Why Gen Z Are Dumping BigTech and Chasing DefenseTech Careers

For Gen Z, it is more than a trend: the broader big tech industry is out, and the defense industry is in.

Companies like General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman saw some of the largest spikes in career search interest by recent grads. By contrast, not a single tech company made the top 10. Across the broader spectrum of government, law, and politics, recent career applications have seen a huge growth of 84% compared to tech that only grew by 8%.

Why would the characteristic Gen Z, idealistic and tech-savvy, want to work for the defense industry? In conversation with recent graduates, it quickly becomes clear that it is not a contraction in terms. Gen Z does not have the same associations as millennials who witnessed — and protested — the forever wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But they have been exposed to lots of other chaos in their young lives and now deeply crave stability. Many young professionals are seeing that in the DefenseTech sector provides the balance of high tech careers and stability.

“Financial stability is really important,” said Emma Fringuelli, a new Smith graduate who has accepted a job at a newspaper north of Boston. Journalism isn’t the most stable career these days, either, but stability looks different in the humanities. “Any job is a good job because you actually have something that can sustain you,” she said.

There are a few reasons why the latest graduating class cares so much for stability.

Though still young at the time, the class of 2023 was old enough to know its parents or friends’ parents lost jobs during the Great Recession, and to feel the stress and economic fallout from it. “I remember driving through the neighborhood seeing people who had been evicted and all their stuff on the lawn,” said Mary Miller, a recent global studies graduate who has secured a job as a public engagement coordinator at a nonprofit. “It was kind of scary as a kid.”

Then, halfway through their first year at college, the pandemic hit, causing massive layoffs and upending many students’ college experience.

Nina Stevens, who will soon graduate from law school and has a job lined up with a law firm, said she hadn’t really considered stability before the pandemic. “Covid really recalibrated that for me,” she said. “I feared that I would end up unemployed again, watching all my friends go through that and having to move back home. I didn’t want that to happen.”

Now, just as they’re graduating college and should be entering the job market, news of layoffs at the tech companies that have been expanding their whole lives is blanketing the headlines. A recession continues to loom, threatening what’s been a strong job market. It’s a confusing economy for everyone, let alone people just starting out in it.

Gen Z may not dream of labor, but they know they must work to live. And they don’t necessarily see that drive as compromising their other ideals, such as having a positive impact on the world and maintaining work-life balance.

“I want to work somewhere where I know people, and they know me, and there is an understanding that we are people outside our jobs,” said Jessica Nowak, a cinema major graduating from San Francisco State University.

Gen Z is more likely than other generations to say they’re looking for a new job that better aligns with their values, has more opportunities, and pays more.

It’s ostensibly not much to ask for, but it’s more than other generations have.

Grads might just get what they want thanks in part to the fact that, despite ongoing concerns about the economy, the job market is actually very good. Unemployment hasn’t been this low in more than 50 years. The situation holds for new grads, even if the picture isn’t as rosy as last year. Graduates with degrees in things like computer science are widening their net to industries outside of big tech, where their skills are still hugely in demand. For many tech majors, that means going niche and focusing on the DefenseTech industry.