Now that members of Generation Z are graduating college this spring—the most commonly-accepted definition says this generation was born after 1995, give or take a year—the attention has been rising steadily in recent weeks. Gen Zs are about to hit the streets looking for work in a labor market that’s tighter than it’s been in decades. And employers are planning on hiring about 17 percent more new graduates for jobs in the U.S. this year than last, according to a survey conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers. Everybody wants to know how the people who will soon inhabit those empty office cubicles will differ from those who came before them.

    If “entitled” is the most common adjective, fairly or not, applied to millennials (those born between 1981 and 1995), the catchwords for Generation Z are practical and cautious. According to the career counselors and experts who study them, Generation Zs are clear-eyed, economic pragmatists. Despite graduating into the best economy in the past 50 years, Gen Zs know what an economic train wreck looks like. They were impressionable kids during the crash of 2008, when many of their parents lost their jobs or their life savings or both. They aren’t interested in taking any chances. The booming economy seems to have done little to assuage this underlying generational sense of anxious urgency, especially for those who have college debt. College loan balances in the U.S. now stand at a record $1.5 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve.

    One survey from Accenture found that 88 percent of graduating seniors this year chose their major with a job in mind. In a 2019 survey of University of Georgia students, meanwhile, the career office found the most desirable trait in a future employer was the ability to offer secure employment (followed by professional development and training, and then inspiring purpose). Job security or stability was the second most important career goal (work-life balance was number one), followed by a sense of being dedicated to a cause or to feel good about serving the greater good.

    That’s a big change from the previous generation. “Millennials wanted more flexibility in their lives,” notes Tanya Michelsen, Associate Director of YouthSight, a UK-based brand manager that conducts regular 60-day surveys of British youth, in findings that might just as well apply to American youth. “Generation Zs are looking for more certainty and stability, because of the rise of the gig economy. They have trouble seeing a financial future and they are quite risk averse.”

答案精析：本题为推断题。根据题干中的Paragraph 3可直接定位至第三段，题目问的是Z一代人的相关信息。该段第一句提到，埃森哲咨询公司的一项调查发现，今年88%的毕业生在选择专业时就会考虑到未来要从事的工作。也就是说，Z一代人对他们未来的工作有着明确的想法，故正确答案为C。

错项排除：A项中的job performance（工作表现）在原文中没有依据，故排除。第三段第二句明确指出，最受学生青睐的雇主的特点是可以提供稳定工作，其次才是职业发展和培训。第三句括号里的内容也说到，对于Z一代人来说，工作和生活的平衡是排在首位的，并非职业培训，故B项错误。D项利用原文词work-life balance进行干扰，但文中只是提到Z一代人将工作和生活的平衡排在首位，并不代表他们认为这一平衡难以实现，故D项错误。