Every few months a new opinion piece makes the rounds: Gen Z doesn't want to work. They job-hop. They ghost interviews. They refuse to come into the office.
I don't buy it. The same generation building a business on TikTok at 19, teaching themselves to code through YouTube, and juggling two or three income streams is not allergic to work. They're allergic to one very specific version of it — the version that says a stable career looks like one employer, one office, one steady climb from junior to senior over forty years.
And when you look at the data, it's hard to blame them.
What the Numbers Actually Say
The Deloitte 2025 Gen Z and Millennial Survey, which polled 23,482 respondents across 44 countries in late 2024, surfaced a striking shift: 48% of Gen Zs now say they do not feel financially secure, up from 30% just one year earlier. The same study found that nearly 70% of Gen Z engage in skill development outside formal employment — courses, side projects, self-taught disciplines. This is not a generation opting out. It's a generation compounding skills in parallel to whatever their day job happens to be.
Side-hustle participation continues to climb. Gen Z and younger millennials remain the most likely cohorts to run a second stream of income alongside their primary role — driven, by their own account, by a mix of financial insecurity and a desire to build skills the formal job market isn't paying them to develop.
The "side hustle" framing undersells what's happening. For many, this isn't a hobby or extra cash — it's a deliberate strategy. One income stream is risky. Two is resilient. Three is optionality. When you grew up watching your parents' generation get laid off in 2008, 2020, and again through the post-pandemic corporate restructurings, building dependency on a single employer doesn't feel conservative — it feels reckless.
The Entry-Level Squeeze Is Real — And Got Worse in 2025
Here's the part that rarely makes it into the "Gen Z doesn't want to work" takes: a significant share of traditional entry-level roles is being quietly absorbed by AI, and the 2025 data is no longer speculative.
According to analysis covered by CNBC, Rest of World, and several labour-market trackers in 2025, entry-level job postings in the US have declined roughly 35% since January 2023. In tech specifically, the picture is dramatic: entry-level tech hiring collapsed by 73.4% year-over-year in 2025 (Ravio, 2025–2026 tech compensation report). Programmer employment fell by 27.5% between 2023 and 2025, with older workers in the same job families actually growing their headcount — a clean signal that what's being displaced is the junior rung, not the function itself.
At large public tech firms, new-role starts by people with less than one year of post-graduate experience fell by about 50% between 2019 and 2024. A recent survey cited by the World Economic Forum found that 49% of US Gen Z job hunters believe AI has already reduced the value of their college education in the job market — a belief that is, based on the hiring data, mostly rational.
The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 reported that 40% of employers globally expect to reduce their workforce in areas where AI can automate tasks. Goldman Sachs' oft-cited 2023 estimate — that up to 300 million full-time jobs globally have some exposure to generative AI — now reads less like a forecast and more like a description of what is actively happening.
This is the environment Gen Z entered. "Why don't they just apply harder" is a question from a different economy.
The Toolbelt Generation
One of the more interesting counter-trends is happening in skilled trades.
The US National Student Clearinghouse has reported consecutive years of double-digit growth in vocational and trade-school enrolment through 2024–25. The Wall Street Journal christened the trend "the toolbelt generation" in April 2024, and the framing has stuck. Multiple follow-up surveys through 2025 show a growing share of Gen Z workers saying they'd consider skilled trades over a four-year degree — citing AI-proof work, faster time-to-income, and the autonomy of owning your own tools, schedule, and client list.
The logic is straightforward. Skilled trade work is among the hardest categories to automate — you cannot unclog a drain, install an aircon compressor, or rewire a distribution board through a chatbot. The work is physical, site-specific, and requires judgement in the field. The barrier to entry is skill, not credentials. And the ceiling is set by reputation and repeat clients, not by how many open headcounts your employer has this quarter.
It's not that Gen Z is rejecting knowledge work. It's that a meaningful slice is looking at the trades and seeing something the last generation was told to avoid: durable, portable, AI-resistant income.
Singapore's Specific Moment
The local picture reinforces the global one, with a few distinctly Singaporean details.
The Ministry of Manpower's Labour Force in Singapore 2025 (Advance Release, November 2025) reports that self-employed residents make up 11.8% of the resident workforce, comprising 179,200 own-account workers (7.3%) and 71,600 platform workers (2.9%). The stand-out statistic: 92.5% of platform workers said they preferred this work type, citing autonomy and flexibility. That is not the number you'd expect if platform work were purely a fallback — it's the number you get when the arrangement genuinely suits the person.
The Platform Workers Act, which came into effect on 1 January 2025, gave formal legal recognition to platform-based work. The Act mandated CPF contributions for platform workers born on or after 1 January 1995, required platform operators to provide work injury compensation, and — notably — granted platform workers the right to form associations and collectively negotiate. One year in, reception from worker associations has been cautiously positive: initial concerns about reduced take-home pay have been offset by the long-term security of CPF and insurance cover. Singapore legislated a whole category of worker into existence. That tells you something about where the labour market is heading.
The "slashie" has become a recognisable local identity — a person who introduces themselves as writer/tutor/designer or engineer/barista/photographer. It isn't a fringe phenomenon anymore; it's on job posts, LinkedIn profiles, and Straits Times features.
Singapore also has an advantage here that most Western economies don't: our density and last-mile logistics make hyperlocal skill marketplaces genuinely viable. A tutor, aircon technician, hairstylist, or furniture assembler in Tampines can serve clients in Pasir Ris, Bedok, and Paya Lebar without losing the day to commuting. In the US or Australia, that same tradesperson might spend half their working hours in a van.
Where Scout Fits In
I started Scout because I saw a specific version of this problem up close: Singaporeans with real, monetisable skills — aircon servicing, handyman work, private tutoring, repair, fabrication — unable to get found, stuck paying agency overhead, or hidden inside rate-limited classifieds.
Scout is not trying to be another gig platform chasing pennies on food delivery. That race is already run. What we're building is closer to a marketplace for skilled work — the kind where the pricing, the client relationship, and the scheduling all belong to the person doing the job. If you can do the work well, people should be able to find you. That's it.
For Gen Z specifically, this matters because the economic strategy of "build a portfolio of skills, control your own time, don't depend on a single employer" is the same strategy Scout's supply side was designed for. Whether it's a full-time calling or your second income stream, the infrastructure to run it should be lightweight, transparent, and on your terms.
Closing Thought
Gen Z isn't abandoning work. They're rebuilding the relationship between skill, income, and time on different terms — terms that happen to fit an economy where entry-level knowledge work is thinning, where AI is actively compressing the career ladder, and where physical, skill-based work is becoming more valuable than the last generation was told.
If you're in Singapore and you have a skill — any skill someone would pay for — the case for turning it into an income stream has never been stronger. The infrastructure exists now. The legal framework exists now. The demand exists now.
The 9-to-5 isn't dying. It's just no longer the only path that makes economic sense.
Scout is a skills marketplace for Singapore and SEA. If you have a skill worth paying for, list your services on Scout — it's free to get started, and the work stays yours.
Sources: Deloitte 2025 Gen Z and Millennial Survey (May 2025) · World Economic Forum Future of Jobs Report 2025 (January 2025) · Ravio 2025–2026 Tech Job Market and Compensation Reports · CNBC, "AI is not just ending entry-level jobs. It's the end of the career ladder as we know it" (September 2025) · Rest of World, "AI is wiping out entry-level tech jobs, leaving graduates stranded" (2025) · Singapore Ministry of Manpower Labour Force in Singapore 2025 — Advance Release (November 2025) · Singapore Platform Workers Act (in effect 1 January 2025) · Goldman Sachs, "The Potentially Large Effects of Artificial Intelligence on Economic Growth" (March 2023) · US National Student Clearinghouse Research Center · Wall Street Journal, "How Gen Z Is Becoming the Toolbelt Generation" (April 2024) · NTUC and Institute of Policy Studies research on platform work in Singapore.