“The desire to get a real job and have a career? That’s stable.” That is how MIT Sloan professor emeritus Paul Osterman summed up what he found when he tested one of the most repeated claims about young workers, the notion that Gen Z has turned its back on careers for the freedom of freelancing.
His answer, reported by Fortune, was that the evidence does not support it. What the numbers show instead is a labor market in which employers, not workers, have been steering people toward jobs built to be temporary: about 35% of the U.S. workforce, more than 55 million people, now sits in what Osterman calls “disposable” work.
What the Survey Counted
Osterman lays out the research in his book, Disposable Workers: The Transformation of Employment. According to Fortune’s coverage of the book, his estimate draws on a survey of more than 6,000 U.S. adults age 24 and up, plus nearly 100 interviews with workers, employers and staffing agencies. A related look at the generation’s priorities appears in this piece on what Gen Z workers want that surprises older managers, and common regrets people often experience in adulthood shows how long career worries have shaped every generation.
The “disposable” label covers freelancers, contractors, gig workers and what Osterman calls marginal workers. Nostalgia for steadier eras, as in little rituals from the 80s and 90s that disappeared without much notice, is easy to find. Marginal workers are W-2 employees whom employers do not treat as full members of the organization, hired with the expectation that they will not stay long.
Gig Work Is the Small Piece
The headline surprise sits in the proportions. Gig work, the part that gets the most attention, is only about 2% of the workforce, according to Osterman’s numbers as reported by Fortune. Contracting and marginal employment are far larger. For more on how generations talk past each other at work, a survey on generational conflict at work is a useful read, as is this look at traits that others often mistake for rudeness.
That matters because the popular story pictures young people choosing app-based flexibility. The data point the other way, and Osterman found that contractors and marginal workers report lower pay and lower job satisfaction than both traditional employees and freelancers. Another angle on the shift is the decline of teenage jobs, charted in the comparison of teen summer jobs in 1978 and 2026, while older workers’ habits, as in boomer habits that are making a comeback, hint at what a long career once looked like.
The Shift Came From Employers
Osterman traces the change to the breakdown of the postwar labor arrangement and points to the 1981 firing of striking air traffic controllers as a turning point. He also says plainly that the trend predates artificial intelligence: “This trend preceded AI.” AI may intensify it, he suggests, by adding uncertainty that pushes employers toward flexible, disposable staffing.
The friction between generations, explored in things boomers and Gen X call selfish that Gen Z considers normal, helps explain why the gig-work story travels. The story of Gen Z drifting away from careers has the direction backward. Jobs that look like careers have become harder to find, and the alternatives are the roles Osterman’s survey flags as disposable.
Glassdoor and the Ambition Question
Daniel Zhao, chief economist at Glassdoor, told Fortune that his data agrees with Osterman’s. He described a sluggish hiring market in which workers feel stuck in their careers, and he rejected the idea that Gen Z lacks drive: “It’s not because of a lack of ambition or laziness or that sort of thing.” Zhao argues that the work available has changed more than workers’ attitudes toward work. Glassdoor reviews also showed mentions of burnout up 43% in May compared with a year earlier.
Commentary in Poets&Quants by IE University vice president Ines Drieselmann lands in a similar spot. She argues that Gen Z is voicing expectations earlier generations held too, such as meaningful work, good managers, fair pay and room to progress, and that short tenure is not proof of disloyalty. Loyalty, in her telling, is conditional rather than gone.
What the Evidence Adds Up To
Put the pieces side by side and a pattern appears. A career-minded generation entered a market where more of the jobs were designed to be short-lived. The gig economy, a small slice at roughly 2%, makes for a vivid image, but the bigger story is the 35%.
That reframing changes the question employers and commentators ask. Instead of wondering why young workers will not commit, the data suggest asking why so many employers stopped offering something to commit to.
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This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
Image: Alan Levine – CC0/Wikimedia Commons
