Gen Z is job-hopping, and pay is the wrong lever

Fifty-five percent of Gen Z workers in the United States plan to look for a new job before the end of 2026, up sharply from 32 percent a year earlier, according to a Robert Half survey conducted September 16 and reported by InvestmentNews. That number lands against an industry that needs more than 70,000 new staff across RIAs over the next five years at current growth rates, per Schwab research, and Cerulli Associates estimates that over one-third of advisors, holding roughly 41 percent of industry assets, will retire within the next decade. The cohort with the shortest fuse is also the only pool left to fill the gap.

Pay is the loudest reason they give — 53 percent of Gen Z job seekers in the survey said switching employers would offer greater earning potential than staying put — but it does not explain the whole picture. Among those planning to leave, 56 percent cited stronger perks and benefits and 50 percent pointed to limited advancement where they work; the most valued benefits ran health insurance at 65 percent, flexible work schedules at 60 percent, commuter benefits at 57 percent, and 401(k) plans at 53 percent.

That last list is a quiet embarrassment for an industry that sells retirement accounts for a living: the fourth-most-valued benefit, at 53 percent, is the product. The 50 percent who cite limited advancement matter more, because advancement is the only item on the list a firm controls outright, and the only one where a small RIA starts ahead of a large national firm. Client contact is the currency, and a small shop can hand a junior advisor a meaningful share of it in year one; a large firm can outbid that on salary, but matching it on responsibility is harder.

The industry's recruiting energy has gone elsewhere: as this publication has argued, the advisor talent war has decoupled from solo breakaways into block trades and employee-channel book trades, and the recent money has chased custody handoffs and private-bank leadership raids — markets for advisors who already own books. None of that produces the next generation. Buying a book and growing one are not substitutes, which suggests the price of the first keeps rising while the supply of the second stays thin.

Dawn Fay, Robert Half's operational president, says employers should be clear about growth paths, compensation and the support available to help retain workers. The survey's window runs to December 31, which makes the practical version of that advice narrow: name, in the interview, which clients and which planning work the next hire will own, because 50 percent of the leavers are already asking. The smallest firm in a market can answer that in a sentence.