Move over millennials: It’s all about Generation Z.
Born in the mid-90s to early 2000s, people in this group are vastly different even from millennials. They have no memory of the 9/11 terror attacks; they can’t remember life without a smartphone.
As more of Gen Z’s 61 million members pour into the workforce, they’re bound to change business as we know it. Comparably analyzed thousands of anonymous salary records and culture data to identify not only the biggest job opportunities for Gen Z, but where they stand on workplace issues. Full methodology below.
15 of the most popular tech jobs for Generation Z (Ranked by average compensation)
The jobs below represent 15 of the most popular technology jobs for people aged 18 to 25. Mobile developers, data scientists and product managers earn the most on average, with total compensation (salary + bonus) at more than $95,000 a year. Customer service reps, marketing associates and technical support managers earn $50,000 or less on average.
Text version:
Mobile developer $96,631
Data scientist $96,115
Product manager $95,266
Developer $93,987
DevOps engineer $87,400
UI/UX designer $80,296
Financial analyst $69,560
Business analyst $69,367
System administrator $67,464
Operations manager $64,853
Account manager $59,229
Sales rep $53,891
Technical support manager $50,306
Marketing associate $50,185
Customer service rep $43,924
[Compensation shown is average total compensation (base salary + bonus). Sample: 4,800 people aged 18 to 25 employed at small, mid-size, and large U.S. tech companies.]
By gender (Ranked alphabetically by job title)
When segmented by gender, the data shows that men 18 to 25 generally earn more in every job role than women, with the exception of developers, mobile developers and system administrators.
Text version:
Men Women
Account manager $59,233 $59,224
Business analyst $69,149 $69,800
Customer service rep $44,800 $42,971
Data scientist $97,210 $90,991
Developer $92,748 $100,910
DevOps engineer $87,075 $89,656
Financial analyst $69,683 $69,074
Marketing associate $55,375 $48,149
Mobile developer $96,220 $100,827
Operations manager $66,701 $62,282
Product manager $96,452 $92,316
Sales rep $54,617 $51,762
System administrator $67,116 $70,025
Technical support manager $50,942 $49,990
UI/UX designer $79,892 $79,753
[Compensation shown is median total compensation (base salary + bonus). Sample: 3,535 men and 1,265 women aged 18 to 25 employed at small, mid-size, and large U.S. tech companies.]
By location (Ranked alphabetically by job title)
San Francisco compensation tends to be the best for workers 18 to 25 in nearly every job role. The exceptions: NY tends to pay best for customer service reps, LA tends to pay best for DevOps engineers and Seattle tends to as well as San Francisco for data scientists and better than San Francisco for product managers.
[Compensation shown is median total compensation (base salary + bonus). Sample: At least 250 compensation records per ethnicity for people aged 18 to 25.]
Text version:
| SF | LA | NYC | Seattle | Boston | |
| Account manager | 65,648 | 53,900 | 60,484 | 59,600 | 48,500 |
| Business analyst | 83,791 | 64,928 | 69,841 | 73,775 | 62,948 |
| Customer service rep | 50,175 | 41,214 | 52,712 | 41,250 | 44,044 |
| Data scientist | 111,261 | 94,388 | 98,931 | 111,000 | 93,000 |
| Developer | 113,099 | 86,618 | 98,781 | 108,482 | 85,729 |
| DevOps engineer | 109,222 | 112,200 | 96,250 | 89,429 | 89,450 |
| Financial analyst | 81,262 | 62,505 | 75,342 | 61,818 | 74,081 |
| Marketing associate | 63,351 | 50,421 | 48,105 | 49,714 | 47,316 |
| Mobile developer | 116,257 | 95,281 | 98,944 | 112,000 | 93,889 |
| Operations manager | 77,104 | 62,669 | 59,851 | 66,000 | 65,269 |
| Product manager | 106,169 | 96,556 | 87,854 | 107,494 | 88,623 |
| Sales rep | 61,153 | 56,385 | 60,170 | 51,545 | 52,782 |
| System administrator | 87,625 | 68,500 | 60,000 | 80,000 | 65,357 |
| Technical support mgr. | 65,636 | 45,969 | 57,448 | 37,500 | 57,327 |
| UI/UX designer | 103,463 | 65,647 | 79,060 | 85,064 | 78,143 |
[Compensation shown is median total compensation (base salary + bonus). Sample: At least 250 compensation records per ethnicity for people aged 18 to 25.]
Workplace Trends for Gen Z (ages 18 to 25)
On workplace stress and harassment
On AI, #TimesUp, cryptocurrency and career blocks
On their coworkers
On the skills they value most
Methodology
— Workplace Trends data comes from 2,050 anonymous responses from people 18 to 25 across the technology sector
— Employees hail from small, mid-size, and large tech companies (VC-funded, privately-held, and public) as well as household brands such as Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, Uber, etc.
— Questions were in Yes/No and multiple-choice format. A total of 27 survey questions were included. Each survey question was initiated sometime between March 2016 and June 2018. Results are as of Aug 18, 2018.
- — What is your biggest stressor at work?
- — Do you feel burnt out at work?
- — Are you satisfied with your work-life balance?
- — What are your biggest work distractions?
- — Have you ever been sexually harassed at work?
- — Have you ever experienced racism at work?
- — How often do you lie to your boss?
- — Has gender held you back in your career?
- — Do you talk about your sex life with your coworkers?
- — Do the political views of your coworkers affect your working relationships?
- — Have you been verbally abused or severely harassed (non-sexual) by your boss at your current job?
- — Did you negotiate your salary?
- — How much of your paycheck do you save?
- — Would you feel confident asking your boss for a raise?
- — What’s the main reason you stay at your current company?
- — Who do you feel most loyal to at work?
- — How often do you socialize with your coworkers?
- — Do you have a close friend at work?
- — Have you ever dated a coworker?
- — In your opinion, how important is having fun with your coworkers to the success of your company?
- — Which of the following soft skills has helped you advance most in your career?
- — If you were the boss, what’s the first thing you’d change?
- — What’s the worst quality you could have in a boss?
- — Do you believe the benefits of artificial intelligence outweigh the potential risks?
- — Is cryptocurrency a scam?
- — Do you believe having kids holds people back in their careers?
- — Do you believe the #TimesUp movement will result in progress in relations between men and women in the workplace?
About Comparably
Comparably is a workplace culture and compensation monitoring site where employees can anonymously and publicly rate their companies and CEOs, access salary data, and find their dream jobs. The comprehensive platform gives job seekers a more accurate picture of what it’s like to work inside an organization because the salary and workplace culture data is structured and segmented by gender, ethnicity, age, location, tenure, company size, equity, title/department, and education. Since its launch in 2016, Comparably has accumulated more than 5 million ratings from employees across 45,000 U.S. businesses, and has become one of the most used SaaS solutions for employer branding with over 10,000 companies actively engaged with accounts. For more information, go to Comparably.com. For highly-cited workplace culture and compensation lists, including Comparably’s annual Best Places to Work and Best CEOs, go to Comparably.com/blog.
