# Gen Z founders hire while corporate America freezes out young workers

> Young business owners are ramping up staff as older companies pull back, reshaping how Gen Z sees the path to success.
- Title: Gen Z founders hire while corporate America freezes out young…
- Summary: Young business owners are ramping up staff as older companies pull back, reshaping how Gen Z sees the path to success. Gen Z and millennial founders are…
- Keywords: gen z, millennial founders, small business, hiring, labor market, entrepreneurship, baby boomers, employment, Gen, founders, hire, while
- Source: Fortune — https://fortune.com/2026/10/16/gen-z-millennial-small-business-owners-hiring-boomers-low-hire-low-fire-job-market
- Author: Muskaan Arshad
- Read time: 2 min
- Topics: gen z, millennial founders, small business, hiring, labor market, entrepreneurship, baby boomers, employment
## Young founders are hiring
Forty-six percent of Gen Z and millennial business owners plan to increase staff in the next year, compared with just nineteen percent of baby boomer owners or older.
## Young owners are more bullish
Gen Z and millennial entrepreneurs are more confident about their businesses and more willing to hire than older generations, according to Justworks CEO Mike Seckler.

> Young entrepreneurs, like Gen Z and millennial entrepreneurs, are much more bullish about how their businesses look, and they're more confident hiring right now than folks from older generations.
## Young owners plan bigger investments
Fifty percent of Gen Z and millennial owners plan to increase investment, compared with eighteen percent of boomer owners. Seventy-one percent expect revenue growth versus fifty-one percent of older peers.
## The broader job market is frozen
Former Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell describes the labor market as low-hire, low-fire: employers aren't laying off many workers but aren't hiring many either, making it hard for new entrants.
## Hiring and quitting are both down
Only one point nine percent of nonfarm workers quit their jobs in August, matching the lowest quit rate since twenty twenty.
## AI is replacing entry-level roles
Companies are being more conservative in hiring partly because of inflation and the rise of AI automating tasks usually assigned to early-career hires. One in three employers say they're replacing entry-level roles with AI.
## Young founders have survived worse
Young entrepreneurs aren't rattled by economic turbulence because they've grown up in constant uncertainty. Seckler says they have a mindset of thriving despite chaos: "I've already proven to myself that I can thrive in this."

> I've already proven to myself that I can thrive in this.
## Gen Z is choosing entrepreneurship
Nearly thirty-eight percent of recent and soon-to-be college graduates are considering starting their own business.Young people have lost faith in traditional employment and now see entrepreneurship as the safer path than climbing the corporate ladder.
## Key takeaway

Gen Z and millennial founders are hiring aggressively while baby boomer business owners and large corporations freeze hiring, forcing young workers to build their own companies rather than climb traditional career ladders.