Gen Z doesn’t want a permanent job anymore Can we say goodbye to the Zalone-style philosophy of stable employment?

The job market continues to resemble a stormy sea, and if Millennials tried to follow a route set by their predecessors - that of the “permanent job” Zalone-style - Gen Z is drawing a structurally different trajectory. Phenomena such as job hopping, quiet quitting or lily padding, as well as the Hollywood model show how the new generation of “non-employees” is rewriting the very idea of work.

According to a new report from Shakers, younger workers stay on average about one year in the same company, accumulating skills and relationships before moving on to the next step. At the same time, the number of freelancers is growing: only in 2025 more than half a million new VAT numbers were opened, a sign of a workforce increasingly oriented toward autonomy and flexibility.

New working models

Italy is now at a turning point. Independent workers have reached 5.17 million, with an annual growth of 2.8% and an incidence of 23.1% of total employment, placing the country third in Europe after Greece and Bulgaria, well above the EU average of 14.3%. Driving this transformation are mainly digital profiles (software developers, data analysts, cloud and artificial intelligence experts, social media managers) for whom demand for specialized skills exceeds traditional hiring supply. The freelance model is no longer a fallback, but a conscious and increasingly profitable choice.

The traditional model, based on stability and vertical growth, is giving way to fluid professional paths built project after project. Within this framework, new approaches to work are emerging: lily padding, which evokes the image of a frog jumping from one lily pad to another accumulating experience, and the Hollywood model, an organizational system where companies build temporary ad hoc teams, like film sets, to manage specific projects. These phenomena fit into a landscape already shaped by dynamics such as job hopping, the tendency to frequently change jobs in search of better conditions or personal alignment, and quiet quitting, understood as the refusal to go beyond minimum required tasks without adequate recognition.

The result is a clear paradigm shift: less linear but more continuous careers, a move from vertical roles to horizontal logics, as in the new philosophy of the career river, and collaboration based on skills rather than fixed positions. Not by chance, the European freelance platform market is expected to reach 5.5 billion by 2033, with a 18.5% annual growth rate.

Dwelling in the world

But this change does not only concern new generations: the job market itself has deeply transformed. Roles are multiplying, required skills are stratifying, and careers are increasingly becoming an ever-evolving performance. Reducing everything to a supposed “caprice” of Gen Z risks being an oversimplification. Rather than focusing on presumed generational impatience, which almost seems like an inheritance from previous generations, it would be more useful to question the meaning of exchange, career goals, and the possibility of transformation. The decline of the sacredness of the permanent job does not only make work more unstable, but also more complex, layered and, in some ways, more interesting, fully reflecting the dynamic way of living of Gen Z.

For some, the permanent job can feel static, just as the stimuli risk dissolving within the stasis that governs it. For others, instead, the independent dimension represents a more dynamic and stimulating space. Why does Gen Z no longer want to work “in certain terms”? Perhaps the answer lies not in the methods, but in the very meaning of work. Because work is not only what allows us to live, but also, more subtly, one of the ways through which we choose to express ourselves and inhabit the world.