page_title: Generation Z
section_title: North America
hierarchical_section_title: Generation Z / Employment prospects and economic trends / North America
caption_attribution_description: English: Via Rail Train 44 from Toronto, bound for Ottawa, speeds through Brighton, Ontario
context_page_description: Generation Z, or Gen Z for short, are the demographic cohort succeeding Millennials and preceding Generation Alpha. Researchers and popular media use the mid-to-late 1990s as starting birth years and the early 2010s as ending birth years. Most members of Generation Z are the children of Generation X and sometimes millennials.
  Most members of Generation Z have used digital technology since a young age and are comfortable with the Internet and social media, but are not necessarily digitally literate. Generation Z tends to be abstemious and risk-averse compared to millennials, and has a tendency to be more flexible in workplaces. However, even though it has lower rates of teenage pregnancies and alcohol and drug consumption compared to previous generations, the generation has also been characterized in the media as anxious and depressed. Some commentators attribute these effects to the generation having grown up in a time of social media, smartphones, the COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing recession.
context_section_description: Between 2014 and 2019, Canada's overall unemployment rate fell from about 7% to below 6%, according to the IMF. In 2017, the magazine Canadian Business analyzed publicly available data from Statistics Canada and Employment and Social Development Canada to determine the top occupations on the basis of growth and salaries. They included construction managers, mining and quarry managers, pilots and flying instructors, software engineers, police officers, firefighters, urban planners, petroleum, chemical,  agricultural, biomedical, aerospace, and railroad engineers, business services managers, deck officers, corporate sales managers, pharmacists, elevator mechanics, lawyers, economic development directors, real-estate and financial managers, telecommunications managers, utilities managers, pipe-fitting managers, forestry managers, nurse practitioners, and public administration managers. However, in the late 2010s, Canada's oil and gas industry has been in decline due to a lack of political support and unfavorable policies from Ottawa. The number of oil rigs in Western Canada, where most of the country's deposits are located, dropped from 900 in 2014 to 550 in 2019. Many Canadian companies have moved their crew and equipment to the United States, especially to Texas.
  Americans aged 15 to 21 expect to be financially independent in their early twenties while their parents generally expect them to become so by their mid-twenties. While the Millennials tend to prefer flexibility, Generation Z is more interested in certainty and stability. Whereas 23% of Millennials would leave a job if they thought they were not appreciated, only 15% of Generation Z would do the same, according to a Deloitte survey. According to the World Economic Forum (WEF), 77% of Generation Z expects to work harder than previous generations. As a result, barely one in two recruits from Generation Z are willing to negotiate a higher salary, even though, as of 2019, the U.S. labor market is very tight, meaning the balance of power is currently in favor of job seekers, collectively. Indeed, Employers are open to negotiations for higher salaries and better benefits in order to attract talents. While there is agreement across generations that it is very important for employees to learn new skills, Millennials and Generation Z are overwhelmingly more likely than Baby Boomers to think that it is the job of employees to train themselves. Baby Boomers tend to think it is the employer's responsibility. Moreover, Millennials and Generation Z (74%) tend to have more colleagues working remotely for a significant portion of their time compared to the Baby Boomers (58%). An overwhelming majority, 80%, prefers to work for a medium-sized or large company. A Morgan Stanley report, called the Blue Paper, projected that the Millennials and Generation Z have been responsible in a surge in labor participation in the U.S., and that while the U.S. labor force expands, that of other G10 countries will contract. This development alleviates concerns over America's aging population which jeopardizes the solvency of various welfare programs. As of 2019, Millennials and Generation Z account for 38% of the U.S. workforce; that number will rise to 58% in the incoming decade.
  According to the United States Department of Labor, the unemployment rate in September 2019 was 3.5%, a number not seen since December 1969. At the same time, labor participation remained steady and most job growth tended to be full-time positions. The number of people who ended up with part-time positions despite looking for full-time jobs dropped to 4.32 million, below the average of the previous three decades. Economists generally consider a population with an unemployment rate lower than 4% to be fully employed. In fact, even people with disabilities or prison records are getting hired. On average, they grew by 2.7% in 2016, 3.3% in 2018, and 3.3% in 2019. However, the Pew Research Center found that the average wage in the U.S. in 2018 remained more or less the same as it was in 1978, when the seasons and inflation 
caption: Railroad engineering was one of the top professions in Canada in 2017. Pictured: An Ottawa-bound train passing through Brighton, Ontario.
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