Desk jobs were once the golden ticket to steady pay, job security, and a career you could build a life around. But Gen Z isn’t so sure anymore. They’ve watched millennials do everything right, and still end up ground down, in debt, or laid off. And to top it off, they’re consistently being warned that AI is coming for all office jobs in the next decade anyway.
Now, three-quarters of Gen Zers actually associate desk jobs with burnout and instability—and new research from SupplyHouse, shared exclusively with Fortune, shows they’re done pretending otherwise.
Nearly 1 in 4 have already seriously considered, or are actively pursuing, a career in the trades instead.
In what may be the biggest generational career pivot in decades, powered by economic anxiety, student debt, and TikTok, Gen Z are trading laptops for toolbelts—and they’re not looking back.
TikTok is the new career counselor—and it’s sending Gen Z down the trades
Half of Gen Z say their interest in becoming welders, electricians, plumbers, and so on, started on social media. TikTok is the number one platform where Gen Z are discovering trade careers, with 1 in 3 watching trade content there—and getting allured. It’s not hard to see why.
Trade influencers are racking up millions of views, showing how skilled labor offers autonomy, financial security, and work-life balance that many entry-level office roles can’t match.
Take Chase Gallagher, for example. At 12 years old, he started mowing his neighbors’ lawns for $35 a pop in the summer of 2013. By 16, Gallagher had already turned over $50,000. Now, his landscaping business is generating millions in revenue—and he’s posting all about his success online.
At the same time, they’re also watching college-educated millennials on TikTok complain that their desk job salary doesn’t stretch enough to move out of their childhood bedroom. Meanwhile, Gen Z graduates keep posting about firing off thousands of job applications into a void as AI wipes out entry-level jobs.
“It just feels like you’re just banging your head against the wall,” a struggling Gen Zer with a maths degree lamented.
So it’s perhaps unsurprising that 78% of Gen Z have concluded that skilled trades are less vulnerable to AI disruption than white-collar careers.
The grass isn’t always greener on the construction site
Despite the buzz, the reality of trade work doesn’t always live up to the TikTok hype. Nearly 1 in 3 Gen Z (30%) say a parent, teacher, or counselor discouraged them from pursuing a trade career. And they may have a point.
Yijin Hardware analyzed jobs based on fatal injury rates, projected openings (2023 to 2033), median wages, and education requirements—and coming in at No. 1 is office admin and support roles. The researchers also found trade jobs are among the most “dangerous” out there for non-grads—logging, hunting, fishing, and refuse have the highest on-the-job fatality rates, paired with unpredictable working conditions, and limited opportunities. Not a single entry-level office job made the bottom rankings of their list.
It’s not the first study to suggest Gen Z may be looking at manual work through rose-tinted glasses.
According to another new WalletHub study ranking the best and worst entry-level U.S. jobs in 2025, trade roles dominate the bottom of the list. Welders, automotive mechanics, boilermakers, and drafters all rank among the least promising career starters due to limited job availability, weak growth potential, and potentially hazardous work.
“While trade work isn’t as easy to automate as some office jobs, new technologies like prefabrication and robotics are starting to take over parts of the workload, which can reduce demand,” WalletHub’s analyst Chip Lupo told Fortune. They’re also not immune to mass layoffs and are at the mercy of interest rates and demand.
And worse still, more often than not, many trade jobs might not actually make Gen Z happier than a desk job.
Another study ranked electricians as the least happy workers of all. According to the research, the physically demanding nature of the job and 40-plus-hour workweeks weren’t made up for by the just “decent” salary. Starkingly, not a single trade job made the list of happiest jobs.
