Of Gen Z now say their employer takes mental health seriously, up from 60% last year.
For a long time, talking about your mental health at work was career suicide. Gen Z is quietly ending that, and the data shows it is working. In Deloitte's 2026 survey of more than 22,500 young workers across 44 countries, 78 percent of Gen Z now say their employer takes mental health seriously, up sharply from 60 percent just a year earlier.
That jump did not happen by accident. This is the generation that refused to treat burnout as a badge of honor, that asked in interviews about workload and support, and that walked when the answer was bad. Employers are responding because the workforce made them.
The work is not done. 52 percent of Gen Z still say their job is a source of anxiety or stress, and nearly a quarter feel stressed most of the time. But the shift from 60 to 78 percent in a single year is real movement, and it happened because young workers stopped pretending everything was fine.
"The generation that refused to pretend they were fine is changing what work owes people."
This is the same instinct behind every young founder and builder we cover: do not accept the broken system you inherited, change the terms. Gen Z is applying it to the workplace itself, insisting that a job take care of the person doing it.
This is the quiet power ANF keeps documenting. Do not accept the rules you were handed. Gen Z is rewriting what an employer owes the people who show up.
Silence used to be the job requirement. Gen Z canceled it.