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Ep. 14 - Gen Z Got Jipped — Or Did They?
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In this episode, Ken Freire and Patrick Lowndes wrestle with the question: “Did Gen Z get gypped?” They unpack why the economic landscape Gen Z inherited is radically different from the one millennials entered, how that shapes work and career expectations, and what it means to trust God when the job market feels broken. Through Scripture, real Gen Z quotes, and stories like JD Bauman’s career pivot, they argue that God hasn’t skipped over Gen Z—He’s forming them for deeper dependence, resilience, and impact.
Resources Mentioned
- Christians for Impact – JD Bauman’s organization helping Christians pursue high-impact careers and giving: https://www.christiansforimpact.org/
- Christians for Impact Podcast (hosted by JD Bauman): https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/christians-for-impact/id1694977223
- Buried Talent – Episode 10: How to Land Your First Job in 2025 (referenced as a practical follow-up on creative ways to land a job)
- Frontier Operator Community - https://frontieroperators.com/community
Timestamps
- 0:00 – 2:15 • Life updates and setup: Ken’s growing family, Patrick’s travel and speaking, and the transition into the core topic: “Did Gen Z get gypped?”
- 2:15 – 5:45 • Macro context: Zero interest rate era (ZIRP), the 2008 financial crisis, the 13-year bull market, and why Gen Z’s economic starting point is very different from millennials.
- 5:45 – 8:20 • What Gen Z is saying: Real quotes from X/LinkedIn on student debt, broken job markets, inflation, and feeling like millennials had a clearer path.
- 8:20 – 11:45 • Are Gen Z lazy—or just stuck? Generational stereotypes, hard-working Gen Zers, and shifting from a superficial to a supernatural view of what God might be doing through hardship.
- 11:45 – 14:30 • Biblical frame for hard times: James 1, Romans 5, and Romans 12 on trials, perseverance, character, hope, and refusing to simply echo the world’s narrative about the job market.
- 14:30 – 16:40 • Dependency and resilience: Why God may be entrusting Gen Z with a harder season to form deeper dependence on Him and a more resilient faith, even in lower-paying or non-ideal jobs.
- 16:40 – 18:05 • From worldly success to kingdom impact: The story of JD Bauman leaving a lucrative finance role to start Christians for Impact, plus encouragement to baristas, entry-level workers, and job seekers that God is not passing them by.
- 18:05 – end • Teaser for next episode: How to stay professionally vigorous once you’ve landed a job, survive layoffs, and keep adding value over time.
Recommended
Transcript
Intro
Introduction: Did Gen Z Get Gypped?
00:00:08
Ken Freire
Welcome to Buried Talent, the show for young professionals that tears down false beliefs about faith and work so you can unbury your God-given talent right where you are.
00:00:19
Ken Freire
I'm Ken Freire and with my co-host Patrick Lowndes. And today we're talking about Gen Z got gypped. Or did they?
Hosts' Personal Updates
00:00:29
Ken Freire
Patrick, this is a weighty conversation because there are a lot of Gen Z people who got gypped. But before we jump into that, how have you been since the last time we chatted.
00:00:39
Patrick
Oh, yeah. You know, things are going well. I'm happy that in my house with lot of kiddos, I'm happy when we're healthy for like a whole month straight. And watch, watch, right? Because I'm saying this, it's just going to happen. But I'll be traveling a little bit next week over to college, giving a great talk. So what we hope is going to be great. But yeah, it's been good being with the fam, being around home for the rainy days here Seattle.
00:01:04
Ken Freire
That's awesome, man. Yeah. And for me, we're just getting ready here. My wife is due in near mid December with baby number five.
Supporting a Pregnant Partner
00:01:13
Ken Freire
So we're just trying to get that ready.
00:01:14
Patrick
Wow.
00:01:15
Ken Freire
My son's birthday's coming up. So we're getting that ready. There's a lot of movement happening in our house.
00:01:21
Patrick
Okay. Hey, some people might be like newly married and maybe they're like, they're pregnant, something like that. What are words of wisdom? 30 seconds to someone like as a guy trying to support the wife who's pregnant, what have you learned? Give us 30 seconds of wisdom.
00:01:37
Ken Freire
Pray a lot.
00:01:41
Patrick
All right.
00:01:41
Ken Freire
There will be so many emotional moments that you're just like, why are you acting this way? And then I'm like, Lord, she's making a baby. All her hormones are out of whack. And you know what?
00:01:52
Ken Freire
It's hard. So I just got to give her a lot of grace and just pick up as much slack as you can because they're going to need it.
00:01:53
Patrick
Yeah.
00:01:56
Patrick
There go.
00:01:58
Patrick
There we go. Yeah. As much as you can. Those are, those are some good words. I like that.
00:02:03
Ken Freire
Yeah. But how does that tie? How does any of that tie into our conversation today?
Gen Z: Overpromised, Underdelivered?
00:02:08
Ken Freire
actually think there's a lot of Gen Z people who feel like they're working really hard, but the, all the promises that they got, there's no delivery on it.
00:02:18
Ken Freire
They got over promised and there's under delivery. So let's talk about that today, Patrick.
00:02:21
Patrick
Hmm. Yeah. Yep. I mean, let's just, I mean, you and I are both millennials, Ken. So like, but let's face it, Gen Z did not get dealt the same hand of cards as the millennials did.
00:02:28
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:02:35
Patrick
Some people have even, as doing some more research on it, they're just, they call it just the hangover, right? Of the longest economic
00:02:40
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:02:42
Patrick
boom that we had bull market. We'll talk little bit about economics. But yeah, I mean, it's just literally the playbooks that used to work are just not working. And so there's some macroeconomics we're going to into. And we're also going to hit kind of the elephant in the room is like, what's up, God? Like, what's going on here? Like, and what now? Like, how am I going to learn from anybody who went ahead of me 10 or 15 years or 20 or 30? Like, let's talk about that today.
00:03:08
Ken Freire
Yeah, absolutely. Because one of the biggest lies that I think Gen Z could be feeling right now is they're promised a lot of things. They're working really hard. And they might be wondering, has God just kind of skipped over our generation?
00:03:22
Ken Freire
And like everybody else had it great. You know, the boomers had it amazing. Gen Z had it awesome. Millennials complained, but look at, they're still doing pretty good. And now Gen Z is like... entering the workforce and they're like, wow, it's kind of like they feel like they have their hands tied behind their back and now they're asking them to go swim a marathon.
00:03:41
Patrick
Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, want to pull up. I got to just maybe hit on some macroeconomic baseline so we're all on the same
Macroeconomic Challenges for Gen Z
00:03:49
Patrick
page. So can I jump into a few of those things first just to make sure?
00:03:49
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:03:52
Ken Freire
Yeah, absolutely.
00:03:52
Patrick
OK, I think this will give us little bit of language. We're going to look at some quotes, what Gen Z is saying out there, and then we're react to that, just like we always try to do on this on this show. But yeah, let me just break down a few things for you.
00:04:04
Patrick
The thing that we got to hit on that we're alluding to is this. I once heard it. Someone said, yeah, you were born the ZIRP era. ZIRP, Z-I-R-P. And what they meant was like the zero interest rate policy from about 2008 to
00:04:17
Patrick
about 2022 this is when like the central banks here in america were just flooding the market with cheap credit and capital really just making it easy for companies to borrow money raise capital spend money right it was just it was easier for companies to buy and sell and grow and and basically prosper and thrive right for like a long period of time 13 years right And so the millennials, yes, they were affected when they were coming to the workplace by the GFC, the great financial crisis, right? When the big mortgage industry fell out in 2008 and that affected 2009 pretty heavily.
00:04:17
Ken Freire
Thank you.
00:04:54
Patrick
And unemployment was high, but guess what? Things bounced back really fast, right?
00:04:58
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:04:59
Patrick
And so the macroeconomic context of like, hey, things were really great for 10 or 12 years, 13 years. It's sort of, if you're Gen Z, it's sort of like, well, yeah, you got this easy hand of cards to play and now I'm getting like this horrible hand of cards to play.
00:05:14
Patrick
And so think to some extent, Ken, like, yeah, Gen has gotten gypped if you're just looking at the macroeconomic facts of the day. And not to mention, there are certain AI booms and things that are, some industries are doing really well, but we got to dig into, we can't just say this is a copy and paste playbook from what worked in the 2010s, and we're going to try to use that here in the mid-2020s.
00:05:36
Ken Freire
Yeah. And there are several people out there who have been talking about this for a long period of time. Right. And if you if you're on X or LinkedIn, there's a bunch of people who are constantly doing this type of work.
00:05:50
Ken Freire
So, for example, Merchant on X, he said he said this and he was discussing Gen Z unemployment stats. from unusual underscore whales.
00:06:00
Ken Freire
He says, Gen Z didn't get lazy. They got handed a degree, 80K in debt, and a broken job market. Boomers bought houses at 3X income. Gen Z can't even get hired.
High Debt and Job Market Toughness
00:06:12
Ken Freire
Or another one where this is Barefoot Student. He says this, or she, I actually don't know. Gen Z is shouldering GFC-like collapse in hiring with no end in sight as offshoring ramps up and employers refuse to hire entry-level workers under the guise of AI.
00:06:29
Ken Freire
And then that last one is Big Nens says, yes, millennials have it easier than Gen Z. Gen Z are working harder. Inflation is wild. The cost of living keeps rising with salary staying about almost the same.
00:06:43
Ken Freire
Y'all had more stability, clear career path. Gen Zs are figuring out survival in chaos. Now, when I read all those, as a millennial, I'm going to be honest, I got a little self-defensive.
00:06:56
Ken Freire
I'm like, no, no, no. We also had it hard. You don't understand Y, or Z. But like we managed to kind of get out of the chaos a little bit.
00:07:01
Patrick
Yeah.
00:07:05
Ken Freire
And like you said, our hands were not dealt as crappy of a hand as they are.
00:07:11
Patrick
Yeah, that's right. And particularly like just thinking about, yeah, lending your job is one thing, but then like rent is going up in lots of places, right?
00:07:13
Ken Freire
So.
00:07:20
Ken Freire
Oh, yeah.
00:07:20
Patrick
And so like people are like, I got to try to maybe move out of the city and I got to start to live a more suburban or rural life, right? There's some other stats we don't have time to talk about in this episode about Gen Z's preference to having more of a hybrid kind of work-life balance where I'm not always in office. Like RTO, return to office will be its own whole episode we'll have to do.
00:07:40
Patrick
But I just thought like the other thing is that, I mean, in this day and age, AI is trying to replace a lot of those entry level jobs. So you have to show up and like bring a pack a huge punch in your career value.
00:07:52
Patrick
So given all of those things as Christians can, how do we stop and take a look at like the reality and then like what's true about us given our walk with God?
00:08:05
Ken Freire
Yeah, I think... We have to always be honest with what's really going on.
Christian Perspective on Challenges
00:08:12
Ken Freire
I don't want to sugarcoat it. And I also don't want to just sprinkle humanism on top of it where I say something like, you know what?
00:08:19
Ken Freire
You just got to figure it out. Pick yourself up by your bootstraps. And we had to do it. You got to do it too. It's like, that's not helpful for it because Gen Z is the future generation.
00:08:32
Ken Freire
And here's, I just want to throw this in here as an ad lib. I remember other generations before us who would always say, hey, this generation is lazy.
00:08:43
Ken Freire
They're complaining. They're always whining. And I feel like every generation talks about the generations afterwards like that. But at the same time, they're also always the hardest working ones.
00:08:55
Ken Freire
Every generation is going to have lazy people and really hardworking people. So I don't want to come here and say Gen Z is not a hardworking. Absolutely. I've seen some Gen Z people who are putting immense amount of work try to make things happen.
00:09:09
Ken Freire
At the same time. We have to take not just a superficial view of what's going on, and we need to take a supernatural view and say, God, what are you doing?
00:09:21
Ken Freire
And I believe God is actually preparing Gen Z to take on a greater leadership mantle.
00:09:29
Ken Freire
And you may be wondering, why do you think that?
00:09:31
Ken Freire
I'm like, well, there is a reason why God puts people through fiery furnace or through wilderness or through hardship. And it's because he's forming us to be something greater and preparing us to lead in a greater capacity.
00:09:46
Patrick
Yeah. And just, I mean, just shooting straight from scripture. I mean, James 1 says, consider it pure joy when you face trials of many kinds, because you know the testing of your faith produces what? Perseverance, right? And then later, like other passages like Romans 5 says, we rejoice in our sufferings because it produces perseverance. Perseverance, character, character, hope.
00:10:08
Patrick
And so if you're out there trying to like just slog away job applications, or maybe you've got a job and we're going to talk about this shortly as well. Like, how do you hang on to that job and actually stick around and survive the layoffs and stuff like that?
00:10:21
Patrick
If you've got that job, it's like, how do we show up with knowing that there's trials, knowing things are hard, And how do we show up with hope that God is going to actually take care of us in the struggle?
00:10:33
Patrick
Or when you fill out that 164th application for a job, that God's still faithful and he's still going to provide, even if it doesn't look like how you thought it was going to look, right?
00:10:46
Patrick
And so it's just like... Well, as Christians, we can be tempted just to mimic and parrot the sayings and the mindsets of the world. But Romans 12 is like, no, you got redo your mindset. You can't just hit copy and paste on the world's narrative about the job market or
Focus on Hard-Working Gen Z
00:11:03
Patrick
how tough is. It's like, what does it sound like to be filled with hope and to persevere, even if you're not getting what looks like success on the front side of that?
00:11:13
Ken Freire
Yeah, and here's what we're saying and what we're not saying, because I want to be clear for everybody listening to this. There might be some millennials listening to this, right? There are certain...
00:11:24
Ken Freire
perceptions or certain views that you may have as a Gen Zer that you're like, oh, I really want this in a job career, right? Like I know some Gen Zers are expecting the high salary and the high leadership status, but never actually having the experience, right?
00:11:39
Patrick
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:11:39
Patrick
Mm-hmm.
00:11:39
Ken Freire
That's a different podcast for a different day.
00:11:41
Ken Freire
What we're talking about here is specifically of you who are like, I am trying really hard. I'm working as hard as I can I'm not getting the job. and understand it from a supernatural or spiritual sense, God is forming something in you. And what he's trying to form is dependency on him and resilience.
00:12:04
Ken Freire
Those are the two things that he's trying to form in
Trusting God's Plan Amidst Challenges
00:12:07
Ken Freire
you. So don't take this season of, hey, I've been sending a whole bunch of applications in and nothing's happening as like you're down and out and you give up.
00:12:17
Ken Freire
Don't give up. God is going to do something else.
00:12:19
Patrick
Yeah. Yeah.
00:12:19
Ken Freire
Also, know that there are other creative ways for you to land a job. And we actually talked about this on episode 10 on how to land your first job in 2025. And it'll be useful for 2026 also. So go check that out.
00:12:33
Ken Freire
But right now, as you're listening to this, I want you to just stay in a place of like, Lord, I'm going to trust you. This is harder. But we believe that Gen Z has been entrusted with something harder because
00:12:49
Ken Freire
God is going to work in you a holier type of dependence than other people might have had in other seasons.
00:12:55
Patrick
Yeah. And it's also, is also very relevant if you've got that job and you're working on developing yourself and keeping that job and trying to be effective, but maybe you're just not making that much and you're feeling like things are just tight, right? Like, and the hopelessness of I'm never going to be able to afford a home, right? I'm never going to be able to fill in the blank, right?
00:13:14
Patrick
Remember that God has you in your place where you are for a reason right now. And this is not like empty promises from God. Like, who are we to say that God is not like literally planning out each day of your life in the situation and how much you're making, which company you're working at?
JD Bauman's Journey to Meaningful Work
00:13:30
Patrick
I mean, the Bible says that God wrote down each day of your life before you lived one of them, right? And so we got to remember, like God is he knows what's going to happen. So the question is, how are we going to journey with him through the journey?
00:13:44
Patrick
I like C.S. Lewis's quote here. Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny. Right. And think about that for sec. Like, yeah, I'm I'm struggling right now. Maybe things I'm not making as much as I want. I'm not. Maybe my job kind of like sucks and don't really enjoy it.
00:14:02
Patrick
Maybe God is trying to work on something in you and you're not actually getting gypped. God has you in a trust spot, so you have to trust on him. Imagine if you had everything that was going your way and like you didn't even need God. You feel like, I think I'm doing pretty good. Like, God, thank you.
00:14:17
Patrick
That's all I'm going say is thank you. But those of us who are struggling, I think this the time we want to lean in on God. How can I rely on you as my hope, rely on you as my joy, rely on you as my provider, right? And I feel like that's the kind of formation that C.S. Lewis talking about. Hardships often prepare us ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.
00:14:37
Patrick
I want to hit on one example to kind of wrap today's episode up. This is an older Gen Z. He's actually right on the edge. And I want to have him on the show at some point here. But JD Bauman, he was working in New York doing some amazing work in the financial industry.
00:14:53
Patrick
and making good money by the world standards things like that. And we had a phone conversation and he told me about why he left his work to go really go deeper into what more, what he felt like was more meaningful work. And so he founded something called Christians for Impact.
00:15:08
Patrick
You should go check it out. They have a podcast as well. And he is just like all into how do how do I bring about this effective altruism from a Christian perspective? How I leverage my life and my giving and my generosity, my work to create the most optimal impact, which includes like not just giving to any random charity, but like ones that are most effective. someone like jd like again he had this path he was on and he discerned like god like i'm on this path that the world might say is going well but he said no like i'm not gonna just phone it in and like you know climb a career ladder i want my life and my impact to count
00:15:44
Patrick
And so I think there's examples like JD that said, hey, it's not just about the worldly success can, but I want to be about kingdom of God success. I want to make a bigger impact, which is why he founded Christians for Impact. But that's one example, I'm sure, of many, many Gen Zers that are not just taking it on the chin from a tough market, but are saying, you know, I'm going to kind of forge a path forward that leads to impact.
Hardships as Opportunities for Growth
00:16:07
Ken Freire
Man, you know, that's so good to think about that he decided to give up and he actually made his life harder in some ways.
00:16:15
Patrick
Yeah, probably.
00:16:16
Patrick
Yeah. Yeah.
00:16:18
Ken Freire
Right. For eternal impact. So for those of you guys who are listening to this, just recognize what we're not trying to excuse or minimize any hardship that you're going through.
00:16:30
Patrick
No.
00:16:30
Ken Freire
So please don't hear that from us.
00:16:32
Ken Freire
We truly believe God is using you right now. He's molding you. And that doesn't mean that you don't find another job or you don't do other things. If you're a barista at a coffee shop right now and you're like, really? got $80,000 in debt and I got this college degree and the only job I could get so far is to be at a coffee shop?
00:16:51
Ken Freire
No. There's other ways, right? Other job opportunities out there. But in the meantime, while you're there, just remember God is with you. He's forming something in you.
00:17:03
Ken Freire
And it's not a lie that he's passing you by. He's actually using that very moment for you to work in you and work through you.
Next Episode Preview
00:17:13
Patrick
Yep. And on this next episode, you can keep listening to it. We're going to dive in when you've got that job. How do you stay active? How do you be professionally vigorous to continue to develop yourself and make sure that you're continuing to add value every day you show up.
00:17:28
Patrick
So we'll catch you next time on Buried Talent.