Z GENERATION
GROWS UP By / Jordan Whitehouse
Youth are targeted as Brand Ambassadors for the sheet metal industry through the My Job is My Gym #mjmg initiative. Photo courtesy of Lisa Bordeaux.
If she didn’t know it already, Dajen Bohacek knew it by the end of 2017: text message is king for Generation Z. Earlier that year Bohacek, the associate director of SMACCA Milwaukee, helped set up a youth apprenticeship program, and part of the job was communicating with would-be high school apprentices. She found out quickly that leaving voice messages about jobs or class cancellations wouldn’t be an option. “They often don’t even set up their voicemails, and they look at you like you’re crazy if you ask them to,” she says with a laugh. It’s a small example, but generational differences like it are beginning to play out across the working world. According to research from Bloomberg, Generation Z, born between 1997 and 2012, will make up 32% of the global population by the end of 2019. That’s more than any other generation, including millennials. Of course, not every member of Gen Z is of working age yet—the youngest is seven, the oldest is 22—but millions of them are graduating from high school every year and trying
4 » Partners in Progress » www.pinp.org
to figure out what they want to do with their lives. Voicemail battles aside, one enticing option could be the trades, say a growing number of experts, including sheet metal professionals and those skilled in marketing to youth.
Opportunity knocks One of those experts is David Stillman, the co-founder of management consulting firm Gen Z Guru. He says the big thing to remember about this generation is that they came of age during the recession. “That means they’re a bit more realistic, a bit more cautious of the traditional path of going to college and going into massive debt,” Stillman says. “We know that 75% of them feel there is still a good way of getting an education other than going to college.” That doesn’t mean Gen Z isn’t going to college, but this attitude has opened the door for education alternatives that are affordable, short term, and able to generate a good salary right away.
