Gen Z and millennial workers would accept lower salaries in exchange for this one thing from their employers
That's according to a new global study on longevity and workplace wellness, in which half of American Gen Z and Millennials—compared to just a fifth of baby boomers—say they would take a pay cut if their employer made an effort to prioritize their well-being at work. The survey also found that Gen Zers are the most unhappy with their careers.
The global study, released this month by the Oxford Longevity Project and Roundglass, a wellbeing platform that helps people build healthy habits, collected data from 14,000 people in 25 countries to analyze perceptions of aging, the workplace, and well-being.
'We found that mental health is one of the top three priorities of people worldwide today,' Gurpreet Singh, founder of Roundglass, who worked on the study, said in a press release. 'Employees don't want to sacrifice their well-being for a job, and if employers don't address this issue, it's going to hurt the company's bottom line. To attract and retain talent, placing importance on employee mental health is non-negotiable.'
Research has shown that companies are falling short in supporting their employees in the face of high rates of loneliness, burnout, and return-to-office mandates. A Gallup survey published last year found that less than a quarter of employees believe their companies care about their mental health and well-being, which, experts believe, could harm retention.
Beyond the U.S., employees worldwide also agreed that mental health must be a top priority to keep them engaged at their jobs, the global survey found. Of those surveyed, nearly three-quarters (73 %) of people in Egypt and 71% of people in India agree that well-being is more important than salary.
Workplace benefits can help showcase an employer's priorities, the respondents shared, with 67% of millennials in the U.S. endorsing physical health benefits, too. 'Boomers and Gen X are the ones who most need to prioritize their health, yet it's millennials and Gen Z who are leading the way in embracing true health span,' said Leslie Kenny, co-founder of the Oxford Longevity Project, in the press release. 'Younger generations are taking their health more seriously—not in spite of their age —but because they've watched their parents and grandparents live longer lives, often while managing chronic diseases.'
It's data that workplaces might consider when it comes to attracting and retaining young employees—particularly since chronic stress can increase the risk for mental health problems and physical health conditions like heart disease.
Millennials comprise over a third of the total American workforce, and the survey found that about a third of this generation considers support for mental health factors when choosing where to work.
Workplace well-being experts have previously told Fortune that, alongside inclusive health benefits, employers must foster a collaborative culture and community that empowers workers to speak up, ask questions, and feel engaged—and that culture is, in fact, everything.
It's often the simple moments of support and communication that make people feel purposeful and engaged. 'Benefits chosen for their buzz rarely address what employees truly need or want,' Gene Hammett, a leadership coach and host of the Growth Think Tank podcast, previously told Fortune. 'Without a supportive workplace culture and strong leadership, even the best perks feel hollow and performative.'
For more on workplace well-being:
Workplace well-being is at an all-time low. Here are 5 ways employers can actually help
Want to boost employee morale and productivity? Ramp up volunteering
How to quiet the noise in your head, and feel happier at work and in life
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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Newsweek
2 hours ago
- Newsweek
Laura Loomer Blasts Return of FDA Vaccine Chief She Helped Force Out
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Laura Loomer has reacted with anger after a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) vaccine chief she criticized returned to the agency. Writing on X, formerly Twitter, the conservative commentator slammed President Donald Trump's administration for rehiring Dr. Vinay Prasad two weeks after he resigned from his role leading the FDA's vaccines and gene therapy division. Why It Matters Loomer is an influential figure in right-wing circles. She was present alongside Trump on the 2024 campaign trail, and she has been tied to his decision to fire National Security Adviser Mike Waltz and other aides, although the president has denied that she was the reason for the sackings. Prasad used to work for the University of California, San Francisco. He has also previously worked at the National Cancer Institute and the National Institutes of Health. Laura Loomer outside the U.S. Capitol on June 12, 2025, in Washington, D.C. Laura Loomer outside the U.S. Capitol on June 12, 2025, in Washington, D.C. Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP Images What To Know Prasad, a physician who was first appointed to the role in May, left the FDA on July 30 following pressure from Loomer and other political influencers. Prasad had faced backlash over the agency's handling of a gene therapy linked to the deaths of two teenagers and his decision not to approve certain drugs. Loomer had also repeatedly claimed Prasad was liberal and said he was anti-Trump. "How did this Trump-hating Bernie [Sanders] Bro get into the Trump admin???" Loomer posted on X in July. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary had defended Prasad, who was a critic of vaccine and mask mandates, prior to his resignation. After it was reported he would return, writing on X, Loomer called the decision to rehire Prasad "egregious." She also indicated she would launch critiques of other figures, saying she "will be ramping up my exposés of officials within the HHS [Department of Health and Human Services] and FDA so the American people can see more of the pay for play rot themselves and how rabid Trump haters continue to be hired in the Trump administration." NEW: In another egregious personnel decision under the Trump administration, it is now being reported that longtime progressive Marxist Vinay Prasad who referred to President Trump's supporters as criminals and compared them to drug addicts after saying he stabbed a Trump voodoo… — Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) August 9, 2025 What People Are Saying Department Health and Human Services spokesperson Andrew Nixon said in a statement to Reuters: "At the FDA's request, Dr. Vinay Prasad is resuming leadership of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research." When he resigned, Prasad said he "did not want to be a distraction to the great work of the FDA" and had "decided to return to California and spend more time with his family." What Happens Next As Trump's presidency continues, it is likely that there will be further personnel changes in government departments.
Vox
4 hours ago
- Vox
Can't commit to vegetarianism but want animals to suffer less? You've got options.
is a senior reporter for Vox's Future Perfect and co-host of the Future Perfect podcast. She writes primarily about the future of consciousness, tracking advances in artificial intelligence and neuroscience and their staggering ethical implications. Before joining Vox, Sigal was the religion editor at the Atlantic. Your Mileage May Vary is an advice column offering you a unique framework for thinking through your moral dilemmas. It's based on value pluralism — the idea that each of us has multiple values that are equally valid but that often conflict with each other. To submit a question, fill out this anonymous form. Here's this week's question from a reader, condensed and edited for clarity: I typically eat vegetarian, and have considered going fully vegan out of concern for animal welfare. But lately my on-again, off-again gastrointestinal problems have been acting up, and I've had to go back on a more restricted diet to manage my symptoms — no spice, no garlic or onions, nothing acidic, and nothing caffeinated. Sticking to a 'bland' diet is hard enough, but doing so while vegetarian is very difficult when things like tomatoes and onions and grapefruits are off the table. I know a lot of people with these issues eat fish or meat, and some medical professionals recommend drinking chicken bone broth to soothe flare-ups. I don't want to abandon my commitment to animal welfare while my gut sorts itself out, but my food options are limited right now. How should I approach this? Dear Would-Be Vegetarian, You're not alone in finding it hard to stick to a purely vegetarian diet. Only 5 percent of American adults say they're vegetarian or vegan. What's more, one study found that 84 percent of people who adopt those diets actually go back to eating meat at some point. And most of them aren't even dealing with the gastrointestinal problems you face. So, it speaks to the depth of your moral commitment that you're really wrestling with this. I'll have some concrete suggestions for you in a bit, but first I want to emphasize that how you approach the question of meat-eating will depend on your underlying moral theory. There's a classic split in moral philosophy between deontologists and utilitarians. A deontologist is someone who thinks an action is moral if it's fulfilling a duty — and we have universal duties like, 'always treat others as ends in themselves, never as means to an end.' From that perspective, killing an animal for food would be inherently morally wrong, because you're treating the animal as a means to an end. Meanwhile, a utilitarian is someone who thinks that an action is moral if it produces good consequences — and behaving morally means producing the most happiness or well-being possible, or reducing the most suffering possible. Utilitarian philosophers like Peter Singer argue that we should be reducing, and ideally eliminating, the suffering that animals endure at our hands. Deontologists and utilitarians are often pitted against each other, but they actually have one big thing in common: They both believe in a universal moral principle — whether it's 'always treat others as ends in themselves' or 'always maximize happiness.' A lot of people find that comforting, because it offers certainty about how we should act. Even if acting morally requires hard sacrifices, it's incredibly soothing to think 'If I just do X, then I'll know for sure that I'm being a good person!' But these moral theories assume that all the complexity of human life can be reduced to one tidy formula. Can it, really? Have a question you want me to answer in the next Your Mileage May Vary column? Feel free to email me at or fill out this anonymous form! Newsletter subscribers will get my column before anyone else does and their questions will be prioritized for future editions. Sign up here! Another school of philosophy — pragmatism — says we should be skeptical of fixed moral principles. Human life is so complicated, with many different factors at play in any ethical dilemma, so we should be pluralistic about what makes outcomes valuable instead of acting like the only thing that matters is maximizing a single value (say, happiness). And human society is always evolving, so a moral idea that makes sense in one context may no longer make sense in a different context. To a pragmatist, moral truths are contingent, not universal and unchanging. I think one pragmatist who can really help you out is the University of Michigan's Elizabeth Anderson. In a 2005 essay applying pragmatism to the question of eating meat, the philosopher points out that for most of human history, we couldn't have survived and thrived without killing or exploiting animals for food, transportation, and energy. The social conditions for granting animals moral rights didn't really exist on a mass scale until recently (although certain non-Western societies did ascribe moral worth to some animals). 'The possibility of moralizing our relations to animals (other than our pets),' Anderson writes, 'has come to us only lately, and even then not to us all, and not with respect to all animal species.' In other words, Anderson doesn't think there's some universal rule like 'eating animals is inherently morally wrong.' It's our social and technological circumstances that have made us more able than before to see animals as part of our moral circle. She also doesn't believe there's a single yardstick — like sentience or intelligence — by which we can judge how much of our moral concern an animal deserves. That's because moral evaluation isn't just about animals' intrinsic capacities, but also about their relationships to us. It matters whether we've made them dependent on us by domesticating them, say, or whether they live independently in the wild. It also matters whether they're fundamentally hostile to us. Killing bedbugs? Totally fine! They may be sentient, but, Anderson writes, 'We are in a permanent state of war with them, without possibility of negotiating for peace. To one-sidedly accommodate their interests…would amount to surrender.' Anderson's point is not that animals' intelligence and sentience don't matter. It's that lots of other things matter, too, including our own ability to thrive. With this pragmatic approach in mind, you can consider how to balance your concern for animal welfare with your concern for your own welfare. Instead of thinking in terms of a moral absolute that would force you into a 'purist' diet no matter the cost to you, you can consider a 'reducetarian' diet, which allows you to ease your own struggle while also taking care for animals seriously. The key thing to realize is that some types of animal consumption cause a lot less suffering than others. For one thing, if you're eating meat, try to buy the pasture-raised kind and not the kind that comes from factory farms — the huge industrialized facilities that supply 99 percent of America's meat. In these facilities, animals are tightly packed together and live under unbelievably harsh and unsanitary conditions. They're also often mutilated without pain relief: Think pigs being castrated, cows being dehorned, and hens being debeaked. Oh, and chickens have been bred to be so big that they're in constant pain; they live miserable lives from start to finish. A pasture-raised label doesn't mean an animal has been spared all of the harms of modern agriculture — it doesn't guarantee that pain relief is used for painful procedures, and farm animals across different production systems have been bred to maximize production, which can take a toll on their welfare. And of course they'll ultimately meet the same fate as those raised on factory farms — slaughter. But your goal here is to meaningfully reduce, not 100 percent eliminate, the harms. And at least pasture-raised animals have gotten to roam around in a field and engage in natural behaviors up until the end. It's a similar story for fish, by the way. More than half of the fish we eat comes from fish farms, which are basically just underwater factory farms. Wild-caught fish is not perfect — slow, suffocating deaths are common — but it's better than farmed. The caveat here is that a lot of the welfare labels you'll see on animal products are basically a con. And some certification schemes have similar names, so you have to pay close attention. If you see the label 'Certified Humane,' that's genuinely higher-welfare — but don't mistake it for 'American Humane Certified,' which is really not. And be wary of putting much stock in labels like 'cage-free' or 'free-range.' They're better than nothing, but because the terms are often ill-defined and unenforced, they're not as meaningful as you might think. Here's a good guide to separating the real deal from the advertising spin. Another classic recommendation among animal welfare advocates is to eat bigger animals — in other words, go for beef rather than chicken. That's both because of how miserable chickens' lives are on factory farms and because, as Vox's Kelsey Piper has written, it just takes way more chicken lives than cow lives to feed people. Cows are huge, producing about 500 pounds of beef apiece, while a chicken yields only a few pounds of meat. So, every year, the average American eats about 23 chickens and just over one-tenth of one cow. That said, cows take a heavier toll on the climate than chickens do, so you don't want to eat tons of beef either. The environment is also one of the key values at stake in our consumption choices, so that has to factor in, too. Of course, another possibility — to the extent that this works with your gastrointestinal issues — is to reach for low-fiber plant-based foods like tofu, seitan, and the smorgasbord of newer products now available (like Beyond and Impossible burgers). But assuming you're going to eat meat, it's a good idea to set some clear parameters and standards around your reducetarian diet. A lot of reducetarians — myself included — have fallen into the trap of saying, 'I'll reduce how much meat I eat,' but forgetting to quantify what that means. That can lead you to eat more meat than you'd intended. So it's probably better to commit to something like 'weekday vegetarian' or 'vegan before six' — you can check out the Reducetarian Foundation for suggestions. At the end of the day, remember that there's a plurality of values at stake here, and no one of them necessarily trumps all the others. If you feel that eating some meat is important for your well-being right now, and you try to do that in ways that keep suffering for animals to a minimum, I don't think you need to feel bad about that. That's because you won't be shirking your values: You'll be recognizing that your values are plural, and you're doing your best to balance between them. That may be the best any of us can really do. Bonus: What I'm reading The blogger Bentham's Bulldog recently published a piece titled ' How to cause less suffering while eating animals .' It contains some of the same recommendations I mentioned above, but the underlying ethical framework is different and it makes one recommendation I didn't: 'offsetting' your meat consumption by donating to highly effective animal charities . I worry that offsetting might create a moral hazard, as with people offsetting their carbon emissions and then potentially feeling free to fly more. But it's worth considering, particularly if you pair it with clear parameters around your reducetarian diet. This Aeon essay answers a question I've often wondered about: Why haven't other animals — say, birds — developed complex civilizations like we humans have? Why don't they build rocket ships, argue about economic policy, and play canasta? I'm grateful to the evolutionary biologist who wrote this piece for finally giving me a satisfying answer. I can't stop thinking about this post on how AI companies may have designed chatbots to play an underspecified 'helpful assistant' character who, due to being underspecified, looks to the internet for examples of how to play that role, finds tons of science fiction about cheesy robots, and thus starts to behave like a cheesy sci-fi robot (ChatGPT will say things like, 'Gee, that really tickles my circuits!'). This post is mega-long, deeply trippy, and worth reading.
NBC News
7 hours ago
- NBC News
Why U.S. politicians are up in arms about new internet rules in Britain
A growing number of U.S. politicians are condemning a new British law that requires some websites and apps — including some based in the United States — to check the ages of users across the pond. A bipartisan group of members of Congress visited London recently to meet counterparts and air their concerns about the U.K.'s Online Safety Act, which went into effect July 25. Vice President JD Vance has been criticizing the law for months, as have privacy advocates who argue that the law infringes on free expression and disproportionately hurts vulnerable groups. Vance criticized the U.K. again on Friday, this time in person at the start of a visit to the country. Sitting alongside British Foreign Secretary David Lammy and speaking to reporters, Vance warned the U.K. against going down a 'very dark path' of online 'censorship' that he said was trod earlier by the Biden administration. The U.K. Online Safety Act is aimed at preventing children from accessing potentially harmful material online, and internet companies are now asking British users to verify their ages in a variety of ways, including with photos of their IDs, through a credit card provider or with selfies analyzed via age-check software. But the sweeping nature of the law has caught some Britons by surprise. They're being asked to prove their age not only for pornography websites but also before they can listen to songs with explicit lyrics or access message boards to discuss sensitive subjects. Reddit, for example, is restricting access to various pages including r/stopsmoking, r/STD and r/aljazeera. Reddit said in a post about its enforcement of the law that for people in the U.K., it was now verifying ages before they can 'view certain mature content.' A spokesperson for the company said r/STD — a message board focused on questions of sexual health — is restricted because of explicit images. They said r/stopsmoking is restricted because it deals with harmful substances and that r/aljazeera — which is not affiliated with the news organization of the same name but deals with similar topics — is restricted because it depicts serious injury or violence. To get around the new law, the use of virtual private network software that can mask a person's location, also known as VPNs, has surged in the U.K. The primary argument of U.S. politicians who oppose the law is that they don't want American tech companies to have to comply, even if they're serving British customers. House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said he raised his objections with U.K. government officials during meetings in London at the end of July. In a statement after his return, he said the law and other European regulations 'create a serious chilling effect on free expression and threaten the First Amendment rights of American citizens and companies.' 'We absolutely need to protect children and keep harmful, illegal content off these platforms — but when governments or bureaucracies suppress speech in the name of safety or regulation, it sets a dangerous precedent that threatens the core of Western democratic values,' Jordan said. The issue may come to a head in a couple of different venues. That could be the courts if any tech companies file lawsuits over the law, or it could come up in trade negotiations if President Donald Trump decides to press the issue with British politicians, although they say it's not open to debate in trade talks. Marc Andreessen, a venture capitalist and Meta board member with close ties to the Trump administration, recently called U.K. leaders to complain about the law, the Financial Times reported Friday. A spokesperson for Andreessen said the report was not true. The U.K.'s Online Safety Act is one of the most comprehensive national laws that any democracy has ever passed to try to curtail potentially harmful content online in the name of children. Parliament passed the law in 2023, and the government went through two years of writing detailed rules before putting the law into effect last month. The law is notable for a combination of reasons: the variety of content it applies to, the potential fines and the possible international reach. A wide array of content is at issue. While the 'primary' focus of the law is online material such as pornography and suicide, it also requires websites to age-gate content with bullying, serious violence, 'dangerous stunts' and 'exposure to harmful substances.' That has covered relatively mainstream services such as Spotify and Microsoft's Xbox gaming system. Companies that don't comply face potential fines of up to 10% of their global revenue, which for the biggest companies could be billions of dollars. The British regulator Ofcom, short for Office of Communications, says companies must use ' highly effective age assurance ' to restrict the riskiest types of content. And the U.K. has not been adamant that it won't allow international borders to stymie enforcement. Ofcom says it plans to apply the law to services with 'a significant number' of U.K. users, services where U.K. users 'are a target market' and services that are 'capable of being accessed' by U.K. users with a 'material risk of significant harm' to such users. The law appears to retain strong support among the British public. About 69% said they supported the new rules in a YouGov poll taken after implementation began, and 46% said they supported it 'strongly.' But 52% said they do not think the law will be very effective at preventing minors from accessing pornography. The law was passed during a previous, Conservative-led government and took effect under the current, Labour-led government. But the far-right party Reform U.K. is pushing for a repeal of the law. Party leader Nigel Farage, a former member of Parliament, has called it 'state suppression of genuine free speech,' and his party is running high in polls. 'Millions of people have noticed that what they're getting on their feeds is different to what it was,' Farage said at a recent news conference. Farage also met with visiting members of Congress last week, and the talks turned heated with Farage and Democrats exchanging insults, according to Politico, although the dispute appeared to be more about Trump's free speech restrictions than about the U.K. law. Most U.S.-based tech companies say they are complying with the new law. Microsoft said in a blog post that Xbox users in the U.K. would begin seeing notifications 'encouraging them to verify their age' as a 'one-time process,' with actual enforcement starting next year. If users don't comply, Microsoft warned, they'll lose access to social features of Xbox but will still be able to play games. Discord said it was implementing new default settings for all U.K. users, in effect treating everyone like a minor with heavy content filtering unless they verify that they're adults. Discord says users can choose to verify their age either with a face scan or an ID upload. Elon Musk's X has also restricted posts, including information about the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, according to the BBC. X and Musk did not respond to requests for comment. But a few services are not complying. The far-right social media site Gab, which allows white supremacist views and other extremist content, said in a notice on its website that it had received notices from Ofcom and, rather than comply, decided to block the entire U.K. from accessing its site. The company said in the notice: 'We refuse to comply with this tyranny.' Preston Byrne, a U.S. lawyer who specializes in technology issues, has said on X that he plans to file a lawsuit soon on behalf of an unnamed client seeking to quash possible enforcement of the British law within the United States. The subject has been simmering for months ahead of the law's implementation, and it came up in February when British Prime Minister Keir Starmer visited the White House. In an Oval Office meeting, a reporter asked Trump what he thought of the U.K. approach to free speech, and Trump tossed the question to Vance, who expressed concern. 'We do have, of course, a special relationship with our friends in the U.K. and also with some of our European allies. But we also know that there have been infringements on free speech that actually affect not just the British — of course, what the British do in their own country is up to them — but also affect American technology companies and, by extension, American citizens,' he said. Starmer defended his government's approach. 'We've had free speech for a very, very long time in the United Kingdom, and it will last for a very, very long time. Certainly, we wouldn't want to reach across U.S. systems and we don't, and that's absolutely right,' he said. British Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy later said the U.K. would not make any changes to the Online Safety Act as part of trade negotiations with the Trump administration. American privacy advocates are watching the debate play out with alarm, concerned that similar age verification laws — like new state laws targeting the Apple and Google app stores — would upend the internet closer to home. 'Young people should be able to access information, speak to each other and to the world, play games, and express themselves online without the government making decisions about what speech is permissible,' wrote Paige Collings, a senior speech and privacy activist at the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, in a blog post Tuesday.
