.jpg)
Maya checks her bank account on Monday morning and immediately regrets it. Rent cleared. Student loan payment posted. And now she's got $47 to last until Friday. She's 24, has a good job, and still feels like she's drowning.
This is Gen Z financial stress at work. And Maya is not alone. Nearly 60% of Gen Zers say money keeps them up at night. With rising living costs, student debt, and social media, it's no surprise that personal finance is feeling unmanageable, even with a steady paycheck.
And here's what happens when your team is financially stressed: focus tanks, creativity flatlines, and they’re not bringing their A-game.
But you, as an HR professional, probably already know all this - and blanket raises aren’t the solution. While fair compensation is the baseline, simply increasing income often leads to 'lifestyle creep'—where spending rises to match the new salary—leaving the employee with the same financial anxiety as before.
The smarter move? Financial literacy. Strategies that coach your Gen-Z employees through their financial situation, understanding credit scores, and budgeting to know where money goes every month.
Because a team that's not panicking about money? That's a team that shows up ready to do great work. So let's talk about what Gen Z workers actually need to stop the financial spiral and start thriving at work.
Having grown up with social media from day one, Maya and her fellow Gen Zers tend to compare themselves to others. But their real day-to-day often looks completely different from edited reels and filtered lives where everyone seems successful and happy.
If living from paycheck to paycheck feels like a drag, working gig jobs might be an endless rollercoaster with no good end in sight.
The unsteady nature of gig work and unpredictable work schedules take real guts and can be unsustainable for Maya and many young people like her living in constant financial stress.
After struggling to find her first job after college and moving out of the family home, Maya quickly realized that in the rat race of expenses, a paycheck never wins.
That soon left her with more than twice as much credit card debt and an unfortunate late payment that tanked her credit score. Quite typical among her peers, whose average score dropped to a record low of 676.
With student debt always on their minds, many Gen Zers struggle to manage their finances.
Forgiveness or no forgiveness, credit rating dump or no dump—the mixed signals about what to expect couldn’t be less helpful in adding certainty to their financial situation.
With all that baggage, it’s hard to expect Maya and her young co-workers to bring their best selves to work and perform to the best of their abilities. A survey from Your Money Line on young people like her shows that Gen Zers:
The result? Quite predictable. Doing the same thing in a new place, even with a higher income, only leads to spending more and creating even higher debt, with the cycle repeating itself.
These findings align with recent Bankrate data showing that financially stressed employees are significantly more likely to experience sleep disruption, reduced focus, and lower productivity at work.
For you, as an HR manager or business owner, having a constantly stressed, non-productive young worker still learning the ropes is the worst-case scenario.
Would sidelining young applicants be the right solution? Hardly so with Gen Zers gradually replacing Millennials across industries.
Raising the paycheck? It could help in the short term, but in reality, that often makes the problem worse.
There are other solutions that many companies find more effective in bringing the best selves of their young employees back to work.
For many Gen X and even Millennials, the strategy to address financial stress was to work harder, but that approach doesn’t seem to resonate with the new generation. For Gen Z, financial wellness practices strike a much better chord compared to working a second job or taking side gigs.
As surprising as it gets, financial literacy has never been taught to us in school. When young workers start learning financial literacy, they discover they can get on top of their finances and are in a better position, even with the same income level.
For most of us, finances are very personal and often uncomfortable to discuss. When we are under financial stress, many people start to feel shame about their money and themselves, silently fighting invisible battles in their heads.
Breaking this silence can happen by building personal connections, creating safe and supportive environments, and removing stigma from financial conversations. Creating anonymous hotlines, providing confidential coaching, and building peer networks can help employees get out of their heads, share their concerns, and take practical steps to bring their finances in check.
Most Gen Zers are obsessed with apps and are picky about their digital experiences, so any financial courses and tools should be intuitive and easy to use.
A modern financial wellness product could make a real difference by teaching practical financial literacy, helping with budgeting, and enabling more effective tracking of finances.
As Gen Z joins Millennials in the workplace, addressing the financial concerns of your younger employees is a smart business move. Teaching them actionable financial literacy, helping them create a budget, and offering support can go a long way in preventing people from leaving ttheir jobs.
Does this sound like your workforce? Helping young employees feel confident about money doesn’t require more work for HR—it requires the right support system. When employees have access to practical tools, real coaching, and judgment-free guidance, financial stress becomes manageable instead of overwhelming.
Change the financial lives of your team by helping them get smart about money now!
.png){kind=small}