MW A tough job market is pushing more young Americans to make a big bet: on themselves

Andrew Keshner

There has been a rise in entrepreneurship among young Americans as the entry-level labor market has become tougher to join

Hannah William, Ethel Mwedziwendira and Anthony Mound are among younger entrepreneurs who've chosen to forge their own paths.

Years ago, Hannah Williams learned her paycheck was $25,000 less than the going rate for her data-analytics job and talked about it on TikTok.

Her post put Williams on a new career path.

The online response inspired her to quit her job and build a digital brand by attacking the workplace taboo of talking about salaries.

After building an audience of more than 3 million followers on a range of social-media accounts, with street interviews digging into people and their paychecks, Williams sold Salary Transparent Street this year and is weighing her next move.

Williams said social media had made it far easier to build a business like hers. Producing video once required specialized skills and expensive software; now, she said, "people have TikTok. And the way that you can film and edit there is way easier to learn."

Though Williams, 29, always liked the idea of working for herself, "I think more than anything, I really wanted freedom."

What bothered her most about the traditional workplace was the idea of asking permission to take time off. "It felt weird for me to ask, 'Hey, pretty please, can I get this one day off so I can go to the doctor?' I just got the ick from corporate America. I felt like it wasn't human."

Williams is part of a rise in entrepreneurship among young Americans, as the entry-level labor market has become tougher to crack.

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For some, layoffs or a frustrating job search have pushed them toward starting a business. Others are drawn by the autonomy and by social media, inexpensive digital tools and AI that made it easier and cheaper to strike out on their own.

The share of entrepreneurs between 20 and 34 jumped during the pandemic, according to UCLA labor economist Robert Fairlie. While millennials and Gen X account for larger shares of new entrepreneurs, Fairlie said the entrepreneurship rate among younger adults seems to be settling at a higher level. "I think it's going to be kind of a new normal too," he told MarketWatch.

There are several theories about the rise of Gen Z launching businesses, Fairlie said. A difficult job market for younger workers is one factor. The pandemic also broadened the idea of what service-based businesses could be, potentially opening new moneymaking prospects, he noted.

Ethel Mwedziwendira, 30, once envisioned an extended climb up the corporate ladder. That was her plan when she graduated from college in 2019.

Mwedziwendira wanted to hone her public-relations skills working for someone else before starting her own firm in her mid-40s. Her timeline accelerated by more than a decade after a 2025 layoff and an unsuccessful job hunt.

She called it her "forced pivot." Mwedziwendira is now figuring out how to build her West Coast clientele after starting EP Studio, a Washington, D.C., creative studio and PR firm, a year ago. "I kind of just bet on myself and the rest is history," Mwedziwendira said.

Bank of America is seeing signs of the same shift among its customers. "Gen Z's growing role is pretty dramatic," said Taylor Bowley, an economist at the Bank of America Institute (BAC).

In June, business applications from Gen Z customers grew disproportionately from a year earlier, Bowley said, as did payments to open limited-liability companies, a business structure that separates personal and financial assets and liabilities.

"The startup pipeline is getting younger," she said.

Some of that may have to do with lifestyle choices of younger workers who want to work for themselves; some of it may be a response to "a more challenging job market."

The job market has become more difficult for many recent graduates.

The economy added 162,000 jobs last month, exceeding estimates. There were still 245,000 unemployed people between 20 and 24 with no prior work experience, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That's the highest August number since 2014, according to an economist at Fifth Third Commercial Bank $(FITB)$ who linked the increase to AI's workplace impact.

There are also signs of particular weakness among young workers in jobs highly exposed to AI, though it's difficult to determine how much of that weakness is attributable to the technology.

August employment for workers up to 25 in jobs with high AI exposure fell 4.4% year over year, according to ADP (ADP) and Stanford University researchers.

Recent grads whose majors have traditionally been a pipeline to jobs that can easily be automated were less likely to find a job within a year of graduating, and saw lower pay than peers in less AI-exposed fields, recent U.S. Census Bureau and Dallas Fed research found.

"What if I want to do it differently?" Alexis Neely on the career questions that Gen Z faces.

In the shifting labor landscape, people in their 20s are trying to figure out what counts as success. "I feel like they got sold the American dream that there's only one traditional way to work and live. What if I want to do it differently?" said Alexis Neely, a Washington, D.C., graphic designer, digital illustrator and animator.

Neely, 30, has had several full-time jobs since graduating in 2021. She recently started a full-time role. Yet she's always freelanced through her business, Pizzagirllex, and doesn't intend to stop now. "It fills me and it fuels me."

Young workers fear AI. Young entrepreneurs are putting it to work.

The same technology creating uncertainty for younger workers is also giving would-be entrepreneurs new tools to start and run a business.

Seven in 10 Gen Z founders used AI to help start their business, according to Gusto's research. The demographic was far more likely to use AI compared with other generations, according to researchers at the payroll and human resources platform.

For example, Mwedziwendira uses AI to brainstorm how to structure weekly priorities and create spreadsheets for her tasks. The process can take around 10 minutes and frees her time for other tasks, she said.

AI has been a key building block for Orestis Skoutellas and Headquarters, the telehealth concussion clinic he's co-founded.

Orestis Skoutellas, the 28-year-old co-founder of Headquarters, a telehealth-concussion clinic startup, used AI to build the company's own personnel-management system to work with doctors and its own patient-video platform, Skoutellas said. That's instead of paying outside vendors to manage those aspects.

Headquarters started in 2024, inspired by a skiing accident suffered by Skoutellas' college roommate years ago. The business has four full-time employees and eight clinical staffers. "We're the hospital. We do everything," he said.

Anthony Mound, who owns Trust 1 Services Plumbing, Heating and Air Conditioning, says that AI's impact on the job market is pushing job seekers to industries like his.

Anthony Mound has seen the AI-fueled jobs shock fill his talent pool.

For example, his operations manager used to work in telecommunications. "She kind of looked at the writing on the wall ... She was like, 'this is the future,'" Mound told MarketWatch.

Mound, 31, employs around 35 people in his Boston-based company, founded in 2020, and wants to triple his head count in five years.

This year, Mound received 500 apprentice applications. Typically, he gets around 50 each year, he said.

Mound benefits from another technological reality for Gen Z business owners. He is building the business' social-media presence, including podcasts with technicians taking customer questions.

"The hardest thing ever was, for me, getting me away from the tools and the customer interactions because I really enjoy that. My newfound love is actually developing people and marketing," he said.