Hey Mindful Notions community👋. After Hill, Austin Nellessen, Magan Chin, and I wrapped up season 1 of our ‘Accessible Intelligence’ podcast, the inevitable question was: What’s next?

We start answering that question today in two important forms. One being season 2 of this podcast (first episode of the new season out Thursday morning!). And the other is a manifesto, written in the body of this post. It gathers some important stats we have seen about Gen Z’s disconnected and turbulent relationship with the economy, or more importantly, doing fulfilling work. It also hints at we are doing about this growing and ever-changing problem with our new platform, LAUNCH, which you will hear much more about in the full episode, out later this week.

This issue of Gen Z struggling to get jobs, much less get fulfilling work, is not going away. And what we are talking about is not unique. But we believe that the four of us, a full-time founder, a writer, a valedictorian, and a tech community builder, are a unique group. And that if we keep dissecting what exactly are the pressure points here, and what resources are out there to guide Gen Z in this brave new world, we can, at the very least, make any young person struggling to find meaningful work feel a little less alone.

I am so eager to see what this group does next. And if any of our conversations resonate with you, please do not hesitate to reach out with ideas on how we can make LAUNCH even better.

-sam

Growing up, we internalized a vision of meritocracy. If you work hard, success will find you. But now, we’ve seen every stage of the trusted path—go to college, graduate with a degree, find a job, and build a career—being disrupted:

* People no longer see college as worth the investment.

* An NBC News poll finds that as many as 63% of registered voters believe that a four-year degree is “not worth the cost because people graduate without specific job skills and with a large amount of debt to pay off.”

* Those who nonetheless attend college find themselves adrift in an educational environment saturated by AI.

* A 2024 survey by Inside Higher Ed finds that three in ten students are not clear on when they are permitted to use AI in their coursework. But 86% of students use it anyway, and, void of smart university policy, they are increasingly doing so “to get quick answers rather than deepen their understanding.”

* Even after making it through college, people are struggling to attain the promised job on the other side.

* Between 2019 to 2025, the unemployment rate for young college graduates increased by 2.63 times more than the overall unemployment rate. Anecdotally, we hear about college graduates prepared for white collar professions instead seeking minimum-wage service work. We see the superstars of our modern economy, like Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, predicting that AI could wipe our as many as half of all entry-level white-collar jobs in the next five years.

* Those who are lucky enough to land a job may find themselves wholly unfulfilled in their roles.

* A New York Times opinion piece on the subject provocatively titled itself, “For Gen Z-ers, Work is Now More Depressing than Unemployment.” The rise of remote work has only compounded this issue. While the World Economic Forum predicts that the number of global digital jobs will rise by approximately 25% within the next five years, this outcome is largely out of line with Gen Z’s preferences.

The four of us graduated high school during the COVID pandemic and college at the beginnings of the AI Revolution. We grew up internalizing the conventional path to success (higher education into job), but are finding ourselves navigating an economic reality that is entirely different from what our parents, guardians, and teachers prepared us for.

We’ve witnessed society transform. But more than that, we’ve seen the people in power—politically, economically, and socially—take advantage of this moment to solidify their advantage. Meanwhile, those of us who are just beginning to assert our presence in the world are left to fend for ourselves. When we struggle to adapt to a system that has failed us, our plight is perceived as reflecting personal shortcomings.

Our goal is not to assert any particular Gen Z perspective. Rather, it is simply to acknowledge the existence of a uniquely Gen Z perspective—one that is caught at the crossroads of expectations and reality. From this common understanding, we hope to create a space for our peers, regardless of what they are doing in this current moment: working a corporate 9-5, building a start-up, pursuing side quests, picking up part-time roles here and there, and/or feeling completely overwhelmed sitting in their childhood bedroom. We seek to build solidarity with all of these perspectives, and from this basis, collectively imagine paths to change.

At this moment, many Gen Z feel as if the economy has left us behind. Our goal is to empower Gen Z to stake a claim in the society that we are actively inheriting.

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