More than half of Gen Z adults say they lack a sense of meaning or purpose in their lives, while nearly eight in 10 young people want careers that make a positive difference, according to new research highlighting a growing challenge for employers.
The latest Voices of Gen Z research from Gallup and Making Caring Common, a programme of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, conducted in partnership with the Walton Family Foundation, found that 51% of Gen Z adults lack meaning or purpose, or both. Across the wider sample of 13- to 28-year-olds, 34% report lacking meaning in their lives, while 39% lack a sense of purpose. Taken together, 45% lack meaning, purpose or both.
At the same time, the research challenges stereotypes of Gen Z as a self-focused generation. Almost eight in 10 (79%) want a job mainly focused on helping others or making a positive difference in people’s lives. But turning that ambition into reality is proving much harder.
Among employed adult Gen Zers who want this type of work, only 56% say they currently have it. The study also shows growing disconnect between the work Gen Z wants and the financial pressures, stress and burnout risks shaping the careers they can realistically pursue. Concerns about insufficient pay, financial security, stress and emotional exhaustion are among the biggest barriers.
The findings raise a wider question for employers. Can organisations provide younger workers with meaningful work without asking them to sacrifice financial security, work-life balance or wellbeing?
GEN Z’S GROWING PURPOSE GAP
The research surveyed 2,436 young people aged 13 to 28 across all 50 US states and the District of Columbia. While the majority still report having meaning and purpose in their lives, a substantial minority do not, and the problem becomes considerably more pronounced as young people enter adulthood.
Among Gen Z adults, 39% report lacking meaning, compared with 22% of middle and high school students. Similarly, 43% of adults report little or no sense of purpose, compared with 30% of those still at school. Overall, Making Caring Common reports that 51% of Gen Z adults lack meaning or purpose, or both.
The findings suggest that the transition into adulthood – including entering the workforce, achieving financial independence and taking on greater responsibilities – coincides with a widening purpose gap for many young people.
MAKING A DIFFERENCE IS KEY TO FINDING MEANING
One of the study’s strongest findings is the relationship between personal wellbeing and feeling that you matter to other people. Gen Zers who believe they make a positive difference in other people’s lives are around three to four times more likely to experience meaning or purpose.
Among respondents who strongly agreed that they positively affect others, 93% said their lives felt meaningful and 87% reported a sense of purpose. By contrast, among those who disagreed that they positively affect others, only 22% said their life had felt meaningful during the previous month, while just 18% reported experiencing a sense of purpose.
This suggests that helping others may not simply be an altruistic ambition. Feeling useful, needed and connected to something beyond oneself could be an important contributor to young people’s own wellbeing. Meaning and purpose are also strongly correlated with lower reported rates of anxiety and depression, according to Making Caring Common.
GEN ZERS WANT WORK THAT HELPS OTHERS
That desire to make a difference extends strongly into Gen Z’s expectations of work. Around 79% want a future job mainly focused on helping others or making a positive difference in people’s lives.
Importantly, the aspiration remains relatively consistent across age, race, gender and perceived household income. This suggests that the desire for socially meaningful work stretches across different sections of the generation. The findings challenge some popular stereotypes surrounding younger workers.
“Contrary to the popular stereotype that Gen Z are selfish, Gen Zers report an inspiring amount of interest in doing work that helps others,” said Richard Weissbourd, Faculty Director of Making Caring Common. “That interest is very important for our collective future. But it may also be key to Gen Zers’ livelihood in an age when AI is spreading rapidly.”
Weissbourd suggests that AI could increasingly shift economic value towards jobs requiring distinctly human capabilities, including caring and interpersonal skills.
PURPOSE ALONE IS NOT ENOUGH
However, the research also exposes an important tension in discussions about purpose at work. Young people may want meaningful careers, but they also need those careers to provide a sustainable living.
When Gen Zers were asked about potential obstacles to pursuing jobs focused on helping others, 49% cited insufficient pay. However, 46% were concerned that such jobs could be difficult, stressful or emotionally draining.
Those concerns were mentioned at least twice as frequently as other potential barriers, including limited career advancement or lack of interest. And while 79% want a career that helps others, only 23% selected caring for others among their top three priorities when considering a future job. Other priorities ranked substantially higher:
- 52% prioritised personally fulfilling work;
- 50% prioritised work-life balance;
- 50% wanted to earn enough without excessive stress; and
- 41% prioritised earning enough to consider themselves financially successful.
Rather than suggesting that Gen Z does not value purpose, the findings reveal a more complicated reality: purpose has to coexist with pay, security and wellbeing. This tension is not entirely new. Previous research found that millennials were prepared to quit jobs that failed to provide equity, flexibility and purpose. This suggests that the search for more meaningful employment has been developing across younger generations for some time.
WELLBEING COULD BE THE DEAL-BREAKER
The concern about emotionally draining work also sits within a much wider wellbeing challenge for younger employees. Earlier this year, Fair Play Talks reported that 59% of Gen Z and 61% of millennials would be more likely to change jobs if their personal wellness needs went unsupported.
The findings reinforce an important distinction for employers. Young people may want purposeful work, but they are increasingly unwilling to accept burnout as the price of doing it. The latest research from Making Caring Common reaches a similar conclusion. As Weissbourd points out, there are legitimate reasons for young people to prioritise financial security and work-life balance. “If we want more Gen Zers to pursue helping careers, these jobs can’t undermine their financial stability or swamp them with stress,” he said.
That places the quality and design of meaningful jobs firmly under the spotlight. Employers cannot simply promote purpose while leaving employees dealing with excessive workloads, poor pay or inadequate support.
ONLY HALF ARE FINDING THE WORK THEY WANT
That tension is already visible among Gen Z employees. Among employed adults who say they want a job focused on helping others, only 56% say they currently have one. Another 27% say they do not, while 18% are unsure.
There are also notable differences between groups. Women are more likely than men to report working in these roles, at 63% compared with 48%. Perhaps more significantly, Gen Zers facing the greatest financial difficulties are less likely to work in jobs helping others, despite expressing similar levels of interest to their more financially secure peers.
This raises another important question about who can afford to pursue purposeful work. If jobs perceived as socially valuable are also associated with lower pay or greater emotional strain, young people with greater financial security may have more freedom to pursue them. Those under greater economic pressure may have little choice but to prioritise income and stability.
“Young people overwhelmingly want work that helps others, but only about half of those who want such jobs are in them,” said Stephanie Marken, Senior Partner at Gallup. “Many assume these careers won’t pay enough or will be too emotionally draining, and those perceptions are holding them back before they ever step into the field.”
Helping young people understand that meaningful work can also be sustainable represents “a real opportunity for employers and educators”, she added.
POOR LEADERSHIP CAN UNDERMINE PURPOSE
The Gen Z findings also form part of a wider workplace fulfilment problem. Recent research found that almost half of employees do not feel fulfilled at work, with poor leadership among the biggest barriers.
Significantly, making a positive impact on other people emerged as one of the leading contributors to fulfilling work, echoing the new findings about the connection between helping others and experiencing meaning. This matters because purpose cannot be manufactured through an employer mission statement alone.
Employees need to understand how their contribution matters, feel valued for making it and work under leaders who enable rather than undermine that sense of fulfilment. For younger employees in particular, there is also evidence of a broader challenge to traditional workplace norms. Previous research found that Gen Z workers are increasingly favouring authenticity and emotional honesty over old-fashioned ideas of professionalism.
Together, these trends suggest younger workers are questioning not just what they do for a living, but what kind of workplace they are prepared to do it in.
MEANINGFUL WORK ISN’T JUST A GEN Z ISSUE
Purpose-driven or meaningful work isn’t just a Gen Z issue. Nor is the desire for meaningful work confined to younger generations. Research previously highlighted by Fair Play Talks found that meaningful contributions are key to helping women thrive at work.
In that study, women described thriving at work in terms of making positive contributions, learning, and feeling valued and recognised. The similarities are notable. Across different generations and demographic groups, a growing body of evidence suggests that employees increasingly define a good job not simply through salary or status, but through a combination of meaning, fair reward, wellbeing, development, recognition and the opportunity to contribute.
EMPLOYER’S VALUES MATTER
The latest findings also sit within a broader shift in younger workers’ expectations of organisations. Gen Z has previously expressed frustration with the gap between employers’ stated commitments and employees’ lived experience. Research highlighted by Fair Play Talks found Gen Z employees were unimpressed with workplace inclusion efforts, reinforcing the importance of organisations demonstrating their values through everyday workplace practices rather than corporate messaging alone.
Purpose could face the same credibility problem. An organisation can claim to change the world, support communities or improve people’s lives. But if employees experience poor management, inequitable opportunities, unsustainable workloads or financial insecurity, that organisational purpose may feel disconnected from their own working lives.
For employers, authenticity between what the organisation says and what employees experience is therefore critical.
COULD AI MAKE HUMAN SKILLS MORE VALUABLE?
The research also arrives as artificial intelligence begins reshaping the work available to younger generations. Weissbourd suggests AI could shift parts of the economy from a knowledge economy towards a greater emphasis on a care economy, increasing the importance of capabilities such as empathy, caring, communication and interpersonal judgement.
Those skills may become particularly important as AI takes on more routine cognitive and knowledge-based tasks. But there is an important responsible business question embedded within that possibility.
If economies increasingly depend on human-centred capabilities while jobs requiring those skills remain poorly paid, undervalued or emotionally exhausting, employers risk reproducing the very barriers identified by the research. Recognising the economic value of human skills therefore needs to go hand in hand with fair pay, career development, appropriate staffing and sustainable job design.
PARENTS ALSO SHAPE YOUNG PEOPLE’S CAREER VALUES
Employers and educators are not the only influences on how young people think about meaningful careers. More than half of Gen Z respondents (53%) said their parents talk to them about the importance of helping or positively affecting others through their work.
That influence is particularly strong among younger respondents. Around 66% of Gen Zers still in K-12 education report having these conversations with their parents, compared with 45% of adults.
Among school-age Gen Zers whose parents discuss the importance of positively affecting others through work, 86% want a career that helps others. In fact, among those whose parents do not communicate that message, the figure falls to 51%. The findings highlight the collective role families, schools, universities and employers play in shaping how the next generation defines career success.
WHY THIS MATTERS FOR RESPONSIBLE BUSINESS
For employers, the findings should prompt a rethink of what purpose at work actually means. Purpose cannot simply be an employer-brand statement, corporate value, ESG pledge or social impact message.
Young workers appear to want evidence that what they do matters – whether to colleagues, customers, communities or wider society. But they are equally clear that meaningful work should not require them to accept financial insecurity, excessive workloads or burnout.
That creates a significant responsible business challenge. Employers seeking to attract and retain younger talent need to connect individual roles with tangible outcomes, show employees who benefits from their work and provide opportunities to make a meaningful contribution.
That could include stronger mentoring and volunteering programmes, employee involvement in community initiatives, clearer links between everyday roles and organisational impact, and greater recognition of caring and interpersonal skills. But purpose must also be supported by the fundamentals of good work: fair pay, good leadership, psychological safety, flexibility, development opportunities and manageable workloads.
There is little value in offering employees an inspiring organisational mission if the everyday experience of working there leaves them exhausted, financially insecure or unable to see how their own contribution connects with that mission. The Gen Z purpose gap therefore tells employers something much bigger about the future of work. Young people want to make a difference. But purpose cannot come at the expense of pay, security or wellbeing.
Organisations capable of bringing those elements together may be better placed not only to attract the next generation of talent, but to create workplaces where people across generations can find greater meaning in what they do.
WHAT EMPLOYERS SHOULD DO NEXT
The findings do not mean employers are responsible for providing young people with their entire sense of meaning or purpose. But with 79% of Gen Z wanting careers that help others, organisations have an opportunity to create work where employees can see how their contribution matters. At the same time, the research is clear that purpose alone is not enough: 49% cite insufficient pay and 46% the prospect of stressful or emotionally draining work as barriers to pursuing helping careers.
For employers, that points to several priorities:
Make purpose tangible
Help employees understand how their everyday work contributes to customers, colleagues, communities or wider society. Purpose is more credible when people can see the impact of their own role rather than simply read about it in a corporate mission statement.
Don’t use purpose as a substitute for fair pay
Meaningful work still needs to provide financial security. Employers should review whether roles associated with care, social impact or service are being properly valued and rewarded.
Design meaningful work to be sustainable
If employees are expected to make a difference while dealing with excessive workloads, inadequate resources or constant emotional pressure, purpose can quickly turn into burnout. Reasonable workloads, flexibility and appropriate wellbeing support matter.
Give younger workers opportunities to contribute
Mentoring, volunteering, employee-led initiatives and community partnerships can provide additional ways for employees to use their skills to make a positive impact, including those whose core roles are not explicitly focused on helping others.
Invest in managers
Managers can help employees understand how their individual contribution connects to wider organisational goals, while recognition, regular feedback and meaningful development conversations can reinforce the value of their work.
Create visible routes for development
Helping professions should not be perceived as career dead ends. Clear progression, learning opportunities and pathways into leadership can make socially valuable careers more attractive and sustainable.
Value distinctly human skills
As AI reshapes work, capabilities such as empathy, communication, relationship-building, judgement and care may become increasingly important. Employers should recognise and develop these skills rather than treating them as secondary to technical expertise.
Ultimately, employers should resist the temptation to turn “purpose” into another recruitment slogan. The opportunity is to create jobs where people can make a meaningful contribution while also earning fairly, developing their careers and protecting their wellbeing. For Gen Z in particular, the evidence suggests those elements increasingly need to go together.
Click here to find out more about The Voices of Gen Z findings from the Gallup survey.
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