If you’re 23 and have sent out 300 job applications this year, you have every right to be pissed. After the 301st application submission, it’s easy to look for someone to blame. TikTok has decided that someone is a 38-year-old millennial who would also love to stop working, thanks, but currently has about $11 in retirement and a dentist appointment to pay for.
The demand started making the rounds this month after a Gen Z TikToker told millennials, in a now-deleted video, “Y’all need to retire so we can have some jobs open for us.” Millennials, a generation raised on AIM away messages and financial disappointment, responded exactly how you’d expect. “We got 68 people sharing streaming passwords, and you think we’re ready to retire?” creator @brimoller joked in a response reported by the New York Post.
Other people joined in because telling a 40-something millennial to retire is hilarious in that “haha, riiiiight” kind of way. TikToker @TheFinePrintbyJJ, who counts herself among the oldest millennials at 44, joked that she’d happily leave tomorrow if someone could tell her how she’s supposed to pay for it. @GenXJono pointed out that Gen X had once again been forgotten in a fight happening directly in front of them.
Please just let Millenniaps live. We are so tired. #millennial #genz #retirement #millennials
Gen Z wants Millennials and Boomers to retire so that they can have their jobs. In other news, GenX continues to be non-existent. #genx #genz #millennials #boomers #jobs
Gen Z Is Asking Millennials to Retire, and the Internet Is Having a Field Day
As an elder millennial myself, I can attest to the fact that many of us couldn’t retire if we wanted to (which, of course we do). Pew Research Center data found that 54% of Americans in their 40s have a parent 65 or older while also helping support a child. Another survey covered by Yahoo Finance found only 35% of millennial investors feel highly confident they’ll manage an early retirement. The oldest millennials turn 45 this year, so Social Security isn’t exactly something we’re banking on.
There’s also the minor issue that clearing millennials out of the office wouldn’t magically hand those jobs to Gen Z. Workforce analytics firm Revelio Labs found the average new hire was over 42 years old in 2025, after climbing drastically since 2022. That’s unusual for this stage of an economic expansion, when younger workers would normally be moving into open jobs more easily.
And then there’s AI, sitting there like the awkward, giant elephant in the room.
A Stanford Digital Economy Lab analysis found employment among 22- to 25-year-olds in AI-exposed jobs, including software development and customer service, is about 19% below where it would be if it had kept pace with less AI-exposed work. Older workers in those same fields haven’t seen the same drop. Researchers said much of the difference comes from companies hiring fewer young people in the first place.
“You can’t know for sure, but it does look like AI is behind these big changes,” Stanford economist Erik Brynjolfsson, the study’s lead author, told Axios.
So now you have a 23-year-old blaming a 38-year-old for sitting in a chair neither one fully controls, while the company upstairs figures out if it can get the work done without hiring either of them. Millennials would love to retire. We just need another 25 years and an economic miracle.
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