While the media continue to report a collapse in internships and other entry-level opportunities, workers aged 15 to 29 are sticking to a strategy of high mobility, moving between jobs to broaden their professional experience. That’s one of the findings of the latest labour market report released in June by Randstad. We spoke with André Perron, Randstad’s Senior Director of Talent Solutions, about this surprising trend.
According to the report, 2026 Employer Brand Research, 42% of Canadian Gen Z workers—those born between 1997 and 2012—said they intended to change jobs within the next six months, either by moving to another position within their current organization (12%) or by leaving for another employer (30%).
The contrast is striking: across all respondents, only 23% said they intended to change jobs.
“That’s a record level of mobility,” warns André Perron. “It’s a red flag on employers’ dashboards and should prompt serious reflection on the challenge of retaining these new workers.”
Flexibility Isn’t Everything
Young adults are not as focused on flexibility (38%) as Millennials and Gen X workers (43%), according to the report.
They generally don’t have children or a mortgage to worry about, and they aren’t necessarily looking for stability or work-life balance at any cost.
“If they don’t see a path for advancement, if there’s no clarity about what the next steps might look like within their company, that’s when they tend to move on,” says the Randstad executive.
A Gap Between Expectations and Employer Performance
Limited career growth is indeed the most frequently cited reason for wanting to leave, mentioned by 35% of younger workers.
That raises another question: could there be an element of bluffing in these survey responses—after all, saying you intend to leave doesn’t necessarily mean you actually will?
In Canada, intentions to change jobs continue to outpace actual job changes, the report notes. This “indicates continued pressure on retention, although these intentions have eased compared with last year. Workers are more likely to consider leaving when gaps persist between their expectations and their current employer’s performance.”
The report also notes that only 14% of workers actually changed jobs during the last six months of 2025.
The “Portfolio Career” Approach
The desire for mobility is particularly striking in a global context where a growing number of companies have decided to replace some junior positions with AI agents.
At the same time, this drive to diversify may be less about restlessness than a survival instinct pushing the younger generation to broaden its professional experience.
“This is a generation that has adopted something of a ‘portfolio career’ strategy,” explains André Perron. “They want to build a diverse range of experiences, experiment with new companies and new roles, and develop a broader professional skill set rather than growing in a linear fashion within a single organization.”
This is also a generation searching for its place—and for meaning—in the workplace.
In another survey conducted by Employment Hero in November 2026, 46% of Gen Z workers said they were not working in their “desired” field. That figure was significantly higher than among other generations, where the proportion ranged from 25% to 28%.
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