Lucky or Left Behind? The Gen Z Money Story

Is Gen Z the most informed generation in history, or the most financially trapped? Is a university degree still worth it, or have we sent too many people to study the wrong things? Has Britain gone from a meritocracy to an inheritocracy, where the “Bank of Mum and Dad” are more essential than ever? Vicky Spratt, Housing and Society Correspondent, investigates the Gen Z story and how bad are things really for young people? This week she is joined by generational historial Dr Eliza Filby. STUDENT DISCOUNT FOR TRIP PLUS: £20 FOR THE YEAR : The Rest is Politics is offering an exclusive discount for students, just sign up with your student email address here To hear the whole episode, and to get access to all TRIP bonus content, sign up at therestispolitics.com Instagram: ⁠@restispolitics⁠ Twitter: ⁠@restispolitics⁠ Email: ⁠[email protected]⁠ __________ Hosted by: Vicky Spratt Producer: India Dunkley Social Producer: Celine Charles Video Editor: Adam Thornton, Lorcan Moullier Researcher: Olivia Taylor Hooper Exec Producer: Tom Whiter Editorial Director: Emily Kent Smith Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alastair Campbell?

  Hello there and welcome to The Rest is Politics with me, Alastair Campbell. Now, we get loads and loads and loads of emails and of messages and of comments about what we do on the podcast. At or close to the top, it relates to young people. And in particular, I would argue, so-called Gen Z, 14 to 29. What's going on with them? What kind of world are they living in? What kind of world are they going to inherit? What if they do have kids? Are their kids going to inherit? How much we should be worried? Have we seen all this before and it's just a kind of a phase that the world is going through? So, we should take it seriously and we are. We've put together a four-part series on this.

• 0:43Alastair Campbell?

  Not a moan fest, not a, "Oh bloody kids" moan fest or rant. Something that we hope is balanced because the picture is nuanced and it's complicated. So which is it? Is Gen Z lucky? Or is Gen Z left behind? That's what this series is going to investigate. So we brought in a journalist, Vicky Spratt, who first came to my attention when she wrote a very good book about housing, but who has spent the better part of a decade speaking to hundreds, hundreds of young people about these questions. So she's going to be guiding us through four episodes and she's going to be joined by specialists along the way. Here's episode one, Lucky or Left Behind: The Gen Z Money Story.

• 1:30Speaker 01

  So let us set about this task at every level. Radical improvement and reform for our children.

• 1:35Speaker 02

  Freedom is a precious gift that one generation can pass to the next and a promise that I intend to keep. We know the importance of those early years and setting children up for a good life. Your dreams are our dreams.

• 1:50Speaker 03

  Gen Z. Gen Z. Gen Z. New report says Gen Z struggling with anxiety and uncertainty about the future. Mental health issues, depression, anxiety.

• 1:59Speaker 04

  Why is my heart pounding like I'm in war?

• 2:03Speaker 04

  They're calling them Generation Jobless. The work ethic, it's missing in the young kids.

• 2:08Speaker 05

  I'm never gonna own a house. Absolutely, when you're spending $40 a day on smashed avocado on coffee. Your generation is greedy and selfish. Generation Z are utterly useless.

• 2:19Speaker 06

  You all come to us young people for hope? How dare you? Change is coming, whether you like it or not.

• 2:30Vicky Spratt?

  Welcome to The Rest Is Politics, Dr Eliza Philby.

• 2:35Speaker 08

  Great to be here.

• 2:36Vicky Spratt?

  Eliza Gen Z, in some ways, the most connected, informed generation in history, in others, being absolutely hammered by fiscal drag, by wage stagnation, student loans, high house prices. I could go on. How bad is it really?

• 2:53Speaker 08

  I think we are living through quite a momentous time. And we all feel it, don't we? We all feel the sense that the script we were sold and were told has been upended. And that script was very much, and it was a late 20th century script, right? Let's get as many of you to university. Through, you know, becoming a graduate, you will get on some sort of professional track. And that professional track will ensure that you get on the housing track and that track to financial stability. And we are living through a time now, and I think we've been living through it since 2008, actually, where that script has, I think, been found wanting and I think is being upended. And

• 3:37Speaker 08

  so when I say, actually, Gen Z have got it better than millennials, I'm going to be really specific here. What I mean is, I think the delusion is over. The sort of years of realism, I think, really started post-COVID. So I think we spent a lot of 2010s going, why am I still having to stay at my parents? Why am I not gaining financial stability? Why is my degree not bringing the rewards I thought? And I think there was a lot of sort of confusion and anger throughout the 2010s. I think Gen Z, I think, has a greater degree of realism and anger. So let's be clear about what is it we are seeing. Firstly, what we were told.

• 4:22Speaker 08

  Hasn't materialised. What we were told to do hasn't brought the rewards that it brought our parents. I think also though, it's very clear areas where that's becoming true. So, housing, your area of expertise. You know, when we think about the accessibility of housing for boomers and Gen Xers, it wasn't there for millennials and it's even, you know, less there for Gen Z. Okay, there's nuances within that, certainly regional differences, but it's not that accessible route to home ownership, isn't there? I would say home ownership now is a leap and not a ladder. Okay, and we can go into the details of that. Number two, education. The pathway to tertiary education is off the back of creating a system as we did,

• 5:06Speaker 08

  really under New Labour, but subsequently under the Coalition and the Tories, is the expectation of going to university and creating a system where basically you sunk or you swam, and if you swam, you got to university. And obviously, that came with increasing price. And what we've seen is this horrible situation where the price of university has gone up, but the value of that degree has gone down. Not in all courses, not for all universities. Okay? So we've got housing, education, and number three, I think, is jobs. And I think actually this is where there is real crisis for Gen Z, because you've got this kind of collision of forces happening where you've got tax on wages,

• 5:49Speaker 08

  you've got the graduate tax if you're paying back your student loan, you've got an increasingly challenging workplace because of the force of AI. And, and you know, work isn't bringing the rewards that it did 20 years ago, 30 years ago. And, and so you, you combine that, you know, education, housing and, and jobs. You know, it's no surprise there's a level of disillusionment and a level of crisis amongst a generation who are, if they can, ever more reliant on the bank of mum and dad.

• 6:22Vicky Spratt?

  Yeah, we were labouring under the illusion that it was still possible to work hard and buy a house and that we lived in a meritocracy. And what you're saying is Gen Z were never under that illusion. They know full well, it's really about how much your parents have. So we've polled the rest is politics audience and had 12,000 responses. Yeah, huge number of people really interested in this. At the point that we're sitting here, 12,000, maybe it will be more. 6,000 of those from Gen Z. I'm really interested in something you just said about 2008. Whether perhaps that's ground zero for Gen Z, for this generation that are coming up now. One listener said, our futures as educated homeowners were bargained away after 2008.

• 7:06Vicky Spratt?

  And if our futures as mid income renters are also being bargained away on the world's battlefields. It's better to know that and prepare ourselves.

• 7:15Speaker 08

  Yeah, I think, I think 2008 is a really important moment. Okay, partly because it is that, that point when asset prices starting, actually, you know, the house prices starts to go up before then, but you know, it does, quantitative easing, you know, is the policy that's pursued. And it, you know, asset prices are increased. I think it's also because it is a nice turning point in terms of the cost of education as well. Although that obviously came out, came out later, there, there is that key moment. I think, I think it's also, and, and, and I don't think we talk about this enough, is one's financial attitudes are actually shaped earlier than you would presume. They're actually shaped around between the ages of seven and 12, right, really early. And so when people talk about the global financial crisis, they tend to think that it impacted millennials.

• 7:59Speaker 08

  I think psychologically, it impacted Gen Z who saw their parents being laid off. Who maybe saw their parents, you know, having their house repossessed, who saw their parents struggle. And I think therefore grew up in a, a sort of culture of economic realism rather than a culture of, you know, unending economic opportunity that perhaps millennials did, you know.

• 8:20Vicky Spratt?

  And of course, they, if they went to university, have been loaded up with a huge amount of debt. Do you think that has shaped their worldview?

• 8:29Speaker 08

  One of the things, I mean, I taught in higher education for a number of years. And I definitely saw a transition that my older colleagues really didn't understand. The emergence of the student as a customer, right? And when you are paying for something, you respect a return on that investment. So when you have a generation who are, you know, working harder than ever, maybe had some private tutoring, maybe, you know, maybe did, you know, huge number of GCSEs, number of A levels, worked much harder than I did, right? And the focus is education, education, education. And then you enter tertiary education and you go, actually, hang on a minute. You know, I've got six hours of lectures or maybe more if you're doing sciences.

• 9:15Speaker 08

  My lecturers don't know my name and I'm not sure this degree is going to get me in an area of work that I want to work in. I think it's a different mindset entering tertiary education amongst Gen Z. And I saw it happen in universities where the number of times we'd sit in meetings going, how can we like, you know, basically sort of bribe them so that they can fill out that student satisfaction survey to the highest percentage? Should we give them free beer and free pizza? Yeah, then they'll say, oh, this university is great. And I think there is this sort of real culture shift that I think older generations don't really understand that's happened in higher education, which is now it's consumers who want a really good service. And by the way, if you went to university during the COVID pandemic, you, you had online

• 9:58Speaker 08

  lectures, you know, you really had really frankly piss poor service. And there's a sense that what am I getting for my money? And you combine that with, you know, a generation who's had a smartphone in their pocket since they were 13, done probably most of their interesting learning on YouTube, maybe now chat GPT, and are really questioning the point and price of going. And, and I think that's, that's as, as important as obviously the price that we now see people paying.

• 10:25Vicky Spratt?

  Let's talk about the price, right? Because it is a big price tag. Until 2006 in England and Wales, fees were a thousand pounds a year. Then they went up to three thousand pounds a year. That's what I paid. Then 2011.

• 10:41Vicky Spratt?

  Nine thousand pounds a year, they trebled.

• 10:44Speaker 08

  Um.

• 10:44Vicky Spratt?

  So the average graduate now has got more than fifty thousand pounds worth of debt.

• 10:50Speaker 08

  Um.

• 10:51Vicky Spratt?

  If they do well, they go on to earn around sixty K. The marginal tax rate they are paying is above fifty percent.

• 10:59Speaker 08

  Um.

• 11:00Vicky Spratt?

  And yet we're not calling it a graduate tax, but it is essentially a graduate tax, right?

• 11:04Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 11:05Vicky Spratt?

  And not everybody is gonna be hammered with that.

• 11:08Speaker 08

  Um.

• 11:09Vicky Spratt?

  Because if you've got wealthy parents who can help and who can pay your fees upfront, or not particularly wealthy parents. I've spoken to people who say that their parents took money out of their houses to pay for their university education. They're not gonna have that debt when they graduate. So it's not a level playing field.

• 11:26Speaker 08

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think, and by the way, you know, the UK has some of the worst student debt in the world. Um, much worse than America, and which is surprising. And why is that? Because a number of parents start saving for the graduate degree in America in where they don't tend to here. But also because they have bursaries. Um, so I think we need to realise how bad it is actually in the UK, even compared to to America.

• 11:53Vicky Spratt?

  That's interesting because there is this sort of illusion that our system is fairer.

• 11:58Speaker 08

  Um.

• 11:59Vicky Spratt?

  Can you explain that a bit more?

• 12:00Speaker 08

  I don't think it is. I don't think it is. And I think it's also related to wages, right? And I think that the thing you alluded to is is that it's not just the interest on that loan. It's also, if you are in a high, you know, what is a high earning salary, but if you are earning a lot, the more you pay and the more, you know, you. The more you're seeing go out of your wage packet, suddenly the student graduate premium doesn't look like. You know, what you were led to believe it should look like. And I think the. Again, it's it's this growing up in economy where work doesn't pay. And if work doesn't pay, the return on the investment of your education isn't there either.

• 12:44Speaker 08

  And I think you combine student loans crisis, and it is loans crisis. You know, a lot of people are now talking about the government like it's the worst kind of loan shark. Loan shark. Loan shark. And I think there's a huge justification. The way that they've tweaked the the loan means that people are legitimate when saying, you know, that's not the agreement that I signed up for. And also that it's all slightly done in stealth and secret and and incrementally so that, you know, it's a bit like the fiscal drag. No one really kind of knows or notices what's happening. But actually, you look at your pay slip and it's considerable amount that's coming out each month. That's where the sense of grievance comes from. And you combine that in, you know, um, a low wage economy where we don't have the same growth in wages that you have in the US.

• 13:27Speaker 08

  Um, and you combine that with the level of taxation on wages as opposed to taxation on wealth. There's a legitimate grievance there for sure. I I think what's interesting is how is the gonna is the government gonna respond? And I think, and this goes back to my earlier point, is that throughout the 2010s, there were student protests around student fees. There was lots of talk about the intergenerational gap. Lots of talk about boomers have had it all and their kids have had nothing. But there was no political ramifications of that, right? Because the Tories were totally kind of in sup to the boomers, right? And not enough young people voted.

• 14:08Speaker 08

  I think now that's starting to change. I think, and the one of the reasons why I think that is politically, this is difficult for Labour because of the impact potentially it might have on people switching to the Greens. But I think it's also a sense of young people have been screwed for a long time. And there's a, there's a, there's a sense that their parents are starting to realise it. I don't know many people over 50 who go, I wish I was young now.

• 14:36Vicky Spratt?

  So much fun these days for young people.

• 14:38Speaker 08

  It's a great time to be a boomer. Right, that wasn't said 10 years ago. Do you know what I mean? Like, I think a lot of boomers and Gen Xers, particularly Gen Xers housing their 20 something kids, having to pay to to get their kids to university, having to delay their retirement plans, are really now realising how screwed their kids are financially. And I think a lot of boomers are as well. So I think there's, therefore, it's more politically volatile for young, I think, and potentially there's a huge opportunity for young people to start sort of protesting and and gaining some political capital, because I think, I think a lot of families are carrying this financial burden. It's not just young people were screwed,

• 15:21Speaker 08

  it's the older generations are having to carry their kids in a way that didn't happen 20, 30 years ago. And so these aren't young people's problems. They are problems that are being carried by families.

• 15:36Vicky Spratt?

  And let's just talk about the graduate premium. Because the defence for hiking fees, I remember, because I was working in Parliament the night of the vote in 2010. I remember we were stuck in Parliament, we weren't allowed out.

• 15:49Speaker 08

  I was protesting, yeah, I remember.

• 15:50Vicky Spratt?

  People were protesting, everybody got kettled. The justification at the time was graduates earn more than non-graduates. It's right that they pay something towards that education. But what happened after 2008 in Britain is that wages did stagnate, particularly for younger workers. Whereas, as you've said, in the US, actually, graduates did see their earnings go up. So we used to have a graduate premium of around 50% more. We still have a graduate premium, but now it's more 36% is at that kind of level. Do you think it's still worth going to university?

• 16:28Speaker 08

  If you want to hear my whole conversation with Dr Eliza Philby and the rest of the Gen Z series, where I'll be joined by Freya India, Bobby Duffy, Alastair Campbell and former Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, sign up at therestispolitics.com. And if you're a student, make sure you sign up with your student email address for an exclusive discount.