Purpose Is a Key Driver for Gen Z

Young people are searching for purpose, meaning, and wellbeing from their jobs. If you spend time around Gen Z – whether you work with us, manage us, or are one of us – you may have noticed that, in general, we have a stronger desire to do purpose-driven work (and a higher-bar for what that really means). Over half of Gen Z has entered the workforce (my peer group) and the other half are engaging with or searching for programs like Civics Unplugged. Because of where I sit smack in the middle of Gen Z, being both within the workforce currently and shaping the next generation of it, I see this firsthand. And I think I can offer some explanation for why.

My generation is searching for more than just a paycheck out of our work. Considering we grew up with #YOLO painted neon on everything we owned and the world around us increasingly began to feel like it was on fire (literally and spiritually), it makes sense that Gen Z is paying close attention to how we spend our time. And since work is where we spend most of our waking hours, we are wondering if that time is being used to really contribute to something that actually matters?

This isn’t just anecdotal. Deloitte’s global survey of over 20,000 Gen Z and Millennial respondents found that 89% of Gen Z say purpose is important to their job satisfaction and wellbeing. When evaluating employers, young people are actively assessing whether their work will be meaningful—not just stable or well-paying.

Now that I am a few years out of college, I have seen many of my friends already switch jobs because the “dream job” didn’t feel like “enough” anymore. They were searching for something more aligned with their values, or at the very least, something that gave them more space or flexibility to build meaning elsewhere.

So the question is: is Gen Z just “built different?” Why does purpose feel non-negotiable for so many young people?

My theory is rooted in how Gen Z grew up, and specifically, the societal conditions under which we developed. Gen Z is choosing purpose because the answer to “Wait, Are We Okay?” is frankly, no.

When I was 11, I created my first Instagram account. At 13, I spent hours waiting to get Snapchats back from friends. At 14, I opened my first Facebook account. When I was 15, Donald Trump was elected president. At 16, I heard the word misinformation for the first time.

I grew up on the internet and social media. At the same time as I was developing my sense of the world around me, these technologies were accelerating fast and without regulation. By high school, social media was the main (and pretty much only) avenue in which we consumed the world’s news. From our phones, we watched school shootings unfold in real time. We followed the #MeToo movement. We saw climate disasters, political unrest, and global conflict. Between Urban Outfitters hauls and makeup tutorials were unfiltered videos of mass destruction and constant calls to action to fight injustice. Whiplash, much?

As a teenager, I remember feeling very anxious. I would lay awake at night, scrolling through all of the online muck, thinking: There’s so much hurt. When can I do something about it?

Then I went to college. The COVID pandemic hit my freshman year. So did the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement after the killing of George Floyd. Again, we watched everything unfold from our screens, while living through it ourselves. For Gen Z, crises were not just experienced as headlines in the news. Crises were internalized through an immersive environment at our fingertips.

Growing up like that changes you. It creates a sense that:

1. The world is unstable.

2. Problems are urgent.

3. You are, in some way, responsible for doing something about it.

In past generations, meaning and identity were often grounded in more stable, local structures like religious institutions, community activities, and place-based pride.

Many of those third-spaces have disappeared, and for many young people, the one’s that still exist (ex. church) don’t hold the same weight they once did. We live more of our lives online. Our communities are fragmented, and while the internet (in theory) connects us to everything and everyone, it also makes belonging feel thinner and more transient.

So while we were gaining exposure to global problems, we were simultaneously losing some of the grounded, in-person systems that historically helped people make sense of their lives.

That creates a gap. If meaning isn’t coming as strongly from community or tradition, it has to come from somewhere else.

This is where work enters the picture.

For many in my generation, work is one of the few domains that feels structured, accessible, and in our control. Even in a bad job market, there’s still a sense of hope and belief that you can switch jobs. You can teach yourself new skills online and change industries. You can pivot.

(Side Note: Of course, we have concerns about AI and the future of jobs, but from where I stand, Gen Z is not just standing by and complaining. We are staying sharp – using AI to optimize our job searches, prompting it to help us learn new skills, and pushing back against big tech when necessary.)

If the world feels chaotic, and your sense of purpose isn’t being fully met, it makes sense that you would look at your work and ask, “Is this actually contributing something good?”

This is why purpose-driven work has become so central for us. It’s about regaining a sense of agency in a world that often feels out of control.

At the same time, the landscape of work itself has changed. Gen Z grew up alongside the rise of startups, remote work, freelance and gig-based careers, and highly visible alternative paths to success

The traditional model—working long hours, climbing the ladder, maybe finding meaning later and outside of work—feels less compelling when you can see people building entirely different kinds of careers in real time online.

I am not naive to the fact that some people don’t/will not have the liberty to take the leap out of a bad job. And social media can create unrealistic expectations about how quick or easy it is to change course.

But on the flip side, it’s certainly not impossible! Social media has also opened the doors for thousands of everyday people to get information on getting started your own business or finding your niche or going out on your own as a content creator. This new version of the job market has changed the way Gen Z views careers, and makes us feel less stuck to traditional pathways.

“There’s more ways to make money outside the corporate cog that grants freedom and flexibility, so we enter the workforce with much higher standards” (The Guardian).

So when people say Gen Z “doesn’t want to work,” I just can’t get behind that! What I see is a generation that is working hard, but is less willing to stay in environments that feel misaligned, especially when alternatives, however imperfect, are visible.

As a young person working at a nonprofit that helps Gen Z find purpose-driven paths, I see firsthand the heaviness of this purpose burden. Young people come to our team asking for help for how they can both make a living wage and find a job with meaning.

And to be clear—if throughout this essay you’ve been defining purpose-driven work as starting a nonprofit, that’s actually not what I’m referring to. We want young people to go out into the world and build the systems that need to exist to build a better future. And that’s going to need to happen within many of the insisting structures that make up our society—from corporations and banks to schools and governments.

Most of Gen Z (Civics Unplugged Fellows included) will work inside and alongside corporations, governments, and traditional institutions. But those institutions can’t operate the way they used to in a world at the precipice of democratic upheaval, global conflict and climate disaster. If work is one of the primary places young people are looking to create meaning and agency, then workplaces have to meet that moment.

This isn’t about making work “fun” or adding surface-level perks or even just raising wages. It’s about aligning values, impact, and culture in a way that allows people to actually feel that what they’re doing matters.

And yes—that requires leadership to shift. Not just to accommodate Gen Z, but to build organizations that are more sustainable, human, and responsive to the world we’re actually living in.

If purpose is a key driver for the youngest generation of workers, who are the future of these institutions, then leaders need to take a hard look at what their workplaces are really offering. Otherwise, we’re just going to build new ones elsewhere.

Purpose, in this sense, is both collective and individual. It’s about recognizing your individual strengths and needs while rooting in care for humans and the future of the society we live in. It’s the belief that our work should positively contribute to something bigger than ourselves.

Here is a generation that came of age feeling, very clearly, that the world is not okay and is choosing to orient our lives to do something about it.

So we should all be asking: What are we doing with our time? Who does it help? What does it build?

Otherwise, what’s it all for?