Funding for To The Contrary provided by: This week on To The Contrary: What happens is people get pushed into going to college.

They get pushed into a certain path without really knowing who they are.

Companies even like Google they're offering opportunities for young adult to enter and learn on the job.

Hello, I'm Bonnie Erbé.

Welcome to To The Contrary, a discussion of news and social trend from a variety of perspectives.

Gen Z is entering adulthood in a society mixed with instability, anxiety, and shifting definitions of success.

This makes many Gen Zers uncertain, social isolationists and reliant on AI.

Many are abandoning white collar careers for blue collar trades.

Yet at work, they're ofte misunderstood by older managers who see them as unmotivated or overly sensitive.

Shaped by social movements and misunderstood and disillusioned by broken promises of prosperity, Gen Zers often demand authenticity and purpose.

With us to discuss the stories are two experts: Julia Toothacre, chief career strategist at Resume Templates, and Jenny Fernandez, a former marketing executive who is now a lecturer at the Columbi University School of Business.

Welcome.

Thank you for having us.

Thank you.

Great that you both can be here.

So let's start by letting me ask you, what are Gen Z's experiences with economic instability, which seems to be all over the place, and automation, and how are they reshaping traditional career paths for them?

Let's start with you, Julia.

You know I think one thing about Gen Z is they hold no loyalty to organization.

And so this economic instability is really not fazing them in that way.

So they will go work for someone for six months and say, nope, this isn't what I want.

And they'll move on to something else.

And we haven't really seen that with previous generations.

And I think that's going to be a really big shift moving forward for older generations to reconcile about how they move through their career.

Gen Z is growing up in the most disrupted labor market.

If you remember, they started going to college right when the pandemic hit.

So they saw family members, friends lose their jobs.

And because of that, they're really, really concerned with financial stability.

And now they're graduating in the AI disruption, that is really having a huge impact in the labor market.

Companies are decreasin the number of entry level jobs by 50%.

So they're really concerne again with financial stability, with understanding how can they really set themselves up for success.

So now with automation they're really looking more toward sustainability versus prestige.

So they're more willing to go for trade jobs versus the college level jobs that we are used to.

Now let me ask you this, because we saw so much hoopla for years before it became the year 2000 Y2K, and it was all about how computers were all gonna turn off, stop working, rig the system in a bad way, and none of that, none of it ever came true.

Does either—?

I'd like to hear both your thoughts on whether that could happen with this as well.

I think AI is here, but I just— I don't know if it's going to take over the way that everybody thinks it's going to.

I think it's a fad right now, and we're seeing companies really jump on to that and try to replace workers because AI is cheaper.

However, I can see a bubble with that as well because AI sounds like AI and it looks like AI.

And so I think we're going to start to see a lot of similarities in how people, you know create content and all of that.

And I think there's going to be a bubble with it.

That's my interpretation based on what I'm seeing.

So.

Well, then all of, you know, years of people like myself doing stories about something to become nothing in five years or very little.

I think— Is that what you're saying?

I think people are going to use it.

You know, I think it's going to be used as an enhancement.

You know, I thin there is a lot of benefit to it.

But do I think it's going to completely take over jobs?

In some cases, yes, I can see that.

But I think then companies will revert back.

So we're seeing customer service as a top area where AI is taking over.

I think people are going to get really weary of that.

And then eventually you'll start to see companies go, hey, we have actual humans that you're going to talk to, and that's going to be, yo know, the revolutionary thing.

So, you know, everything's cyclical.

And I think this will be cyclical as well.

History repeats itself.

So back in the, you know, 2010s, we saw how the digital transformation kind of took down the barriers of entry.

And we saw a whole new entry or creation of startups.

Right.

The new generation of inventors.

I think nowadays we're seeing a lot of Gen Zers and early career professionals being laid off because companies are investing more towards AI, yet they're not seeing the benefits.

It's somethin that it has been proven already, but they are really betting in the future.

So what I think is going to happen is that we potentially are going to see Gen Zers starting to ventur into more, you know, doing more gigs, kind of side hustles starting their own businesses.

And frankly, as we see the boomer generation in the next 5 to 6 years starting to retire in mass, we're going to see a transfer of small business ownership, where right now they're the ones owning the businesses.

But potentially we're going to see the younger generation starting to take more risk and create and build and support those small businesses.

That's very interesting because I hadn't even thought about its implication on boomers, my generation, which is in the midst of retiring right now, and what you just mentioned about how it's going to impact the workplace and future generations.

Do you see other ways in which this whole phenomenon is going to change the work life juggle or work in lif or however you want to put it?

The trades is going to have a kind of a renaissance.

We're seeing research from McKinsey, from Resume Builder as of this year showcasing how four out of ten Gen Zers are actually looking to enter in the trade sector.

So they're not really hung up on the prestige of a college career because theyre seeing that the $200,000 coding job in the technology world is no longer available.

AI and Gen AI are kind of taking that so they're more willing to go into more pragmatic careers.

They really want stability.

But I can't see somebody who got all th schooling needed to understand AI and computers and how they work and what they can do and what they can't do deciding, o the heck with it, I'm becoming— I can make more money as an electrician.

So I'm going to go do that.

Do you see that?

I do see that.

Yeah.

Because what happens is people get pushed into going to college.

They get pushed into a certain path without really knowing who they are.

And so we see a lot of people— I saw this when I worked in higher education in career development.

People were in college and they should have been doing a trade or they should have been doing something else.

They just don't know it yet.

They don't have the experience.

They don't trust themselves.

So they're relying on othe people's voices to guide them.

I think that Gen Z is a little bit more self-assured than other generations that I've seen, and they know what they want, and that education is still going to serve them in the trades really well.

I think a lot of them will end up doing their own business within the trades.

As Jenny said earlier, entrepreneurship I think, is going to have, a huge blow up, even though we already see a lot of that.

I think even more so, but among the trades.

The one thing though, that I want Gen Z to understand is yes, the trades, you know, you don't have th the debt or anything like that.

It does make good money but it also wears on your body.

So there's a trade off there going into the trades that I don't know that Gen Z is 100% thought of yet.

And so I think that's going to be interesting to see long term what it's going to look like.

But the opportunities are there and they're seeing i and they're capitalizing on it.

Jenny, we're talking— let's make this clear, I think or correct me if I'm wrong, but when we're talking about somebody learning, AI as a key to the workplace, to be able to mass progra computers, get them to take over human functions, really look into the future versus going back to becoming a small business person and running a plumbing service or a you know, an electrical service or something like that.

Are these the same groups of people?

I think they're totally different groups of people in terms of education anyway.

I think it goes back to what are your values?

Right?

So for Gen Zers, its all about authenticity, about independence, autonomy and having the freedo to be able to do what they want to do in their own terms.

So when it comes to, as we talked about ownership of a small business, for example, they can, you know, they can manage their hours, they can hire other people.

I don't think they're going to go back to what it was 30, 40, 50 years ago.

I think they're going to modernize what it means to be a new tradesperson where they're going to be doing marketing online, where they're going to be hiring, and they're going to be really acting more as managers.

So I think that there's going to be a consolidation in terms of what does it mean to be a small business in the trade world and Gen Zers are, you know, very much keen to—again, because theyre so pragmatic that they want stability they want the financial freedom to be abl to manage their mental health, their families, in their own terms.

I think the people that want to be in tech and want to do AI and want that part, they're going to do it.

They're going to find a way to do it.

They're likely very gifted in it, and those are the ones that will still get employed into those positions.

So I think what we're talking about here is that subset that went to college, but maybe knew that it wasn't exactly what they wanted.

And now they're making more independent decisions for themselves.

Each of you has mentioned, what Gen Z might end up doing with all of its AI education and all its knowledge of technology and possibly going bac to electrical work or plumbing, or one of the old skills, I would call them.

You think that's really going to happen or are people going to say, wait a minute, I studied all this tech.

I'm not going to go back and be a plumber.

I don't want to be an electrician.

Yeah, they make more money than I do but it's not where my soul is.

Yeah.

I mean, if I could add to that, actually, nowadays we're seeing high school students who are learning kind of the old school trade classes who are being offere $70,000 jobs out of high school because there is such a need of workers that have those skills.

And there has been a gap because there has been a big push for many, many years to get people to college.

And again, I'm a professor, I'm a big fan, and I'm doing my doctorate program at this time.

So I'm a big fan of education.

But I think that was, you know, they're going there's going to be a subset of college graduates who may not be able to find the more traditional jobs that they expected and maybe willing to, to go t these other type of trade jobs.

However, there's also young folks who didn't get to go to college or chose not to because they wanted to avoid the debt.

And I think while companies even like Google, they're offering opportunities for young adults to enter and learn on the job, almost like get an apprenticeship so that they can figure out on the job what does it mean to be, you know, whether it's a technician in Google?

Whether you need to be a prompt engineer?

All of those great things that you can learn on the job from the companies that potentiall even universities need to start, you know, providing new education that is really geared towards more modular, short term, you know, different type of non-college-educated work.

Jenny mentioned the renaissance of trades, and I see that coming.

It's not quite there, but I think it's coming in the next 5 to 10 years.

And there's, I think there' going to be money put behind it.

So we're going to see it in high schools.

We're going to see either the government or other trade unions putting a lot of money into recruiting students.

And I think that's what's going to get people into it.

Like I said, I worked in college career services.

A lot of the trades do want people with college degrees because they can go into management much easier because they have a certain core set of skills.

So I think that you will see trades going to college campuses and trying to recruit people out of that.

So I think that's what we're going to see.

We just haven't seen it quite yet.

I think we're on the cusp of it happening.

Now are we going to see— one thing we haven't talked much about here is the rate of pay being made by the traditional, kind of independent, business people, like plumbers, like electricians.

The pay has shot up in those fields.

I mean, a generation ago, those people were not paid very well, and now they're pai just about as well as the people who were, you know, getting their education in AI and building computer companies.

How—each of you, please explain for us and for the audience how this will be affectin people's careers in the future?

I think this is why you're seeing Gen Z move toward the trades.

They're seeing the money.

They're seeing that they can get a $100,000+ job without all of this additional training, or it's training on the job, or a company is paying for them to go through this training, so there's no investment from them.

And they reap all the benefits.

But the thing to remember and I mentioned this earlier, is you're not going to be able to do that trade your entire life, like there is a point where your body is likely going to tap out.

So you might make reall good money in those early years, but you know, you have a higher rate of potential injury.

You're, you know things can happen to your body.

So long ter it might not be the best option.

But I think that's where you, again, are going to see them go into more management, owning their own business, different things like that.

There's really going to be an opportunity to decide early on in your career, ho do you show up to the workplace?

Do you decide to start as a tradesman and again reap the benefits of the salaries, the job, the flexibility, and know that with AI and the fact that Gen Z is the first digital native generation of our lifetime, that they have the ability to reskill themselves, right?

Actually AI because of AI and technology advancements, theyre projecting that the new generation is going to change careers 12 plus time in their lifetime.

So they know that if they wanted to change— Change careers?

Change careers, not even jobs.

12+ times?

How do you have time to train for 12 different careers?

Sometimes it's not by choice, right?

But you have to do it in order to continue to be agile and adaptive.

But they are.

They are used to having information at the ti of their fingers, transparency.

And they already hav that mindset of a perfect career where they're always investigating a side hustle, trying to see how they can monetize their, you know, how they're active in social media, the internet that I see them evolving.

I think it's just a matter of how do they adapt to the economic situation that they're facing.

And this goes back to having grown up and faced the financial kin of great recession that happened during the pandemic, where they saw family members lose their jobs and kind of their savings.

This idea that we're in a career for 15, 20, 30 years— that is no longer.

There are a subset of people that will do that because that's part of their value system.

It's part of their personality.

But I would say the majority of people, and I think Gen Z is going to be the poster child for this— they are going to not just have 12 plus different jobs, bu they're going to switch careers because I think now the narrative is changin where, yeah, do this for seven years, go be an electrician for 7 to 10 years and then go do something else.

You know, I think that's a new message that we're hearing in the career space that we didn't hear before.

Before it was you need to stay in this position because you're going to get promoted, and then there's going to be a pension and there's going to be all of these benefits.

There are no benefits anymore to staying in an organization long term—for most, there are in some areas, but for most there's not.

So I think they're going to be switching a lo more than previous generations.

This reminds me a bit of what we went throug in the years leading up to Y2K that, you know, when it became the year 2000, all of these prediction about how it was going to change the workplace changes, the wor life balance, do this, do that.

And then it kind of came and went.

Nothing really changed.

And I just remember thinking, gosh, what a fool I was to devote that much airtime to talking about something that everybody said was going to happen, but never happened.

So how much of that and, you know, let's start with you tw both responding to this, please.

But how do you think that's going to work out in terms of a future in AI versu in one of the traditional trade?

Yeah.

I mean, if I could start.

So I think that what we have to do is really go back to the skills that we need to build in order to be agile, in order to be adaptive and, and, and relevant.

And the Worl Economic Forum produces a report every year where they publish, what are the top ten skills?

And most of them are actually soft skills.

Only a few are hard skills like learning AI, large language models, but most of them are about being resilient, curious critical thinker, problem solver and that those are the skills that are going to help you again be able to switch careers, change jobs, change basically what you do and be comfortable with uncertainty.

So I think if we continue to do that, we're just going to be able t navigate whatever comes our way.

This is the new trend, right?

We're talking about AI because it's happened so quickly, the same way that the .com happened back in the late 90s and early 2000s.

So I think this is just the the current fad that keeps us from talkin about all the layoffs going on.

And I also think that we're being pushed to talk about AI because it's being used, I believe—this is my hot take— as a scapegoat for the layoffs that are happening.

I think a lot of organizations are blaming AI as a way to do a reorganization.

And really, they're trying to get rid of people in the workforce to boost their profit.

Again, that's my ho take based on what I'm seeing.

But I think you're right, Bonnie, I think this is definitely the hot button thing.

I think there is going to be a bubble at some point.

We just don't know when it's going to be.

But I do think that A is going to change how we work, and I think we have to start to train that.

The downside with higher education—and I teach also and I've worked in it—is they're extremely slow to change.

And right now wha I'm experiencing as a professor is more institutions trying to put blocks on AI than helping students understand how to use it.

I think some programs are starting to do that, but as a whole, most of these institutions are saying you cannot use AI, and we're going to block it and we're going to keep doing that so that you can learn how to critically think and all that, which I think is good to an extent, but I think that it is hindering the entry level, you know, graduates that are coming in because I don't think that they have the right training at this point, and higher education has got to step up and figure out how to integrate that in well.

So let's pretend I'm a student of each of yours, and I come to you and say, you know, I've got a pretty technical side to me, and I could go into AI and computers.

On the other hand, I love tinkering with things and making them wor and figuring out what's wrong.

So maybe I'd be a better electrician or plumber.

What are you going to say to me?

Yeah.

So I think, you know, what I would advise them is to talk to people, right?

We need to network with folks who ar in the different type of careers that we're investigating, looking to enter.

And frankly, the one thing about AI that I have to say, it's here.

It's not going to go away.

It's just going to accelerate.

But we don't know much about it.

Gen Zers are actually one of the generations that is using it the most, and even more than professors and more than managers.

So actually, what we need to do, and I do as a professor at Columbia, is institute AI as much as possible within my curriculum.

Like, you know, if you're going to use AI, tell me the prompt, iterate.

Tell me what you learned.

I give them tools so that they can experiment, because sometimes actually they're fearful that they're going to break the law or the policy or get caught, you know, quote unquote.

So we just need to make it safe to experimen so that they can figure it out.

And it all goes back to people, because companies are going to train folks how to use AI within their platforms.

Right?

Nobody is going to b looking to hire for this skill because the skill is being— is evolving as we speak.

Jenny, you and I have such a similar approach to this.

This summer was the first time that I really encouraged the use of AI to teach a career class at USC and that was something that I said to them hey, if you're going to use it, use it well, you know.

If I can tell that you've used AI, then you're not using it well.

There was— There was some training involved in that.

I had to call out some students on it.

But Bonnie, to go back and answer your question, I would sit down with this student and I would really dig into their values.

I would dig into a little bi of their background in history, which I know students don't have that much to work from, but they have more than they think that they do.

And then what I would do is talk about what does the future look like?

What could it look like?

I encountered a lot of students who did have that, you know, two sides to their personality.

And a lot of times we would talk about what make the most sense to do right now and what ca you still be doing on the side, or what can you do later in your career that makes sense?

For some of them, if finances are a barrier or something that they valu where they want a high income, then I might say go for the trades.

I worked for an MBA program where I had a student who was a star student.

He was amazing.

We thought he was going to get this really big job, you know, doing consulting.

He actually went back and became an electrician.

And all the professors were so frustrated because they wanted him to be this poster child for the program.

And I said, did you talk to him?

Because I talked to him and this is what he wanted.

He wanted to go back and mak a 100,000 plus dollars a year.

And then he wanted to go into management, and eventually he wants to own his own business.

So he's still going to tak that MBA knowledge and apply it.

But he wanted to be making really good money right off the bat and he wasn't going to do that even with MBA, even with having an MBA.

And my thought is that, you know, good luck to all you brilliant folks out there who want to go into a combination of technology and trade skills and everything that we've used in the past, combined with everythin we're going to be using in the in the future.

Because it' going to take a heck of a memory to, you know, to memorize all that stuff.

But best of luck to you because it is the future of careers.

That's it for this editio of To The Contrary, let's keep talking on social media, including X, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.

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