Study says Gen Z are ‘job hopping’ and ‘income stacking’ to avoid risk

While our parents may have willingly climbed the corporate ladder, Gen Z evidently feels safer by having multiple paid gigs on the go at once.

Much is made of the terms ‘slow quitting’ and ‘task masking’, but attempting to look busy in the workplace while your investment ebbs away certainly isn’t exclusively Gen Z behaviour. Just look at the faces of everyone on the tube ride home tonight.

However, what the cohort may genuinely be trailblazing in the career space is something called ‘income stacking.’

This refers to consciously rejecting the traditional career ideals of older generations. Instead of focusing on climbing a single corporate ladder, staying loyal to one company for years and working toward senior management titles, there is a growing fear that this path alone is no longer sufficient economically speaking.

What is clearly becoming a popular alternative is the pivot to accumulating several smaller revenue streams at once, rather than a single job to pay the bills and put a little aside for goals of the future.

According to research conducted by Fiverr, 54% of Gen Z and Gen Alpha believe traditional employment will become obsolete, while 67% have expressed a preference to rely on multiple paid gigs at once to get by.

This shift has been prompted by numerous factors, including the decline in entry-level jobs, poor real living wage, and the surge in gig-economy opportunities since the pandemic. The study even says that as little as 14% now say they’re interested in working for an established company full stop. Cue your mother fainting in the kitchen.

Forbes aptly describes this shift as rejecting the career ladder for a ‘lily pad’ approach, where side hustles and accumulating a wide net of soft skills is deemed not only more lucrative, but actually safer in terms of financial security.

In the simplest sense, it’s ‘why work under the cosh in an office cubicle for my wages, when I can rack up freelance gigs that amount to more money for less time invested?’ Whether or not you believe that’s misguided, research suggests it’s already a vastly popular belief.