‘Clear trend’: Young Aussies lead significant WFH shift
Australians have now been given what may be the biggest sign yet that a major working from home change is starting to happen across the country.
When you think of the generation most likely to be staunch defenders of working from home, it is probably Gen Z that pops into your head, right?
The youngest working generation entered the workforce with strong opinions about work-life balance, rejecting the “hustle culture” ideals favoured by previous generations.
Many of them also started working in full-time roles during the Covid-19 pandemic, when remote work was the norm for many employees.
So, it came as no surprise that, when major companies started forcing staff back into the office, Gen Z were leading the charge in the fight to keep flexible working arrangements.
However, a new report has found that young Aussies’ attitudes to working from home may be starting to shift.
Jobs platform, Hatch, recently released its 2025 Hotlist report, which is based on a survey of nearly 2000 Gen Z and Millennial professionals, conducted in May and June 2025.
Part of the survey explored respondent’s preferences for work arrangements, revealing a significant drop in the number of young Aussies wanting to work fully remotely.
Of those surveyed, just 12 per cent said their deal arrangement would be to work from home full time, down from 23 per cent in 2024.
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Interestingly, this is the same number of people (12 per cent) who said they prefer being in the office full time.
Hybrid work was the clear winner, with 69 per cent preferring this kind of working arrangement.
Adam Jacobs, Co-founder of Hatch and The Iconic, said young people wanting time in the office is “definitely a really clear trend”.
Speaking to news.com.au, he said he believes this trend could be related to the fact that a lot of young workers started their career during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Mr Jacobs said fully remote work may have felt “normal” at the time, but now young people are discovering they value that in-person connection.
“I think there’s a bounce back, or a correction, back from that Covid era,” he said.
The CEO also believes young people are looking for “more stability” right now and one way they are doing that is by “building stronger networks with their colleagues, by spending time with them in person”.
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He also pointed out that this doesn’t mean Gen Z want to go back to the office full time, with the report showing that work-life balance is still “really important to them”.
“It is still a preference for bringing balance into the design of how much time you spend in the office each week, and having time in office and also time out of office,” Mr Jacobs said.
The rise of the side hustle
For older generations, having a side hustle alongside your full-time job – while not unheard of – definitely wasn’t commonplace.
The Hatch Hotlist shows Gen Z have taken a completely different approach, with so many young Aussies picking up side gigs that it has now become mainstream.
Of the respondents, a whopping 80 per cent said they either already have a side hustle or they want one.
According to recent ABS data, more than 950,000 Australians are ‘multiple job holders’, making up 6.5 per cent of the working population.
Employed people aged between 20 and 24 were most likely to hold more than one job in March 2025, with 9.3 per cent fitting this category, compared to 4.5 per cent of employed 60 to 64 year olds.
Bella Codsi is one of the many young people who have picked up a side hustle.
The 29-year-old works as an account executive at Hatch and two years ago decided to become a registered marriage celebrant.
Speaking to news.com.au, she said the idea to pick up a side gig came to her after speaking to other people in the tech industry about the types of things they were doing on the weekend.
“A lot of people in tech have these hectic hobbies, and I was often kind of the butt of the joke, like, ‘Bella has no hobbies’,” she said.
“I’m a ‘read at the beach on weekend’ person, and these guys were like, ‘I go paragliding’ type thing, so I kind of had this niggling feeling of wanting to learn something new.”
At the time, a lot of her friends and family were getting married and many were looking for someone to officiate their weddings.
So, Ms Codsi dived in headfirst and within six months she had completed the necessary course to obtain her marriage celebrant licence.
She now has a calendar full of weddings, conducting ceremonies every other weekend during peak seasons.
At its current size, Ms Codsi’s side hustle brings in enough extra cash to cover her rent one week a month.
“I don’t budget assuming I’ll be able to buy a whole heap with these earnings, because I think that puts a lot of pressure on it, and kind of takes away from the spirit of what I’m doing here,” she said.
While it is clear young Aussies are embracing the side hustle with gusto, what about those concerned their employer might view picking up another gig as disloyal?
Mr Jacobs said he could “totally understand” how an employer might be concerned about this, but a deeper look into the data surrounding the trend can help alleviate those fears.
He noted more than two thirds of the Australians who already have a side hustle view it as a hobby or a creative pursuit that they “don’t want to be their primary source of income”.
“They’re not trying to create a portfolio career, or they’re not trying to find their next their next job. They’re basically trying to build new skills and express their creativity outside of work in ways that are really interesting to them,” he said.
Mr Jacobs noted side hustles can actually have a lot of benefits for employers, such as workers developing new skills that they can then bring back to their main job.
The findings in the Hatch report also helps expel the stereotype of Gen Z being “lazy” and “entitled”.
Mr Jacobs said this is the complete opposite of what the report shows and what his company is hearing from the thousands of young people they speak to.
He said young people want to build impressive, inspirational careers, but what makes them stand out from previous generations is that they “want to have balance from the get go”.
“I think that can feel like scary to employers, because it means that Gen Z is showing up in different ways. They’re showing up with more prioritisation on balance,” he said.
“But if we think about it as individuals, it’s kind of what we all want in our life. So I think if we can be open minded to that way of thinking, then it can actually bring a lot of good ideas into the organisation at large.”
