetizable skill	Focus on 1–2 truly marketable skills	Increase your odds of earning income in an unstable market

FAQ

• Is Generation Z really worse off than previous generations? On most economic indicators that affect daily life-housing costs, student debt, job stability-yes. Wages haven’t kept up with prices, and the traditional path to security is harder to access.
  
• Does hard work still matter if the system is broken? Hard work still opens doors, but it no longer guarantees safety. Effort now has to be paired with strategy: choosing sectors, skills, and lifestyles that reduce vulnerability.
  
• What kind of skills should Gen Z focus on? Skills that transfer across industries and borders: coding, data, sales, writing, design, logistics, project management. The key test: will people still pay for this in a recession?
  
• Is buying a home still a realistic goal? For many, yes-but later, in different locations, or with different setups (co-buying, smaller spaces, moving away from big-city centers). For others, long-term renting while investing money elsewhere may make more sense.
  
• How can I feel less anxious about money and the future? Start by putting numbers to your reality (income, expenses, debt), lowering a few fixed costs, and talking honestly with people you trust. Fear grows in silence; it usually shrinks when it’s shared and named.