Gen Z Is More Likely to Ask for Better Pay. Here’s How They’re Doing It

Many workers are reluctant to ask for extra pay. According to research from Harvard Business Review, 46% of people accepted the first offer they received when they got hired. 1

One of the primary reasons people are reluctant to negotiate salaries is that the job market is notoriously difficult right now. Business Insider reported that job seekers now only have a 0.4% chance of landing each job they apply for. As a result, many people feel they need to accept anything they can get.

The cost of not negotiating your salary

Research also shows that those who don’t ask, don’t get. According to a 2011 study published in the Journal of Organizational Behavior, people who ask for wage increases boost their starting salaries by $5,000, on average. 2

In fact, you could be missing out on much more than $5,000 in the long run. Assuming your salary increases 5% each year, over a career of 45 years, negotiating an additional $5,000 to your starting pay would amount to $750,000 extra. Linda Babcock, an economist from Carnegie Mellon University, told NPR that not negotiating your salary can cost you “anywhere between $1 million and $1.5 million in lost earnings” over your lifetime.

Despite earlier findings that suggested young workers aren’t negotiating their salaries, things have changed since 2018. In a 2025 survey from Resume Genius, 55% of Gen Z respondents said they negotiated their salaries, compared to 48% of millennials and 42% of Gen X and Baby Boomers.

The survey also found that asking for better pay is worth it more often than not. Of those who negotiated their salaries, almost 8 in 10 new hires (78%) said they received a better offer.

Why Gen Z workers are more likely to ask for better pay

In the past, those just starting out in their careers were usually reluctant to ask for better pay. Considering the current state of the job market, why are young workers more likely to negotiate their salaries?

One major factor is the information they have access to. Young job seekers are increasingly turning to TikTok for career advice. In a survey from ResumeBuilder.com, 74% of Gen Z respondents said they “frequently” or “sometimes” got career advice from influencers on TikTok. 41% of Gen Z respondents also said they’ve made big career moves based on what they’d heard on the platform.

There are plenty of creators who offer career advice on TikTok, providing tips for how to negotiate salaries or what a decent starting offer should be. Even if a lot of the guidance given by these creators is bogus—and it sometimes is—Gen Z still seems to find much of the career advice on the platform to be salient.

Even if negotiating your salary results in better pay in the long run, many people are hesitant to have those difficult conversations with their employers. For Gen Z workers, this apprehension has driven them to some unorthodox solutions.

Practicing with AI chatbots

AI chatbots like ChatGPT or Claude have become mainstream, and many younger workers are using these tools to help them rehearse difficult conversations. Gen Z and millennial workers use ChatGPT like a career coach, asking it to play the part of their manager or even write salary negotiation scripts for them. In a recent survey from Deloitte, the majority of young workers (72% of Gen Zs and 69% of millennials) said they used an AI chatbot as a career coach. 3

A study from Southeastern Oklahoma State University also found that Gen Z is outsourcing big career moves to AI chatbots. 42% of Gen Z workers said that they’d used an AI tool to find their career, and one quarter of them said they’d followed ChatGPT’s advice and are glad they did.

How ChatGPT became Gen Z’s career coach

Many critics will point to Gen Z’s reliance on AI tools for career advice as evidence that they’re unprepared for the professional world. In reality, Gen Z hasn’t been afforded as many opportunities to practice professional conversations in person.

A lot of Gen Z attended college remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic, with many of their interactions happening virtually. In a survey conducted by The Harris Poll, 65% of Gen Z respondents said they had to relearn social skills after pandemic restrictions were lifted.

The pandemic also greatly affected how Gen Z workers navigate their career paths. According to a study by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research (AP-NORC), 43% of Gen Z workers feel that the pandemic made pursuing their educational and career goals more difficult.

As a result of the pandemic, a lot of young workers feel that they didn’t get the guidance they needed to prepare them for their careers. With ChatGPT, they now have it on demand.

Asking parents for help

Young workers aren’t just using AI chatbots to help them negotiate better pay. Some of them are getting help from a more traditional source—their parents.

According to a recent survey from Zety, 28% of respondents said that a parent helped them with pay or salary negotiation in some capacity. 10% of those respondents’ parents negotiated with employers directly. 4

Gen Z’s parents are increasingly playing a role in the job application process. Zety’s survey also found that 44% of respondents’ parents helped write or edit their resumes, while 21% admitted that they contacted a potential employer or recruiter on their behalf.

It’s understandable that Gen Z is turning to their parents or chatbots for help with these tricky conversations. Considering the challenges job seekers face in 2026, many people are afraid to do anything that could stop them from getting hired, including asking for better pay.

That said, there are a few issues with these new negotiation tactics.

Chatbots: inauthentic and biased

AI chatbots can be useful tools for practicing negotiations, but experts say you shouldn’t rely on them too much.

One study tested whether different versions of ChatGPT would provide biased salary negotiation advice for new tech hires. The study found that all four versions of ChatGPT offered widely different salary recommendations, especially when comparing employee and employer prompts. 5 The researchers concluded that these tools aren’t reliable for personalized salary negotiation advice, with employee and employer recommendations differing by $20,000–25,000 in some cases.

Moreover, employers are beginning to recognize some of the characteristics of AI-generated language. While simply getting a chatbot’s advice for how to approach salary negotiations could be harmless, directly reading from an AI-generated script is likely to sound inauthentic.

Parental negotiations: a lack of confidence

While getting career advice from mom and dad isn’t egregious, some experts say that having your parents take charge of the application process is probably a bad idea.

In an interview with Fox Business, Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary said that he had a candidate’s parent unexpectedly show up to a Zoom interview. O’Leary said that bringing your parents to an interview is a red flag, stating that resumes of job seekers who do this “go right in the garbage.” He questioned whether someone who needs a parent by their side during an interview can be trusted to make decisions by themselves.

While it’s unlikely that most candidates would bring their parents to a job interview, O’Leary touches on the crux of the issue. Employers often expect confidence and independent decision-making skills from their workers. If you’re outsourcing salary negotiations to your parents, it’s likely to give the impression that you’re not confident.

Gen Z is not only more likely to ask for better starting pay, they also expect higher raises. In Resume Genius’s survey, on average, Gen Z respondents said they expected annual salary increases of 10%, the highest of any generation.

Relatedly, a 2025 survey from ZipRecruiter found that new graduates expect a starting salary of $101,500 on average.

Unfortunately, a six-figure starting salary usually isn’t on the table. The survey found that the average starting salary for recent grads was $68,400.

A lot of critics like to paint Gen Z workers as “entitled” or “unrealistic.” However, some experts say that Gen Z’s higher salary expectations show that they’re beginning to value their worth. Bryan Driscoll, an HR consultant, told Newsweek that Gen Z can see the “disconnect” between how much workers are paid and how much companies make in profits.

“They, like many other generations, realize their labor has value, and they’re not afraid to walk if they’re undervalued,” he said.

While you probably shouldn’t bring your mom to your interview or read straight from an AI-generated script, negotiating your salary is still worthwhile. According to Harvard Business Review, here’s how you should actually approach salary negotiations:

Be polite and likeable

It sounds like a no-brainer, but employers are more likely to respond positively to your requests for better pay if you ask nicely. Along with being polite, try to anticipate potential tensions during the negotiations and respond with kindness and professionalism. If the employer initially seems taken aback by your request, be empathetic and explain the rationale behind the salary figure you came up with.

Show them why you deserve it

Make sure your employer understands why you deserve a better offer. It’s not enough to let credentials speak for themselves—you should tell the story behind it, too. For instance, if you worked as a developer for a year, rather than just talking generally about your experience, highlight specific tasks or projects you worked on that bolstered your professional development.

Do your research

Of course, one of the most important things to do before accepting any offer is to research the going rate for people in your job and industry. Look for the average pay rates or speak with friends and family to get a better idea of how much you can ask for. This will prevent you from asking for too little or too much and demonstrate your diligence and proactivity to potential employers.