According to a recent Harvard University poll , more than 40 percent of Americans under age 30 admit they are “barely getting by” financially; fewer than one in five trust the federal government to do the right thing; and just 15 percent believe the country is headed in the right direction.

Generation Z is coming of age at a particularly difficult time. Zoomers, as they’re known, are aged between 13 and 28, and have already lived through a global financial crisis, a historic pandemic, and several wars. Now, many of them confront an entry-level job market muddled by advances in AI.

Generation Z is coming of age at a particularly difficult time. Zoomers, as they’re known, are aged between 13 and 28, and have already lived through a global financial crisis, a historic pandemic, and several wars. Now, many of them confront an entry-level job market muddled by advances in AI.

According to a recent Harvard University poll, more than 40 percent of Americans under age 30 admit they are “barely getting by” financially; fewer than one in five trust the federal government to do the right thing; and just 15 percent believe the country is headed in the right direction.

How do Gen Z’s worries about America impact their views about the world? For answers, I spoke to Kyla Scanlon on the latest episode of FP Live. Scanlon is a 27-year-old commentator who has been dubbed the “economic advisor for Gen Z” and is the author of In This Economy?: How Money & Markets Really Work. Subscribers can watch the full discussion on the video box atop this page or download the FP Live podcast. What follows here is a lightly edited and condensed transcript.

Ravi Agrawal: I want to start with the economy. You coined the term “vibecession,” which neatly described how people feel about the economy, whether or not the data and numbers had caught up. So, let’s start there. Stock markets seem to be returning to normal after the post-Liberation Day blip. Unemployment is stable. And yet, we’re hearing warnings about recessions. What’s going on?

Kyla Scanlon: We’ve gotten relatively solid economic data over the past couple of days, and the stock market is green again. But when you dive deeper into the data, you see some things that are concerning.

Kevin Roose of the New York Times wrote this excellent piece about the AI job apocalypse and what young people face in the labor market. The unemployment rate for young people is 5.8 percent, which is quite high. A lot of entry-level jobs are being replaced by AI, like research and analysis. The overall economy is relatively resilient in the face of tariffs. The tariffs keep wavering, so who knows what will happen when they go into effect. We just saw 50 percent tariffs on steel and aluminum.