Gen Z Ditches Entry-Level Jobs For Poop Scooping. Up To $15,000 A Month. The Algorithm Ate Their Internships, Obviously.
Entry-level job postings have fallen 29% since January 2024 per World Economic Forum data, and 46% of Gen Zers, the largest share of any group, worry AI will take their jobs. So 57% of them now run side hustles, compared to just 21% of boomers, according to The Harris Poll. Some are earning up to $15,000 monthly doing physically unpleasant work like junk removal and pet waste cleanup.
This illustrates what economists call labor market displacement cascading into entrepreneurial adaptation. When automation eliminates rungs on the career ladder, the affected population does not simply vanish. It redirects. The mechanism here is substitution of income sources. The traditional entry point disappears, so the worker constructs an alternative revenue stream using physical services that AI cannot perform. The lesson is that AI displaces cognitive tasks first, which pushes human labor toward the analog and the manual. Your career moat, as it were, may well be something gross.
Gen Z workers, dubbed America's first true side hustle generation by The Harris Poll research, are pursuing junk lugging and poop scooping. They are the demographic most anxious about AI job impact at 46%.
- Open your phone's notes app and list five physical tasks people in your neighborhood hate doing. Lawn care, junk hauling, pet waste removal, gutter cleaning, and moving help are reliable candidates. Expected outcome: a concrete list of service ideas you can actually deliver.
- Post a free listing on a local classifieds site or community Facebook group offering one of those services with a specific price. Expected outcome: your first potential customer inquiry within a few days.
- Use ChatGPT to draft a short, professional service description and a follow-up message template for when inquiries arrive. Expected outcome: a reusable response script that makes your side hustle look like a real business.