Suzy Welch Says Gen Z Is Burnt Out Because Older Generations Worked Just As Hard. The Data Disagrees
Co-Founder and Chief Data Scientist
Millennials ages 36 to 40 recorded 4% more median work hours than Gen X at the same age, a Federal Reserve working paper using survey data from 1963 through 2022 found. The result complicates Suzy Welch’s comparison in a July 24, 2025, Masters of Scale interview, when she answered a 25-year-old’s complaint about burnout by recalling that she had worked “seven days a week nonstop” at the same age.
Hours alone obscure what gets packed into them and what the resulting paycheck can buy. Modern workers generate more than twice as much output per hour as workers did in 1980, while research connects exhaustion more directly with workload, control, security and rewards.
Age-Matched Hours Complicate The Generational Comparison
Welch’s seven-day schedule is one person’s recollection rather than a measure of generational effort. The Federal Reserve researchers compared Americans at matched ages, finding that Millennials ages 36 to 40 worked 4% more median hours than Gen X, although mean hours were unchanged and hours across Gen X, Baby Boomers and Millennials broadly converged by their mid-30s.
Those findings do not establish that Gen Z works harder than every preceding cohort. Most Gen Z workers have not reached the ages examined in the Federal Reserve comparison, making a complete age-matched assessment of their working lives impossible.
The historical increase among Baby Boomers also requires context. The Federal Reserve paper found that median hours for Baby Boomers ages 36 to 40 were 32% higher than for the preceding Silent Generation, but linked much of the increase to rising female labor-force participation and two-earner couples rather than longer individual workweeks for every employee.
Contemporary Hours Carry More Measured Output
The Bureau of Labor Statistics series published by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis placed nonfarm-business output per hour at an average index level of about 118 across the four quarters of 2025, compared with about 49.5 across the four quarters of 1980. Productivity reflects technology, equipment, skills and management, so it cannot measure an individual worker’s exertion, but each contemporary labor hour carries substantially more measured output.
Burnout research similarly focuses on demands and resources rather than schedules alone. Aronsson and colleagues’ systematic review and meta-analysis in BMC Public Health, covering 25 prospective or comparable case-control studies conducted from 1990 through 2013 in Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand, found moderately strong evidence linking greater psychological job demands and low job control with subsequent emotional exhaustion.
Related work-intensification research treats heavier workloads, longer hours and greater time pressure as overlapping pressures. The reviewed studies were observational, so they could not establish causation as cleanly as randomized experiments.
Younger Employees Report More Stress
Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2025 report, using 2024 data for the United States and Canada, found that 60% of employees under 35 experienced stress during much of the previous day, compared with 46% of employees ages 35 and older. Gallup also found that 23% of employees under 35 and 13% of employees ages 35 and older said they felt lonely a lot of the day yesterday.
Those figures describe reported emotions rather than clinically assessed burnout, and they combine workers from two countries. Even with those limits, the age differences indicate that similar schedules can coexist with materially different experiences of pressure and isolation.
Economic Rewards Shape Expectations About Work
Welch also recalled that the younger freelancer responded to her story by saying, “But you had hope.” She agreed, arguing in the Masters of Scale interview that younger workers have watched hardworking relatives lose jobs and therefore may no longer assume that effort produces security.
The Federal Reserve’s intergenerational study found that Millennials ages 36 to 40 had median household income 18% above Gen X at the same age, although that progress was slower than the 27% increase Baby Boomers experienced over the Silent Generation. The same paper found that 61% of people ages 35 to 44 owned a home in 2022, compared with 66% of that age group in 1989, when the oldest Baby Boomers were 43, and identified rising home prices as a likely barrier to first-time ownership.
In its May 2026 report on U.S. households’ economic well-being in 2025, the Federal Reserve found that homeowners who moved during 2024 or 2025 reported a median monthly mortgage payment of $2,300, compared with $1,600 among all surveyed mortgage holders. The agency concluded that home prices had outpaced incomes, making ownership more difficult for younger, lower-income adults than for older generations.
A practical comparison of jobs should therefore place expected hours beside workload, control, security and what compensation can buy. The available evidence does not diminish earlier generations’ effort, but it does show why recalling a long schedule cannot determine whether younger workers’ burnout is legitimate.
