Last week, Deloitte published its 2026 Millennial and Gen Z Survey.
The survey asks 22,000 Millennials and Gen Zs from 44 countries about their working lives.
It makes for fascinating reading,
especially for anyone who has an interest in the world of work or the future of careers. And, I’d argue, it should be essential reading for anyone who manages other people or a team of people.
Millennials and Gen Z make up roughly two-thirds of the global workforce.
So the report really is a window into the minds of the people who increasingly are the workforce and are navigating modern working life day in, day out.
Here are some of the highlights:
*** One of the biggest factors now steering Millennial and Gen Z career decisions isn’t pay, work/life balance, security, opportunities to progress, flexibility or purpose. It’s something else entirely: housing. Specifically, whether they can afford to live anywhere near the jobs they want to do
*** Three quarters of
Millennials and Gen Zs are using AI at work. But they’re not using it because of their companies. They’re using it despite the clunky company infrastructure around them. Kind of like your boss telling you to “embrace change” while still printing all their emails
*** More than half of Millennials and Gen Zs say they feel digitally drained. Which
is no surprise when I think about an average day at work and all the emails, Teams messages, Teams calls, phone calls, notifications and fire drills (literal and metaphorical) which chip away at our attention morning, noon and night
*** On a similar note, the report suggests a new core career capability for 2026: adaptability. The people surveyed think the
ground will keep shifting beneath their feet (new tools, roles, job descriptions, expectations and so on…)
*** The subtitle of the report is “Progress on Their Own Terms”. Only 1 in 4 Gen Zs want fast promotions and for Millennials it's 1 in 5. One of the reasons for this? Millennials and Gen Zs say they’ve looked at their leaders and they don’t like what
they see. In particular, the burnout, the stress, the responsibility and the work/life balance
*** It’s not all doom and gloom though. Mental wellbeing has got better in the last 12 months. Perhaps deciding to stop sprinting towards a destination you never wanted to visit helps with that? Who would’ve thought it!
So there you have it.
No neat takeaways or pithy one-liners to wrap up this email today. Just a handy summary of a 53 page report which gives an interesting snapshot into the world of work today.
Don’t say I don’t look after you.
If you’d like to check out the report for yourself, here’s the link
To fulfilment,
Tom