For decades, we’ve been told that the modern workplace is a playground of freedom and choice. Flexibility, agility and autonomy have become buzz words in an employment marketplace saturated with an endless choice of job opportunities.

But the reality for most workers, especially younger ones who have recently joined the job market, is that jobs vanish as quickly as they appear, benefits are slashed, exploitation is rife and career paths once paved with middle-class respectability have crumbled under the relentless march of automation and the ubiquity of the platform economy.

It is perhaps no surprise, then, that young people are now looking for an “employer for life”. Recent research suggests that workers under the age of 27 are eager to stay at a single company for seven years – twice as long as the average tenure, according to official statistics. It appears as if gen Z want to emulate their grandparents’ career paths that were tied to one company with large pensions, a tight-knit family feel and gold watches upon retirement, and revert to a life of comfort and security rather than the........

© The Guardian