What Are They Thinking About Their Future?
If you work with teenagers every day, you probably don’t need a research report to tell you that something has changed.
Today’s young people are thinking about their future in a world that feels less predictable than the one their parents entered. They hear constantly about the cost of living, housing affordability, climate change, artificial intelligence, skills shortages, changing university expectations and jobs that may not even exist in another ten years. And then somewhere in the middle of all that, we ask a 15 or 16-year-old: “So, what do you want to do when you leave school?”
Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised when the answer is, “I’m not sure.” They are concerned but they haven’t given up.
The latest Mission Australia Youth Survey provides an interesting picture of young Australians aged 14–19. Cost of living is now overwhelmingly their biggest national concern, nominated by 64% of respondents, followed by mental health, climate change and the environment, and housing and homelessness. School and study problems are also the most commonly reported source of personal stress. (Mission Australia) These are quite grown-up concerns.
Teenagers are hearing conversations at home about mortgage repayments, rent, grocery prices and whether buying a home will ever be affordable. Yet there is another important part of the story. They remain ambitious.
In the same Mission Australia research, employment and career goals were the most commonly identified hopes for the future, nominated by 59% of young people. (Mission Australia) So perhaps the right description of today’s teenager isn’t pessimistic. It is cautiously hopeful. They want a good future. They are simply less certain about how to get there.
New Zealand teenagers are telling us something similar
The picture is remarkably familiar. Youthline’s 2026 State of the Generation research found mental health was the most important issue identified by young New Zealanders, while 52% nominated a lack of job opportunities and 38% identified money worries. Almost half of 12–17-year-olds said they worried because their parents or whānau were stressed about money. (Youthline NZ)
There is also genuine anxiety around employment. New Zealand’s seasonally adjusted proportion of 15–24-year-olds not in employment, education or training reached 14.4% in the March 2026 quarter. (Stats NZ)
Australia’s labour market is stronger overall, but young people still face a harder entry point than experienced workers. The Australian youth unemployment rate was 10.4% in July 2026, compared with an overall unemployment rate of 4.5%. (Australian Bureau of Statistics)
And then there’s AI
Artificial intelligence adds another layer of uncertainty. Teenagers are simultaneously fascinated by AI, using AI, experimenting with it and wondering whether it will eventually take their job.
In New Zealand, Youthline found 69% of young people were either a little or very worried about AI. Among their concerns, 57% identified its potential effect on future job opportunities. (Youthline NZ)
That anxiety is understandable. But it also creates an important opportunity for career education.
The evidence coming from Jobs and Skills Australia is considerably more reassuring than some of the headlines. Its major study into generative AI concluded that AI is more likely to augment human work than replace it, automating some tasks while changing how many occupations are performed. (Jobs and Skills Australia) That is an enormously important message for students. The conversation should therefore move from: “What jobs will AI destroy?” to: “What will humans contribute when AI is everywhere?” The personal strengths we have sometimes called “soft skills” may increasingly become some of the hardest skills to replace.
Career choice is becoming less about choosing one job. Perhaps the biggest change we need to make in career education is our language. For generations we have asked students to choose a career. Increasingly, we should be helping them prepare for a career journey.
A student leaving school today may work across several industries, occupations and employment models during their lifetime. Some will go to university. Others will choose TAFE, apprenticeships, traineeships, employment, micro-credentials or combinations of all of them.
Technology will change their jobs along the way. That makes self-understanding enormously valuable. Before asking young people “What do you want to become?”, perhaps we should spend more time helping them answer:
“Who are you?” What are you naturally good at? Because occupations change, but personal strengths travel with us.
Careers advisers have never been more important
Ironically, at the very moment students have almost unlimited information available to them, good career guidance has become more important rather than less important. Google can give a teenager 10,000 career options. AI can give them another 10,000. The challenge isn’t information. It is helping a young person make sense of it.
That means helping students connect who they are with the enormous range of opportunities available to them. It also means giving teenagers permission not to have everything figured out at 16. Our job isn’t necessarily to help every student choose the perfect career before they finish Year 12 or 13.
It is to help them understand themselves, recognise their strengths, explore possibilities and make their next good decision. That feels like a much more realistic ambition. And
looking at what young Australians and New Zealanders are telling us in 2026, it may also be exactly what they need.
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