A 30-country survey by Ipsos found that 31% of Gen Xers say they are either “not very happy” or “not happy at all” and only 15% saying they were “very happy”. That’s not surprising. After crafting a career straddling both analogue and digital systems, the home stretch to retirement has been upended by another disruptive technology – AI.
This generation has arrived at a fork in the road, with no appetite to embark on either direction.
Gen Xers just want to be left alone. They prefer to fly under the radar and have done so for many decades. Retail marketing research, as well as HR discussions, have generally been focused on Baby Boomers and Millennials. It stands to reason. Gen X is a smaller demographic, sandwiched between these two larger generations who have arguably had a bigger cultural and economic impact.
Gen X was born between the mid-1960s and 1980, an era that saw a decline in birth rates due to a wider acceptance of birth control, abortion, and shifting social expectations of marriage and family size.
The forgotten generation
Search for Gen X on social media you’ll inevitably stumble on video clips of Gen Zs asking why Gen Xers are not analysed as much as they are, and the Millennials before them. The Gen X responses sum up their persona perfectly.
The general tone goes much like this one: “Don’t mess with us. We fought in real life, not on the internet. We are the last generation of feral children. We didn’t have safe spaces. We didn’t have trigger warnings. No one was allergic to gluten. We mind our own business. We will (bleep) you up. We are older than Google. We are not the bigger person. Leave us alone.”
What makes this generation the “forgotten” generation is not only their noticeable absence in marketing and HR conversations but the fact that they slipped through the cracks – socially, culturally, and technologically.
Gen X experienced radical societal shifts during their formative years, such as increased divorce rates, the restructuring of the nuclear family, and growing up with both parents working, which led them to be called “latchkey kids” – children who made their own way home after school and had to fend for themselves, unsupervised, until their parents returned home.
Technologically, they grew up in an analogue world and started their working lives in a digital mode. This in-between existence afforded them certain advantages.
In terms of growing up without social media, their lives were not documented – their childhoods had no digital footprint, which is probably just as well, as parental supervision was, let’s just say, relaxed, or perhaps simply lax. Parents were happy to cede independence at an early age. With both parents working, helicopter parenting did not exist.
This independence left a deep imprint, as did the fact that they were forced to adapt to rapid digitalisation to forge a career. Gen Xers also lived through economic turmoil, including the dot-com bust in the late-1990s and the 2008 financial crisis, which affected their earnings and savings. Dealing with multiple socio-economic changes has equipped them with versatile skills and abilities, as well as tenacity. It instilled a preference to work independently and not to be micromanaged – hence the mantra “leave us alone”.
The career cul-de-sac
Many Gen Xers who shied away from climbing the corporate ladder pursued careers in the pre-digital creative sector – magazine publishing, newspaper journalism, photography, graphic design, advertising, music, film, TV – and many chose to work as freelancers.
The non-monetary perks these industries offered as well as the freedom of freelancing appealed to Gen X’s independence and self-reliance.
This lifestyle and career path has served Gen X well for the past two to three decades, but now, AI has been unleashed.
Having built up impressive skill sets and expertise in their fields, many Gen X creatives now find that their jobs are to be automated or simply rendered obsolete. The traditional promise of hard-earned financial security in retirement has been replaced by anxiety about career irrelevance and savings depletion.
Why AI redundancy feels different
Julie Whitehead, a 54-year-old writer and mental health advocate, told the New York Times that “this crisis goes beyond job loss. It’s about erosion – of purpose, of professionalism, and the devaluation of human ability,” she said. “A lot of us have spent a lot of time practicing our craft – writing or coding or accountancy or engineering – and we’re possibly looking at the end of all of those career paths.”
The reluctant leaders
Now that the Baby Boomers have all but retired, Gen X are now being called to step into the vacated leadership roles – and many are reluctant to do so. Not only are they happier working independently, they also value work-life balance, unlike their predecessors who sacrificed family time and personal interests for their careers. Leadership and management roles would upend the equilibrium.
They are also moving into leadership roles just as Gen Z is entering the workplace.
“Tenacious”, “resilient” and “hardened by life’s hard knocks” are not words most managers, HR practitioners, or business owners would use to describe Gen Z employees. Micro-managing (they appreciate a lot of feedback) an incoming Gen Z workforce, not to mention having to nurture their career aspirations, is anathema to Gen Xers.
On the home front there’s the additional challenge of being the “sandwich” generation: having to look after their children and their ageing parents. The financial strain combined with job and therefore retirement uncertainty creates “worry burnout” and “decision fatigue”.
The irony – a Gen Z parallel
For years, all parents have been urging their children to learn how to code. It would always be a “fool-proof career back-up plan” because the world will always need coders – so the thinking went.
In January this year Salesforce, the global software giant, announced that they would no longer be recruiting software engineers or coders due to a 30% increase in productivity from using AI. At Meta Mark Zuckerberg announced that they will no longer need mid-level coders by the end of 2025. In April Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella confirmed that AI now writes 30% of Microsoft’s code.
Cue panicked parents desperately looking for the new “future-proof” career advice.
Aneesh Raman, chief economic opportunity officer at LinkedIn, wrote, “There are growing signs that artificial intelligence poses a real threat to a substantial number of the jobs that normally serve as the first step for each new generation of young workers.”
KEY TAKEAWAYS
It is deeply ironic that AI has created a bookend crisis for both Gen Xers at the tail end of their careers as well as Gen Z as they start their careers. Gen Z still has time to recalibrate and upskill, but for Gen X it is a Catch-22. There is limited time to upskill and not enough time to reskill completely, and even if they were able to reskill, their age counts against them in the job market.
No matter which direction they take at this crossroads, both point towards a high probability of dissatisfaction. For white-collar Gen Xers, they will be ascending into a leadership or management roles that they don’t relish, and for creatives, the prospect of ending a fulfilling career feeling sidelined.
At the start of the year the WEF Future of Jobs 2025 report found that “41% of employers, globally, intend to downsize their workforce as AI automates”. At the time of the survey it was just speculation. AI redundancies have become a reality. The companies just weren’t specific about which demographic would bear the brunt.
Dion Chang is the founder of Flux Trends. For more trends as business strategy, visit: www.fluxtrends.com.
