Pay, stress, quality of life... What is young people's relationship with work?

Young people don't want to work, young people are lazy and representative of this famous "Gen Z" (those born in the late 90s to the early 2010s, editor's note) who have been shaking up corporate life since their arrival on the job market.

Is it true? Not necessarily, according to a study by the Montaigne Institute , "Young People and Work: Aspirations and Disillusionments of 16-30 Year Olds ," published Tuesday, May 29. "These are a lot of preconceived ideas; young people don't reject work," Olivier Galland , sociologist and co-author of the survey, explained this Saturday on RMC.

As part of this study, "schoolchildren and students" aged 16 to 22, "early active" people aged 19 to 22, and "advanced active" people aged 25 to 30 were interviewed. The starting point is that there is not one homogeneous youth, but rather many "young people with sometimes very varied expectations and backgrounds."

For example, "young people's expectations regarding the quality of work vary greatly depending on their level of education. Graduates from vocational courses (CAP, BEP, BTS, DUT) are generally less demanding than their counterparts from general university courses."

And what about financial motivations? 80% of young people surveyed said they would continue working, even if there was no financial need. However, one wonders whether a negative response from them would be more criticized than one from older workers.

Because while "work for young people is not just a means of subsistence," remuneration remains the "number one criterion," asserts Olivier Galland. Work, or the famous "value of work" often advocated by the right but also by parts of the left, remains "a vector of integration and a means of self-fulfillment," according to the researcher.

Today's young people are concerned about the quality of life at work and the conditions in which they are required to perform their jobs. While they are demanding, "two-thirds have a job that does not fully meet their expectations," which, according to Olivier Galland, generates a great deal of "frustration." The survey also reveals that young people are confronted with moral harassment (27% of young workers report having experienced it) and sexual harassment (9%) in the workplace.

Young people no longer want to do physical work, but in any case, the growing tertiarization of the labor market (the increase in service jobs to the detriment of industrial and agricultural jobs) facilitates jobs in which young people are in contact with the public. An increasingly demanding and aggressive public, which also generates "stress among young people, who are taking it very badly."

The job market is still too corrupted, according to Olivier Galland, by a "principle of lordship that remains very strong," in which "adults have the wisdom, the qualifications, and the power, and young people must simply obey and listen." According to the study, young people are not rejecting management, but rather aspire to see their work valued more.