Too young to be this tired: Why Gen Z is burning out faster than any generation before

Gen Z has been caricatured endlessly, from “dragging their slang into corporate boardrooms” to being dismissed as an entitled cohort that refuses to play by inherited rules. The criticisms are plentiful and predictable.

Yet, in the rush to fault them for unsettling the status quo, we have overlooked a far more consequential truth: today’s youngest workers are reporting burnout levels unprecedented in the modern workforce.This is not the usual turbulence of early adulthood; it is a structural unravelling of well-being, a collapse engineered by workplaces that have failed to evolve. The crisis reveals deep fractures in how work is designed, distributed, and dignified.

A global mosaic of distress

The numbers tell a story that is both consistent and disturbing.

Another international well-being study found that nearly one-quarter of 18- to 24-year-olds described their stress as “unmanageable,” with an astonishing 98 percent reporting at least one burnout symptom.In Canada, a Canadian Business survey reported burnout among 51 percent of Gen Z workers, higher than Gen X (32 per cent) and boomers (29 percent).

For a generation entering work in an age defined by disruption, viral, economic, and technological, the cumulative impact is staggering. As university educators, workplace researchers, and demographers have been warning, this is not a blip. It is a structural rupture.

The anatomy of burnout: A three-stage descent

Burnout is not sudden; it is cumulative. Its progression, documented widely in organisational psychology, unfolds in three escalating dimensions:Exhaustion: The warning flarePersistent fatigue is often the first fracture. It is physical, emotional and mental, and it corrodes resilience over time.Cynicism: The emotional shutdownAs exhaustion deepens, workers begin to detach. Cynicism, depersonalization, and a sense of estrangement from work take root.Erosion of self-efficacy: The silent collapseThe final stage is most devastating: A declining sense of purpose and competence. Workers begin to feel they are no longer good at what they once could manage.These stages are accelerated when expectations of work diverge sharply from its realities, a mismatch younger workers experience more acutely.

Why Gen Z is especially vulnerable

They entered the workforce in crisisMany Gen Z workers came of age during or immediately after the COVID-19 pandemic, when informal learning, the kind absorbed through day-to-day osmosis in office, evaporated overnight. The social scaffolding that typically supports early-career growth simply did not exist.The economic contract has fracturedThe once-assumed belief that a university degree guaranteed a stable, well-paid job, has left young workers stranded in a labour market defined by precarity, soaring living costs, and shrinking security.Housing affordability, inflation, and gig-based employment have intensified the emotional tax on Gen Z, who face higher financial anxiety than any generation since the 1970s.

The consequential question: What happens next?

Burnout is not an individual failure; it is a structural outcome. And it demands structural solutions.Rebuilding connection and communityOne of the most effective antidotes to burnout is deceptively simple: Human connection. Routine check-ins, shared learning spaces, and peer networks can help counter the isolation that fuels detachment.Rejecting the culture of excessive workBoundary-setting is becoming a survival skill. Blocking meeting-free time, defining availability, and resisting the mythology that longer hours equal better output are essential steps in reclaiming autonomy.

The responsibility of employers

Individual coping mechanisms cannot solve a systemic problem. Workplaces must:

A generation’s struggle is a warning, and an opportunity

Gen Z’s burnout crisis is not merely a youth issue. It is a diagnostic tool, revealing a world of work strained by inequity, technological upheaval, economic fragility, and managerial neglect.Their exhaustion is telling us something. And the message is unambiguous: If the workplace does not evolve, the workforce will continue to break.A workplace redesigned to support Gen Z, with clarity, connection, flexibility and dignity, becomes a workplace that lifts all generations. The crisis is real, but so is the opportunity to rebuild the culture of work into something that sustains, rather than depletes, the people who power it.