At Thanksgiving last year, a great-aunt tried to offer Kayla Cornett a reassuring example: Her older cousin had worked hard, saved and bought a house. Cornett, 24, could do the same, she said — if she tried just a little bit harder.

What stayed with her long after the turkey was cleared was the implication that her current efforts just weren’t enough. She was trying to keep up with rent and the ordinary expenses of adulthood, and it was a struggle. She recently started carrying a credit-card balance for the first time, she says, after even modest costs began piling up. Filling her gas tank was $40. “I can not eat, or I can have credit card debt,” she remembers thinking when older relatives questioned her balance.

Cornett and her partner have stayed in their Raleigh apartment even as the complex has grown less safe and cars have been broken into. They had moved in 2023 and were reluctant to do so again; other places now cost $200 or $300 more per month. Leaving would mean trading one worry for another bill they can’t afford. “The little things are accruing in a way that feels insurmountable to me,” Cornett says.

The affordability crisis is a struggle felt by everyone in the country, but it’s hitting Cornett’s generation particularly hard as they emerge into adulthood with high inflation, little savings, a wobbly job market and a lifetime of dysfunctional politics. Transunion, a consumer credit reporting agency, found in a 2024 study that 22- to 24-year-olds in Gen Z had higher average credit-card balances, higher average auto-loan balances and higher average personal-loan balances than millennials of the same age a decade earlier, even when adjusted for inflation. Gen Z borrowers also had higher delinquency rates than their millennial counterparts.

This gap — between the promise that hard work will bring stability and the costs young adults say they can’t get ahead of — is key to understanding the politics of Gen Z, a voter group that helped President Donald Trump win in 2024, but whose longtime loyalties have yet to be won by either party. After Trump’s victory, much was made of a vibe shift in American politics. The manosphere was ascendant and tradwives were everywhere.

For a brief moment, it seemed like conservatives had captured the attention of American youth. Perhaps. Or perhaps Trump pulled in young voters because of his promises to rein in high prices, and since he failed to do so — amid his tariffs and his war with Iran — young people are preparing to reject the GOP in droves in the midterms. Gen Z’s political behavior is often viewed through the lens of cultural issues or internet trends.

But based on a dozen interviews with Gen Zers from across the country, those explanations obscure a more fundamental force: They belong to a generation coming of age with less financial security and with a growing sense that the American economy doesn’t deliver, at least not for them. A crushing debt load is the most tangible proof.

“The first time I voted was the 2024 presidential election,” says Anna Yi, a 21-year-old Democrat studying at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. “I remember being a little bit naive and being like, ‘There’s going to be a lot of change. There’s going to be a lot of sweeping social reform and whatnot.’ Now it’s: Who’s going to get me a job? Who’s going to let me afford my own place before I turn 40?”This is a generation that feels betrayed, with deep distrust that the system is capable of responding at all.

From there, some young people may decide that if neither party is listening or the government won’t act, there is little reason to vote. They grow cynical enough that they withdraw from politics and ultimately stay home on Election Day. There’s also another, darker alternative — that hopelessness leads them toward the kind of nihilistic forces fueling extremism on either side of the political spectrum.

“Everything’s too damn expensive. Nobody has any money. The job market is shit for young people,” says Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.), the sole Gen Z member of Congress. He is keenly aware of his peers’ struggle: Even after winning his first election in 2022, he was denied an apartment due to a low credit score and went into debt trying to furnish his new home.

“People don’t see government as a vessel to help people,” Frost adds. “I think what’s going to end up happening is we could just have people who are completely skeptical of the system. Maybe they withdraw completely, or maybe they continue to vote, but there’s less allegiance to a party and more of a thirst to see something big happen.”Figuring out what that “something big” is may be key to winning over these disgruntled and discouraged voters. The party or politicians that do so will find themselves better positioned with this key demographic in the 2026 midterms, not to mention the 2028 presidential election and beyond.

And across the aisle there’s one thing everyone agrees on: Young voters may stop showing up for a system that keeps failing them.

The American Dream makes a grand promise: Hard work will pay off. A simple but powerful statement that frames this country as a land of opportunity and upward mobility, where talent and perseverance are rewarded. In theory, a determined American could get a good education, a decent job, a house, a family, a life of prosperity — all because they put in the work. For many in Gen Z, that promise feels increasingly out of reach.

In a 2024 UCLA survey of people ages 14 to 27, 86% said they wanted to achieve some version of the American Dream, but 60% said it would be difficult for them personally. That distance between aspiration and expectation may be the most disheartening part.

Young people are beginning adulthood on increasingly difficult terms: College tuition has reached record highs, and even though some whisper that it’s no longer worth the cost, more young people are now enrolling than past generations. And so the debt mounts as well: Today, college graduates take an average student loan debt of more than $30,000 alongside their diploma — and 67% of Gen Zers say they have delayed a life event like buying a home or getting married because of student loan debt.

“Among my friends, I’m seeing a lot of people that are just kind of now realizing as juniors or seniors in college that they don’t have a great plan of how they’re going to repay their student debt,” says Katherine Mickelson, a student at Baylor University.

It doesn’t help that many were tantalizingly close to receiving student loan relief only to see it snatched away: In 2023, the conservative Supreme Court majority struck down President Joe Biden’s plan to forgive more than $400 billion in student debt. Aside from more modest efforts afterward by Biden, lawmakers have done little on the matter even as advocates plea for even temporary relief.

“We’ve been calling for a payment pause until everyone gets their act together,” says Natalia Abrams, president of the Student Debt Crisis Center. “I think when lawmakers talk about the affordability crisis, they’re talking about rent and gas and utilities, and student debt is just not even mentioned — when that is affecting 45 million Americans.”Already saddled with student loans, with little help in sight, many people often continue to accrue debt throughout college due to inflation and higher costs of living. They open extra lines of credit and embrace Buy Now Pay Later to help afford their daily expenses, even as new interest accrues.

Once they’re kicked off their parents’ health insurance at 26, securing health care is yet another financial burden, and costs continue to go up; the GOP-controlled Congress allowed for the expiration of enhanced Affordable Care Act tax credits at the end of 2025, which has led to hikes in premiums. And even before those credits expired, nearly one in five people between the ages of 18 to 29 said they had to borrow money to pay their medical bills, the largest share out of all age groups surveyed.

Then there’s the issue of risky investments that are further plunging this generation into debt. When major milestones like homeownership seem far off due to financial hardship, the possibility of a quick win may seem more appealing. A “financial nihilism” can set in, where people are drawn to high-risk, speculative investments like sports betting and prediction markets — arenas that have found particular interest from Gen Z. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has found that there’s been a measurable increase in household financial distress and credit delinquencies following the legalization of mobile sports betting. These losses can then deepen the credit-card balances many young people are already carrying.

It’s a vicious cycle that has long-term implications: In 2024, one in seven Gen Zers maxed out their credit card. Gen Z credit scores saw a record decline in 2025, particularly as credit card delinquencies continue to rise.

“The quality of the rest of your life is going to be very dependent on what you’re able to do these 10 to 20 years for yourself,” says Frost. “If they’re unable to set things aside and build their wealth and build their life, you’re looking at an entire generation that, in aggregate, will be living paycheck to paycheck, which isn’t right or good for the country.”

For some recent graduates, even starting to save for the future is difficult to imagine when a degree hasn’t led to work that can cover the bills. Chima Nwokolo, a 24-year-old from California, put it this way: “It’s not an economy that’s working for ordinary folks, such as myself.”I met Nwokolo in Raleigh, North Carolina in August at the Voters of Tomorrow Summit, an annual event that brings together young people looking to be involved in progressive politics.

He was at “nerd camp” — as many attendants lovingly call it — because he believes in political participation but also because he’d like to network for a career in politics. He’s struggled to get a full-time job in this field after graduating with a political science degree from San José State University. To make ends meet, he’s worked part time at a movie theater.

It’s the kind of story that’s repeated across the country and with every young person I met at the event: There’s an anxiety and concern about their future as a fruitless job search drags on. That’s the case even with a fairly strong economy — though it’s notable that the unemployment rate for those between the ages of 20 to 24 is 8%, nearly double the national rate of 4.2%.

Young people are struggling to find jobs for a range of reasons. Entry-level openings have dropped 35% since 2023, and AI is reshaping the work available to them. Employers often expect applicants to have experience, but gaining it can mean taking unpaid internships that many can’t afford. And with more applications going through online portals, job seekers may wait months without hearing back or knowing whether anyone has even seen their resume. For a generation that’s just emerging into adulthood, staying jobless only furthers their cynicism about their own future. And most importantly, without a job, there’s no way to pay off the debt accrued while getting a degree. With interest, it only grows.

It’s never been easy to enter adulthood. Millennials may say they had it worse graduating college during the 2008 recession. Gen Xers had the dot-com bubble crash. Baby Boomers had the stagflation of the ’70s.

But Gen Z also has to grapple with one factor that likely gives them a different — and more dour — perspective: social media. This is a generation born into an echo chamber that amplifies their worst fears and where doom scrolling dominates.

“You might have been mildly pessimistic about the economy and you start going online and reading social media posts, and things like that enhance that perception,” says Jimmie Lenz, an economist at Duke who studies generational financial habits. “They're always preaching to the choir, right? You're always being fed the same thing.”

The reality is also that for Gen Z, this is all they know — and it’s worth acknowledging that they’ve experienced real turbulence, including a pandemic, in these formative years. “The time they’ve lived in has been really tumultuous,” Lenz says. “To think that their perspectives would be different is a little bit foolhardy, really.”This is where some people blunder by brushing the issue off. Former White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt (herself part of Gen Z) felt a backlash this summer after criticizing the “laziness” of some in her cohort while explaining the rising popularity of democratic socialism.

“You can’t change their feelings with facts,” says Paul Teller, a Republican strategist. “If they feel that they’re crunched, you can’t change their mind by saying, ‘Oh yeah, but GDP numbers are actually this, and inflation ratios are that.’ No, you have to speak to their feelings.”The disconnect between the problems young people describe and the answers they hear from Washington seems to only grow. Candidates promise to reduce debt or bring down inflation, but it doesn’t happen.

Feeling ignored by the political process can do a few things. It might push some young people to get involved, in hopes of changing the system themselves. Gen Z has historically been a politically active generation with some of the highest voting rates.

Alternatively, frustration can make political participation seem pointless. If campaign promises don’t translate into lower costs or better prospects, voting can start to feel like an empty exercise and people just tune out or grow skeptical of institutions. The trend lines are not good: Only 33% of young people say they will definitely vote in the upcoming midterms, down from 2022 and 2018.

In an Institute of Politics poll taken earlier this year, just 15% of young people said they trusted the federal government to do the right thing all or most of the time — an all-time low for the survey. Even more concerning, though, is the sheer helplessness felt among the generation: 50% felt that they didn’t have any say about what the government does — up from 34% in 2017.

“At the federal level, I think young people just feel like nothing really changes, and their day-to-day kind of looks the same,” says Rachel Janfaza, a political strategist focused on young people who predicts voter turnout for the generation could drop this year. “It plays into that level of distrust, and it also plays into a lack of motivation to participate.”There is a darker possibility, too. Some young people may come to see more radical answers as the only ones that can break through. That includes political violence, worries Mickelson, the Baylor student. “People feel like they don’t have a voice for a channel to actually be heard,” she says.

We’ve already seen hints of it happening across the political spectrum: On the far right, the white nationalist and antisemitic influencer Nick Fuentes has captured a growing audience of Gen Zers disaffected with mainstream politics. On the far left, Luigi Mangione’s killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson sparked a wave of online romanticization of violence as a response to corporate abuses.

These are different currents, and economic frustration alone does not make someone an extremist or mean they would take action — but they show how deep disillusionment can make extremist politics or political violence seem like a plausible reaction to feeling shut out.

“One of the most potent forms of radicalization is when people feel like they don’t have any other options,” says Jon Lewis, a researcher at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University. “The idea that things are broken, that the country is not where it should be — all of these things that Gen Z has increasingly latched onto, observed, and seen — what we’ve seen [is] that really functions as a risk factor.”Whether young people see a reason to vote this November goes well beyond turnout or whether they help swing Congress to the Democrats.

If a generation already struggling with housing, education and unstable work concludes that elections can’t change any of it, the cycle of despair will only deepen.

So, how to break the cycle? For many young voters, political credibility starts with changes they can see in daily life. That is part of what makes New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani stand out to them.

“He’s actually doing things,” says Yi, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill student. “He’s fixing potholes and putting up water fountains and taxing second homes. Those are small changes, but they’re changes that communities can feel and notice.”Even Congress has begun to take some steps on affordability. Earlier this year, lawmakers enacted the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, which is aimed at expanding housing supply and bringing down costs — though it will take a long time to fully kick in.

Some young people are taking matters into their own hands, including by running for office and bringing their own experiences with debt, housing struggles and a precarious job market into the debate. Their efforts reflect a belief that the system can still be pushed to respond — and that the generation living with these pressures should help shape the solutions.

“Right now, a lot of Gen Zers look around at politics… and they see a lot of rhetoric and not a lot of results,” says Riley Owens, a 27-year-old Republican candidate for Utah’s 1st Congressional District.

Owens may not agree with Mamdani on much, but as one of the handful of Gen Z GOP candidates in the nation, he understands why more young people are embracing democratic socialism: “The promise of the DSA offering things for low cost or no cost is really appealing to people who feel like the system isn’t working for them.”Owens has also built his pitch around issues confronting young adults face, especially the difficulty of buying a home. As a renter himself, he says he wants to encourage local zoning changes that make it easier to build duplexes and accessory dwelling units, expand tax credits for low-income housing and restrict large investors’ purchases of single-family homes.

Meanwhile, Justin Pearson, a 31-year-old Democrat running for Tennessee’s 9th Congressional District, is pushing an economic-populist message that he thinks will appeal to young people with frustrated ambitions.

His proposals include Medicare for All, addressing medical debt, raising the minimum wage, taxing billionaires and stopping data centers from driving up utility costs.

Pearson tells me his campaign is powered by “an intergenerational movement of people who want things to be different.”“We want the rules rewritten with us in mind,” he says.

The proposed fixes differ by party, but the pressure is shared. In interviews with young Democrats and Republicans alike, they describe debt, housing and the general difficulty of getting ahead as defining concerns. It would be Washington’s loss — and that of both parties — to forget that.

“Whoever can solve this will have loyalty and support from voters,” Owens says. “As a political matter, this is the single issue, in my view, that will influence elections.”The candidacies of people like Pearson or Owens show that some young people still see politics as a place to make change. But getting their peers to believe in that path may be harder than naming what is wrong: Gen Z has heard promises before and has little reason to expect relief.

The midterms will test whether either party can turn young people’s frustration into political support. The stakes will be even higher in the 2028 presidential race. Ultimately, politicians have to prove they can change the costs and choices shaping young people’s lives. If they can’t, a generation already questioning the system may decide it is not worth waiting for it to work.