Picture a car plant in Lordstown, Ohio, in March 1972. The workers are the youngest in the American auto business, 24 years old on average. General Motors had cut hundreds of jobs and still wanted 100 cars an hour off the line. A job that used to take a minute now got 36 seconds. The workers walked out. Reporters called it an “industrial Woodstock.” Those rebels were baby boomers. Today their generation sits in the corner office and pays consultants to explain Gen Z.
That's how Todd B. Kashdan opens his op-ed in Friday's Journal. He's a psychology professor at George Mason University, and his case is simple. Most generation gaps are age gaps. A survey of 1,200 American workers heading into 2026 found 57% of Gen Z thinking about a job change, against 20% of boomers. Many managers take that as proof that loyalty is dead. Kashdan reads it as proof that young people are young.
The numbers back him up. Take job tenure, the time a worker has spent with one employer. For 25- to 34-year-olds, the median was three years in 1983, when the Lordstown strikers were in their mid-30s. In 2022 it was 2.8 years. Barely a change. And in 2024, a worker aged 55 to 64 had been in the job more than three times as long as one aged 25 to 34. “The gap between being 25 and 60 was there when the boomers were 25,” he writes. He also points to a 2012 review of 20 studies. It found the generations differ little, if at all, in job satisfaction and the urge to quit. Even the Pew Research Center, whose generation labels fill corporate slide decks, changed course in 2023. It now compares generations only when the people are at the same stage of life.
Who's really job-hopping
Here's the line most readers will skip, and it's the one that matters for a plan. Since the 1980s, workers 25 to 44 have stayed in their jobs about as long as ever. Workers 45 to 64 have not. Their median tenure fell. Kashdan puts it in terms of the grumpy neighbor who keeps your Wiffle ball. That man has spent less time at his job than men his age did in the 1980s. He also explains the grumbling. In five studies covering 3,458 American adults, each person saw decline in the trait they prized most. People who prize obedience said kids no longer listen. Bookworms said kids no longer read. In 1624, a London minister wrote that youth had never been so saucy.
Our read
This is Career. Short tenure at 25 is normal and always was. The number that changed is the one for people in their late 40s, 50s and early 60s, and it went the wrong way. Those are the peak saving years. They're also the years when a job loss hurts the most and a new job often takes longest to land. So the honest reading of this op-ed goes to the manager. Your own tenure is less certain than your father's was.
Here's the connection. If you're 45 to 64, your plan should assume you'll change jobs again, by choice or otherwise. This week, do one portable thing. Count your old 401(k) accounts from past employers and make sure you can log into every one. While you're there, check your current plan's vesting schedule. That's the timetable for when the employer's contributions become yours to keep. Find the date you're fully vested. Those two checks take a lot of the panic out of a layoff. You don't want to be hunting for the umbrella in the parking lot.