Public Education’s ‘Lazy, Entitled Losers’ Gen Z: America’s New Workforce

By Carole Hornsby Haynes       May 8, 2025 

In a recent interview on Varney & Co., Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy excoriated Gen Z, the generation that was born between 1997 and 2012. 

“It’s hard to manage them. They don't want to work. They're spoiled brats. They've grown up in a world where it's everyone gets a trophy generation, and the idea of showing up and going through traffic and being at the office at 8:45 and working until six, they look at you like you've got 10 heads. They think everthing is on a silver platter. It’s really hard to motivate these people. They’re really lazy, entitled losers." 

One of the world’s most famous luxury brands, Louis Vuitton, is struggling with American workers at its Texas plant. In 2019, wanting to tap into the American market and meet a growing need for Louis Vuitton products, the French parent company opened a factory in rural Alvarado where President Trump and the billionaire CEO of VLMH cut the blue ribbon. The parent company, LVMH, announced that 20 percent of its hires, company wide, would be under the age of 30 as a solution to global youth unemployment and a lack of specialized workers in the luxury sector. 

Since its opening, the factory has experienced ongoing problems with quality control, hiring, and employee retention, which have significantly impacted production of its signature handbags. Former employees report the Texas factory is one of the worst producing of the Louis Vuitton plants globally. 

The factory has had difficulty in training employees to produce the brand’s quality products. By February 2025, the factory had only 300 workers, far short of the initial plans for 1,000 high-skill jobs. Former employees say the pressure is high to meet quality standards and production quotas for handbags that retail from $1,500 to $3,000. These challenges led some workers to conceal defects in handbags while supervisors turned a blind eye. The waste in the cutting, preparation, and assembly process of leather hides is 40 percent at the Alvarado factory – double the typical industry wide waste rate of 20 percent. 

A survey of 966 business leaders found that 75 percent of companies reported many recent Gen Z college graduates – aged 27 and under – were “unsatisfactory” workers. They cited lack of motivation, poor communication skills, unprofessional behavior, inability to meet even basic workplace expectations, inability to manage workloads, late to work, missing deadlines, easily offended, entitled, and support the far left ideology of diversity equity inclusion (DEI). 

A poll reported that 40 percent of the respondents believed Gen Z was the most difficult generation with which to work. Gen Z expects management to change their recruitment and retention policies to cater to the whims of “lazy, entitled losers,” who demand flexibility and safe spaces for mental health well being.  

The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that Gen Z will make up 30 percent of the workforce by 2030and the largest cohort in the workforce by the end of 2035. Because Gen Z prefers to avoid leadership roles in favor of a better work-life balance, this presents a problem for corporate leaders who need to develop the next generation. 

This change in employee behavior, attitude, character, and skills did not happen by accident. Education has been a primary vehicle for the cultural revolution to destroy the fabric of American society. A dumbed down curriculum in public education has resulted in a high percentage of illiterate, unmotivated youth. Politicized lessons infused with radical sex have created mentally unstable students who are coddled in “safe spaces” where they can huddle down as infants during the day’s stressful moments. 

Universities are expensive Marxist propaganda centers with their own “safe spaces.” Senseless, useless woke fields of study leave graduates adrift with degrees that are meaningless in the workplace. An employer survey reported that 60 percent of college graduates lack even basic skills for the workplace. 

Historically the American education system has produced independent, responsible, literate, and creative workers. That type of training in earlier American schools led to our nation becoming the global leader with millions of inventions that have brought us incredible wealth and improved the daily lives of people all over the world. 

If future American workers are going to be skilled, responsible, and dependable, then their education must be totally different. 

That’s why so many parents are removing their children from government indoctrination in favor of free market alternatives. By the year 2030, only about 50 percent of school age children will be in the public education system. The other half will be educated in home and private schools. Since students who are educated in homeschools or in private schools score significantly higher on national tests than those in public schools, we can expect the non-publicly educated students to be among America’s the best and brightest workers in the world.