# Megatrends One Year Later – #23: Generational Value Shifts – What I Predicted, and What’s Actually Happening
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“Digital natives aren’t just changing the workplace-they’re accelerating humanity’s boldest innovations while older resistance fades away.” - Futurist Jim Carroll One year ago, in July 2025, I published Megatrend #23: Generational Value Shifts as part of my 30 Megatrends series. Time to grade myself. Here's what I wrote at the time: As digital natives - kids who have never known a world without technology, the Internet, and social media - become the majority workforce and leadership cohort, we are seeing accelerated acceptance of new paradigms that would have faced resistance from previous generations. The decade between 2025 and 2035 will mark a fundamental and irreversible transfer of economic, cultural, and operational power within the global workforce, as digital natives transition from workforce participants to the leadership cohort. Gen Z is now roughly 26–30% of the global workforce and 41% of the entire US shift/frontline workforce. 89% say purpose is essential to job satisfaction. The wrinkle: average early-career tenure for Gen Z is just 1.1 years — the shortest of any generation on record. The shift is real. So is the churn that comes with it. The AI-anxiety piece I flagged also got sharper, not softer. 40% of workers now fear AI will make their job obsolete, up from 28% just two years ago, and 90% of job seekers say they worry about AI at work. The twist: fear isn't producing exits. It's producing "job-hugging" — 57% of workers staying put out of fear, up from 45% six months earlier, with quit rates at a decade low. Verdict: Right on the shift, underestimated the churn — and underestimated how AI anxiety would freeze people in place instead of pushing them out. The resistance is fading. It's just being replaced by turnover at the entry level, and paralysis everywhere else.

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Source: https://jimcarroll.com/2026/09/megatrends-one-year-later-23-generational-value-shifts/