Over half of Gen Z and millennials say they're struggling with the question of how to start a family while living paycheck to paycheck

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Over half of Gen Z and millennials say they're struggling with the question of how to start a family while living paycheck to paycheck
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  • A new Deloitte survey finds that over half of Gen Z and millennials live paycheck to paycheck.
  • More younger workers are picking up second jobs as the cost of living remains a top concern.
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When Dolly Parton wrote about working 9 to 5, she hadn't encountered Gen Z and millennials — it's no longer enough to make a living.

Deloitte's latest survey of Gen Z and millennials — which had over 22,000 respondents across 44 countries from November and December 2022, in addition to interviews gathered in March 2023 — illustrates the dire economic straits that many of the youngest workers say they're facing.

"Our views are that these generations have proven that they are resilient," Michele Parmelee, Deloitte global people and purpose leader, told Insider. But, at the same time, economic uncertainty is taking a toll on the contours of what their lives look like, impacting everything from housing to family planning.

Over half of the Gen Zers and millennials surveyed, 51% and 52% respectively, said that they lived paycheck to paycheck. That's a five percentage point bump from last year, and it comes as prices remain persistently high, likely due in part to companies realizing that they can still squeeze record profits out of consumers. Indeed, cost of living remains the biggest concern for Gen Z and millennials, with over a third of Gen Z ranking it as a top concern, and 42% of millennials staying the same.

Half of Gen Z and 47% of millennials said that they expect starting a family "to become harder or impossible." They're even more pessimistic about home ownership, with 61% of Gen Z and 62% of millennials also saying that they expect that financial goal to become more difficult or impossible.

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"It's concerning in terms of the impact that it's having on these life decisions that I think previous generations took for granted," Parmelee said.

Living paycheck-to-paycheck means a lot of young people are becoming DINKWADS and side hustlers

That tracks with low birth rates, as many younger workers — especially millennials — eschew having children completely. Instead, becoming a DINKWAD has risen as a new American dream for the younger generations. That acronym stands for double income, no kids, with a dog.

"The allure of the DINKWAD lifestyle is solely based on financial and personal freedom from any responsibility," Omar Ahmed, a self-proclaimed proud DINKWAD, previously told Insider.

With care costs high — 40% of Gen Z and 43% of millennial caregivers in the Deloitte survey reported that care duties had a "significant impact" on their financial situations — the idea of starting a family is financially daunting for already cash-strapped Gen Z and millennials.

And that hefty cost of living is leading more young workers to take on a part-time or full-time job on top of their primary jobs, according to Deloitte. Nearly half — 46% of Gen Z — are working a side job, with over a third of them saying they picked it up because they needed a secondary source of income. Over a third of millennials are in the same boat. Both of those percentages are higher than last year, which tracks with the unique economic strains both generations find themselves under.

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For millennials, the fallout from the pandemic marks yet another generation-defining recession in their early to mid working careers. While millennials finally clawed back some power in the red-hot post-vaccine labor market, leveraging the Great Resignation to finally jump into better and higher-paying roles, that abruptly came to an end as tech layoffs began to disproportionately throw millennials right back out of their jobs. And Gen Z has been on a rollercoaster ride of graduating into a pandemic, losing their jobs, and then trying to navigate a fundamentally changed economy and labor market.

Even so, the youngest generation of workers feels slightly more optimistic than millennials about what their financial futures hold, according to the Deloitte survey. That could be because they're ready to remake work in their own image.

"The workforce had a larger voice, had more of a position of strength, than prior to the pandemic," Parmelee said. "They used that position of strength to voice what they wanted and what they needed, and they actually acknowledge that it made a difference, because they're more satisfied around flexibility, and DEI, and action on sustainability, and support for mental health."

Are you a Gen Zer or millennial living paycheck to paycheck, and rethinking what your future will look like? Contact this reporter at jkaplan@insider.com.

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