About 77% of Gen Zers prefer RTO over fully remote work
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Only 23% of remote-capable Gen Z employees say they prefer fully remote work, compared with 35% for Millennials, Gen X, and Boomers, Gallup reported in 2025.
Surprisingly, more than three in four (77%) of the generation most associated with work-life balance and work flexibility actually prefers RTO, though still not in favor of being fully in the office 100% of the time.
There are two major drivers for this shift in sentiment, according to Axios reporting:
- Loneliness, with 27% of Gen Z professionals saying they felt lonely at work, double the number of Gen X
- Lack of career advancement opportunities
Additionally, a recent academic analysis of 50 million European job postings from 2018 to 2021 found that remote jobs demanded 25% more skills on average, along with more experience and higher credentials, than in-person roles.
This means that, when working remotely, Gen Z is not only more likely to feel lonely and held back from career progression opportunities they need early on, but also at a disadvantage when applying for remote work. Remote roles traditionally require and expect higher levels of credentials, expertise, and experience.
Is Remote Work Damaging To Entry-Level Jobs?
As we work to uphold the remote work model as the standard and embrace flexible working, do we stop to consider the full cost? While fully remote work can offer upsides for well-being and employee productivity, it also has downsides, especially for early-career professionals. This is why more than three in four Gen Zers want to be back in the office.
Last week I interviewed Dr. Joshua Mask, economist at Temple University and a former recruiter, who just published a study that separated the adverse impact of AI on entry-level careers from the adverse effects of remote work.
He noted that, interestingly, AI-exposed jobs and remote-suitable jobs tend to overlap a lot, mainly because they both fall under the white-collar career category. This makes it increasingly difficult to know whether to attribute certain losses to AI or to remote work.
However, Mask isolated the 2020 to 2023 results (the period before AI started disrupting work in a major way) and used that data to understand remote work’s impact on early-career professionals.
He found that teleworkable roles led to about a 2% decline in pay or starting salaries, but this effect was mitigated when the professional transitioned roles. I wanted to dig into his findings a little further; here’s a peek into our conversation:
“What I do truly worry about is people are starting out their career,” he said, which mirrored exactly what Gen Z are reported to be anxious about from the Gallup report. “Taking on more remote work, or taking on a role that would potentially be like 100% remote–I worry about the gap in training, the gap in socialization. There’s a lot of things you learn in the first few years that I worry these students might be missing. Because of the socialization, I would say more than anything else, and I say that in part because AI, if it’s going to do anything in terms of automating tasks, it’s going to be the work that doesn’t involve us interacting with one another.”
So I asked Mask, “What do employers need to bear in mind now when it comes to creating job openings to ensure they are protecting the pipeline of the next generation of talent?”
What Employers Need To Consider Now Before Hiring Remotely
“The first thing they should recognize is that you want a pipeline,” he said with a dry smile. “In a former life, I was a recruiter. I guess that’s what got me into labor economics. I’m very familiar with that world. Did it for about 5 years.
“And yeah, finding people is hard. Do not be looking at AI going, ‘Hey, I can replace my whole business,’ because that’s not going to happen. Establish a pipeline.”
Mask also had advice and suggestions for employers who still need to hire fully remotely to attract top talent, or for whatever the reason may be:
“If that’s the case, then you just want to be mindful about how that pipeline is built for that type of role. And I think, if you want the socialization piece, it’s going to have to involve some, not coming into the office necessarily, but some sort of where the employees get in the same room together, like a retreat, not just for your employee culture, but also for the new workers, right?”
Reflecting back on his own experience, Mask recalled starting his professor job at Temple University in the middle of the pandemic. “My colleagues weren’t here. Most of my colleagues were teaching; everything was online, so everybody was at home, right? And so, my first experience here was largely remote,” he recalled.
“And the thing that I noticed more than anything else is that I didn’t really feel comfortable here for about a year because I didn’t know anybody. It was a very different experience from every other job that I had.”
Mask believes CEOs need to consider that aspect of remote work for new employees. “Like, are they entirely happy here if they don’t have any sort of relationships with anyone?”
Last but not least, employers need to consider the gap in training feedback for younger workers.
“You have to recognize there’s going to be a gap in training feedback,” he says. “So there needs to be tasks, either in the way that you are able to monitor those tasks so that you can see whether they’re doing a good job or not, so that you can give feedback that way, right? Or build tasks around so there’s more oversight with current senior-level employees.
Remote work without deliberate mentorship, feedback and social connection hurts Gen Z’s social skills and career advancement opportunities
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“These are things that naturally occur in an office, right?” he continued. “Junior worker gets assigned something they don’t know what to do, so they go to the senior worker, and they just kind of sit at the desk and figure it out.”
These considerations are not trivial, and should not be pushed aside as an afterthought. Being a responsible employer means thinking through how you set up remote roles, the options and structure you put in place for early-career starters, and ensuring you have enough in-office talent to nurture younger professionals where needed.
It also demands that Gen Z workers enter the job market with clear expectations of what they expect from employers, how much they intend to leverage their initial opportunities to grow their careers, and if they do desire to work remotely–what they are getting themselves into and how that choice could impact them for the next few years.
