Young White Men Have Been Robbed of Their Futures—Here's the Proof

You've probably heard older generations—especially baby boomers—complain about how young people just 'don't want to work anymore.' They're lazy, entitled, and act like spoiled children. That’s the real reason, they say, why most young people can’t afford a home until they’re 38.

This sentiment might come from anecdotal experience, but it also has something to do with the messages relayed on TV. I recently came across a post on X citing some questionable statistics about Gen Z workers receiving help from their parents to get jobs, accompanied by the caption, “This is pathetic.”

Many young people shared my view that these statistics seemed to be manipulated to serve a certain agenda—that agenda being that young people are suffering financially not because of systemic problems, but because they just happen to all be really lazy.

Of course, some young people are lazy, although even most of the 'lazy' ones that I happen to know would fit better under the label 'disillusioned.' The 'American dream' of going to college, getting a job in your desired field, owning a home in the suburbs and starting a big, happy family seems almost unachievable these days. It's so far beyond reach that some people have just decided to give up entirely.

However, I know many more cases of intelligent, ambitious young people who did it all right. They went to college, worked a part-time job to pay their bills while trying their best to make good grades, and planned for the future as much as possible. But after graduation, they sent out hundreds of job applications, only to end up back home, living with their parents and working a job that never required their degree to begin with. Or, they moved in with a roommate, got the best job they could find, and are now making just enough to pay their half of the rent, with no extra money to put away for a home or a family.

So what’s going on? Is Gen Z really just the laziest generation ever, or has the system failed them?

I teamed up with a young economics student named Joseph, who goes by "doomernat22" on X, to go over some statistics that show that young people, specifically young White males, are playing a rigged game.

Joseph made a point: a college degree these days is useless. When Charlie Kirk said that "college is a scam," he was right, to a certain extent. Time spent in college doesn't mean that you are naturally intelligent or gifted, or skilled in whatever field you are going into, or that you've grown academically or become more well-rounded as an individual in any meaningful way. Unfortunately, most employers still do value college degrees as they demonstrate that someone is capable of hard work and time commitment. Because of this, making it to a good school is still typically a necessary step for career success.

Unfortunately, White people, especially White men, face systemic discrimination when it comes to college admissions due to affirmative action practices, and have for decades. If high-human capital White males are fortunate enough to make it to a top school, they face another layer of discrimination when they start applying for jobs.

Due to these practices, White people are extremely underrepresented in Ivy League schools, a long known as a gateway to elite institutions. More Blacks and Hispanics are accepted in relation to the total population, despite being much less qualified on average.

For the White men who do make it to college and hope to work a desk job that uses their degree, many are starting to notice that the white-collar job market is frozen. Now, bartenders and baristas are seeing more wage growth than desk workers! Even promotion rates have slowed down from 14.6% in 2022 to 10.3% in 2025. And if that's not bad enough, the Amazon CEO recently boasted that due to new generative AI technology, Americans should expect more white-collar job cuts soon.

This might be the point where some people think: sure, useless communications and business degrees won’t get you a job in this economy, but what about the booming tech industry?

Well, despite a continuing and significant increase in computer science degrees over the past few years, it seems like graduates are now having just as tough a time in the tech field. A lot of this is due to increased competition with foreign workers, predominantly from China and India. As of 2025, nearly three quarters of the Silicon Valley workforce is foreign-born! This is following mass firings of native born American workers and mass hirings of H-1B visa holders.

Recently, I came across a statistic which showed that the U.S. now has more unemployed people than job openings for the first time since April 2021—which was the height of COVID-era layoffs. And one of the biggest issues for Gen Z Americans is not just a lack of jobs available, but it's specifically a lack of good jobs.A quick look at the Job Quality Index shows that the growth of low-quality jobs (those paying below the median wage) has outpaced high-quality jobs (those paying above the median wage).

Gen Z isn’t broken; the system is. And no amount of “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” rhetoric will change that until we rebuild an economy that actually rewards the hard-working, qualified people whose ancestors built this country from the ground up.