• Millionaire podcaster and former CNN legal analyst Mel Robbins slammed people who look down on Gen Z for being “weak” and lacking work ethic. After following in their boomer parents’ footsteps by getting degrees and office jobs, the generation got the short end of the stick and deserves some slack for navigating an unprecedented reality, she says.

Gen Z has been branded a “lazy” generation of workers, marked by their TikTok addiction and work-from-home allegiance. But millionaire podcast personality Mel Robbins hit back at critics who slam the next generation of workers—and even encouraged them to step into their shoes and see if they’d like it. 

“We sit here and we look at 20-somethings and we’re like, ‘Oh they’re weak or addicted to social media, or all anxious,’” Robbins said in a video posted to her TikTok. “Have you stopped to consider what it’s like to be a 20-something today?”

Robbins’ empathy for older Gen Z and young millennials is in stark contrast to the negativity clogging the feeds of young people. 

Whole Foods’ former CEO John Mackey said that young people “don’t seem like they want to work”; Whoopi Goldberg criticized Gen Z and millennials for not  “bust[ing] their behinds” like her generation did, and that they only want to work four hours a day; and actress Jodie Foster deemed her Gen Z employees “really annoying” and difficult to work with.

But Robbins asserted that older generations wouldn’t know what it’s like to navigate adulthood in 2025, like homeownership being “out of reach,” a ballooning generational wealth gap, and colossal student loan debt.

“The average 20-year-old today is under so much stress and pressure and chaos right now,” Robbins said. “And it’s not stress and pressure and chaos that existed 5 or 6 years ago.”

Robbins’ advice for Gen Z: ‘If you feel lost, I’m not surprised’

It’s tough out there for 20-year-olds. They’re finding out the hard way that following the exact formula of their parents—going to a prestigious school, completing internships in undergrad, and catapulting into a lush job market—is broken. Gen Z wound up with the short end of the stick, Robbins said

“The world is in chaos—and most 20-somethings had parents that lived in a very predictable, stable economy,” Robbins continued. “They went to a corporate job, they reported to the office, they had a network of friends at work. That’s not the typical 20-year-old experience.”

Gen Z is, by far, the most downtrodden about their work lives; only 62% say they’re happy in their jobs, the lowest of any generation, according to a survey from MetLife. And beyond having trouble forming connections at the office, young employees are living through economic disarray outside of work. Only about 43% of entry-level workers feel positive about their employer’s six-month business outlook—the lowest figure Glassdoor has recorded since its data collection started in 2016.

“They’re now in the middle of a recession, in hybrid work. The world is shifting, the landscape is shifting,” Robbins said. “If you feel lost, I’m not surprised. This is exactly how you should feel.” 

“You’re doing your 20s correctly—there’s nothing wrong with you,” she added. “It’s a perfectly normal response to the decade that you’re in, based on the moment in history that you’re in. Feeling lost is to be expected.”

And things are about to get worse for Gen Z

Economists fear things are about to get even rockier for Gen Z. The ballooning probability of a U.S. recession will spell big trouble for young generations in particular, according to “Bond King” Bill Gross.

“This market ‘crash’ will affect millennial and Gen Z investors for long to come,” Gross posted on X Tuesday, prior to President Trump halting some of his aggressive tariffs. “What before was a can’t-miss way to make money will induce caution and more conservative attitudes.”

Young people are also particularly vulnerable to financial collapse. They’re witnessing fewer entry-level job opportunities in a market clinched by budget cuts and AI implementation. And as the lowest totem on the pole, Gen Z doesn’t have much bargaining power in asking for better salaries. Many young Americans don’t have enough in the bank to cover a single month of spending—and the problem could get even worse.

Rather than just rolling over and accepting a bleak fate, Robbins is encouraging anxious Gen Zers to reframe their mindset. In her TikTok video, she recommended that 20-somethings embrace uncertainty and view this tense moment in history as an opportunity.

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon also recently gave his two cents on the woes of America’s youngest workers—and was similarly optimistic.

“These kids, anyone who’s depressed—as long as we don’t have nuclear war—they’re going to have an unbelievable life,” Dimon said in a recent interview with Fox News. “They shouldn’t be bemoaning their situation, they should be looking at the world and saying, ‘What can I make of it? What can I do better than the folks before me?’”

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• Ark Invest founder Cathie Wood is betting on President Donald Trump’s tariffs: the chaos could be a setup for trade deals, and any economic slowdown could be the thing that pushes the administration and central bank into action, she wrote in a recent note. 

Ark Invest founder and Chief Executive Cathie Wood, famous for her bets on Tesla, appears to be betting on the president’s tariffs, too. 

“While many observers fear that the Trump tariff policy is a recipe for economic and geopolitical disaster, we believe that what looked at first glance like the largest and most regressive tax increase in U.S. history could turn out to be quite the opposite,” Wood wrote in a note on Friday. 

President Donald Trump announced a sweeping tariff regime on so-called “Liberation Day” that sent the stock market spiraling and sparked chaos in the bond market. He later announced a 90-day grace period while raising tariffs on China but keeping the door open to a deal.

But Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s apparent elevation as the lead on trade negotiations over other administration officials turned Wood bullish.

That comes after reports said Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick would play “bad cop,” while trade advisor Peter Navarro would be sidelined. 

So “what once seemed like a chaotic situation based on incomprehensible ‘reciprocity’ calculations could have been a setup—premeditated or otherwise—for serious negotiations that will lead to lower tariffs and non-tariff barriers, neither of which would have been possible without the shock therapy that President Trump administered,” Wood wrote in the note dated April 11. 

She mentioned Elon Musk, too, who she said was “still influential” in the administration and holds a zero-tariff stance. Navarro and Musk clashed over tariffs.

Wood isn’t the first to be critical of the reciprocal tariff calculation, or the first to suggest this could have been the strategy all along. And late Friday night, another tariff reprieve was declared: smartphones, computers, semiconductors, and more, were exempt from tariffs. 

But mixed signals followed. Lutnick said exemptions won’t last and tariffs were coming later, and Trump posted on his social media platform that no one was “off the hook” on tariffs. Still, Monday began with a tech rally and the situation has somewhat calmed.

Wood said that throughout recent volatility in the stock and bond markets, she held that the president was aiming for robust economic growth and a strong market for the second half of the year—an expectation she had before the tariff whiplash began, coming off what she called a “rolling recession.” 

A tariff-induced shock could push the administration and the Federal Reserve, which is in wait-and-see mode, to intervene more forcefully with fiscal and monetary stimulus. 

“Now that much of the economy has seized up in response to the fear of tariffs, the drop in activity is likely to be more severe than otherwise would have been the case, a clarion call for tax cuts, deregulation, and lower interest rates,” she wrote.

Ark Invest did not respond to Fortune’s request for further comment.

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LVMH, the Paris-based luxury giant, reported €20.3 billion ($23 billion) in revenue in Q1 2025, down 3% year over year. The figures slipped short of the 2% growth forecasted by VisibleAlpha consensus estimates.

As in past quarters, the wine and spirits division with Moët & Chandon and Veuve Clicquot brands led the decline by 9% year-over-year. Meanwhile, watches and jewelry, which includes Tag Heuer and Bulgari, was the only segment not to decline in organic terms, remaining flat for the first quarter.

The biggest topic on the minds of companies globally is tariffs, which went from being threats to an all-encompassing policy earlier in April before President Donald Trump dialed back on them. During LVMH’s earnings call, the company said that despite the tariff-related uncertainty, American demand remained strong during the first quarter.

“After years of exceptional growth, the best way through [a] downturn cycle is to stay focused. It is also a time to demonstrate our agility and capacity to adjust and react,” LVMH CFO Cecile Cabanis said.

She added that the company hasn’t seen a significant impact from tariffs yet, although she conceded that the “aspirational clientele is always more vulnerable in less positive economic cycles.”

LVMH chairman and CEO Bernard Arnault previously underplayed the negative shock of tariffs on the French company, touting the U.S. as “welcoming.” Arnault, who had a front-row seat at Trump’s inauguration presidential ceremony earlier this year, said he was “seriously considering” making more of the group’s luxury goods available in the States. 

“It’s clear that we are being strongly pushed by the American authorities to continue to build out our presence. In the current context, this is something that we’re looking at seriously,” Arnault said earlier this year, according to Reuters.

LVMH employs 40,000 people in three Louis Vuitton factories.

Cabanis said most of what the company makes in the U.S. is for the American market—but not all of it. That gives LVMH a bit more room to maneuver.

The French conglomerate, which owns over 75 brands and is considered the sector’s bellwether, has been slow to recover from the drop in demand for luxury goods. This became clear with the company’s 2024 sales, which fell 2% to $88 billion, even as fourth-quarter revenues improved by 1%. 

Still, a few signs of recovery emerged thanks to a strong shopping appetite in Japan and the U.S., which account for 9% and 25% of LVMH’s sales, respectively.

LVMH is the first major luxury group to release first-quarter results, setting the tone for what the rest of the sector could face. The company’s shares have tanked 17% since the start of 2025, while Arnault’s net worth has plummeted $15 billion during the same period.

A luxury rebound? Not yet

Despite a rocky couple of years, the luxury market hoped to turn a corner this year, with the worst highs of inflation and interest rates in the rear-view mirror. That would’ve also helped European players, as shares in luxury companies have fallen 8.5% year-to-date. 

American consumers would have been the saviors, ultimately pulling the sector out of its slump by late 2025 or 2026, as McKinsey’s luxury lead Gemma D’Auria pointed out in a January report. However, with President Donald Trump announcing a slew of tariffs, a recovery appears nowhere in sight anymore. 

American luxury consumption could “have been sufficient to overcome expected weakness in Chinese and European luxury demand but now seems unlikely: the nth order impact of recently announced average U.S. import tariffs of ~23% (even after accounting for President Trump’s recent rollback) and a looming trade war on the global economy have yet to be seen,” Bernstein SG analyst Luca Solca said in a note Monday.

Such volatility could impact LVMH the worst as it’s among the most exposed companies to the U.S. 

Luxury goods are made in France and Italy, and high-end watches are Swiss-made. These countries now face a 10% tariff on trade—lower than Trump’s initial levies but still higher than before.

Analysts fear the most how tariffs will affect consumer sentiment if luxury giants pass on additional costs to shoppers. A recession could also spook people enough to avoid spending thousands of euros on bags and shoes.

“A recession is bad for luxury, as consumers spending money on luxury need to experience feelgood. Hence, you will see that the luxury goods industry is cyclical. And LVMH is the best proxy of the industry – hence facing headwinds in a recession,” Solca told Fortune in an email.

HSBC now expects organic luxury sales to be flat this year, compared to earlier estimates of a 5% year-over-year increase, the Financial Times reported. 

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