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It’s not 40 hours—Gen Zers don’t know how long they need to work in a week and even experts can’t decide

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The CEO of $8.1 billion AI chips company Cerebras recently hit back at the idea entrepreneurs can launch an innovative business working “30, 40, 50 hours a week.” Aside from suggesting “every waking minute” should be dedicated to success, he gave no magic number for how much time people should actually put in. And in an internal memo to Gemini staffers earlier this year, Google cofounder Sergey Brin set his own expectation by saying clocking in 60 hours every week is the “sweet spot” to be efficient. Workplace experts told Fortune that’s unsustainable—but they also don’t always know where to draw the line. 

“The lesson for most young professionals is if you want to get ahead, you’re not going to get there 40 hours a week,” Dan Kaplan, co-head of the CHRO practice at ZRG Partners, told Fortune. “Part of the danger of the comment of the 60-hour workweek is it’s actually not about 60. It’s about working extra until the work is done.”

Striking the right balance between working hours, ambition, and downtime can be tricky—especially for Gen Z workers just starting out. Staffers who are low on the totem pole can often be tapped to do tedious tasks and stay late at the office to show commitment, something that higher-ups suffered through in their youth. Think Wall Street’s young staffers logging 100-hour workweeks, and Jamie Dimon capping JPMorgan’s junior bankers at 80 hours. 

Experts explain to Fortune some of that norm shifted during the pandemic. Working from home, employees became more aware of their well-being and began to advocate for it. Gen Z also stepped into the workforce, bringing their outspokenness on work-life balance and boundaries with them. They’re even down to ditch the Monday-to-Friday norm with 80% of Gen Z advocating for a four-day workweek, according to a 2024 survey from A.Team. 

But at the end of the day, experts said some rules on climbing the career ladder still apply—you have to put in the hours early on to grow faster. They argued against defining a “sweet spot” of working hours, and in favor of adopting a mindset that the day ends when all the boxes are ticked. 

Point blank, period: 60 hours is unsustainable 

Experts may not have an answer to how many hours make the perfect workweek, but they do agree on one thing: Working 60 hours a week indefinitely is unsustainable. Clocking in for so long can lead to intense burnout and disengagement among employees—and even serious health risks. 

Yet a part of America’s “always on” culture will always stick; when a company is in flux or battling an extreme low, employees will be expected to have all hands on deck. When JPMorgan was toughing out the 2008 financial crisis, CEO Jamie Dimon strategized in war rooms daily until as late as 10 p.m. or 5 a.m. Or even more recently, Brin’s 60-hour request to Gemini staffers, accusing those who work less than that of putting in the “bare minimum,” and not only being “unproductive but also can be highly demoralizing” to others. 

“Now there are times when there are huge objectives, and we know it’s going to require extra [hours] over this period of time,” Jackie Dube, chief people officer at software company the Predictive Index, told Fortune. “But if it’s expected to be sustained over time, I just don’t think that’s something where you get the most productivity out of your team.”

Dube said that the typical 40-hour workweek is sustainable for most, and working less or more as companies go through peaks and troughs is fair. But instead of watching the clock and obsessing over the number of hours worked, experts advise that Gen Zers and others care more about staying on top of assignments. Whether that takes 35 hours one week or 50 another, go with the flow.

“I don’t think we should be thinking about a ‘sweet spot’ in terms of work hours,” Jasmine Escalera, a career expert for MyPerfectResume, told Fortune. “I think we should be thinking about the sweet spot in terms of output.”

How Gen Z should approach working hours

With no golden rule on how many hours to work, Gen Z has a difficult choice: Grind while they’re young or take a holistic view of climbing the ladder—after all, they’ll be climbing it for around 45 years. 

The expert’s choice? Take the fast lane. 

“If your goal is to learn as much as you can, move up the ranks as fast as you can, gain the experiences, then you might say to yourself, ‘For these next few years, I’m sacrificing time for that experience.’” Escalera said. “If you’re Gen Z and want to work for a startup company in tech and really want to advance your career, the traditional 40-hour workweek may not be what is going to happen.”

“When you’re earlier in your career, it’s about learning as much as you can. And most people learn by doing. Get as many projects as you can, get involved in as many teams as you can,” Dube echoed. “And typically, earlier in your career, you have a lot more energy. You have less things going on that you’re taking on, that are occupying your time outside of work.”

Still, they shouldn’t lose sight of what they actually value. Gen Zers overwhelmingly value their boundaries from work, and need to weigh that against their other priorities. 

“There are lessons that we should all take from COVID: Take care of yourself; look after your own health and well-being,” Kaplan said. “True success is measured by all dimensions of your life, not just financial and career. And there is a point where putting in too many hours, stressing 24/7, isn’t healthy—and ultimately leads to being less productive.”

A version of this story originally published on Fortune.com on March 9, 2025.

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Powell warns of a ‘very unusual’ economy as inflation remains high amid a weakening job market

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December 10, 2025

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Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Wednesday described the U.S. economy as “very unusual,” saying policymakers are navigating a rare combination of tariff-driven goods inflation and a labor market that may already be weaker than official data suggests.

The Fed cut interest rates for the third consecutive meeting, a quarter-point reduction Powell framed not as a confident pivot toward easier policy, but as a defensive move meant to keep the labor market from slipping further. He repeatedly emphasized risks to employment have risen “in recent months,” and noted that behind the headline numbers, job creation may already be negative.

Powell made the striking admission the Fed believes the official payroll figures—which have slowed sharply since the summer—are overstating job growth by roughly 60,000 per month. 

“Forty thousand jobs could be negative 20,” he said, adding this dynamic is not well understood by the public because unemployment claims remain historically low—something both economists Mark Zandi and Claudia Sahm recently toldFortune could be giving people a false sense of security about the job market.

“I think a world where job creation is negative… we need to watch that very carefully,” Powell said. 

It is this weakening backdrop Powell said makes the current moment “very unusual”: Inflation remains elevated, but most of the remaining overshoot comes from goods categories directly affected by tariffs, as opposed to domestic economic overheating, which he said the Fed has worked hard to cool since its 2022 highs; inflation excluding tariff-affected goods is “in the low [two percent],” he said. Services inflation is cooling, wage pressures are easing, and neither the labor market nor business surveys suggest a “Phillips-curve” kind of inflation threat, Powell said, referring to the inverse relationship between inflation and unemployment. 

Instead, Powell said, the bulk of the problem is a “one-time price increase” pushing up goods categories as import levies work their way through supply chains. Goods inflation, he noted, should peak around the first quarter of 2026, assuming no additional tariff rounds.

Those crosscurrents have fractured the Fed. Three officials formally dissented from the rate cut on Wednesday, and several others offered what Powell described as “soft dissents,” when an official’s personal projection falls out of what they ultimately voted for. There were six such “soft dissents” this time, during one of the deepest divides inside the FOMC in years, driven by disagreement over how to weigh the risks of lingering inflation against the possibility that job growth is weaker—and much more fragile—than reported.

Powell stressed that policymakers cannot simply choose one mandate to prioritize. 

“There is no risk-free path,” he said, a refrain he’s repeated for months. “When both sides of the mandate are threatened, you should be kind of neutral.” 

He characterized the current stance as being at the “high end” of neutral, allowing the Fed to “wait and see” how the data evolve.



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Top economist Diane Swonk: Jerome Powell risks losing the Fed’s credibility on a gamble about AI and immigration

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December 10, 2025

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Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell warned Wednesday afternoon that the U.S. labor market may be significantly weaker than the official data suggest. But according to KPMG chief economist Diane Swonk, the Fed may be drawing the wrong conclusion—and in doing so, risks undermining its hard-won credibility on fighting inflation.

In a new analysis shared with Fortune, Swonk argues that Powell is treating the slowdown in hiring as a sign of weakening demand that must be offset with lower interest rates. But if that weakness is being driven instead by structural forces—specifically, AI adoption and sharp declines in immigration—then cutting rates won’t fix the underlying problem and could worsen inflation.

“Powell risks the Fed’s inflation-fighting credibility if the weakness in employment is due more to AI and curbs in immigration than weak demand,” Swonk wrote.

That warning comes after one of the most contentious Federal Open Market Committee meetings in years. The Fed cut rates by a quarter point for the third meeting in a row, taking the federal funds rate down to 3.5%–3.75%, but the vote fractured the committee. Swonk notes it was the first time since 2019 that there were three dissents, and they came “in opposite directions.”

Governor Stephen Miran — currently on leave from the White House Council of Economic Advisers — voted for a half-point cut, while Kansas City Fed President Jeff Schmid and Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee voted to hold rates steady.

Swonk highlights that the Fed’s statement resurrected language meant to indicate a pause: “In considering the extent and timing of additional adjustments… the Committee will carefully assess incoming data, the evolving outlook and the balance of risks.” Powell reinforced that stance, saying “We are well positioned to see how the economy evolves” and emphasizing that policymakers would need to “be a bit skeptical” of data distorted by the government shutdown.

But the bigger issue, Swonk argues, is that Powell kept pointing to imminent downward revisions to employment, revisions she warns may not mean what the Fed thinks they do.

If job growth is negative because automation is replacing workers or because the labor force is shrinking due to immigration policy, then monetary policy can’t solve the problem. That’s because rate cuts can stimulate demand, but they cannot create workers or reverse automation decisions already made by firms. 

“The challenge is if that weakness is due to AI and curbs on immigration, then rate cuts will not do much to shore up the labor market. More could show up in inflation,” she wrote.

Powell, during the conference, acknowledged that AI may be “part of the story” behind the cooling labor market, citing major employers like Amazon that have linked hiring freezes and job cuts to automation. But he stressed that it’s “not a big part of the story yet,” and said it’s too early to know whether this wave of technological change will ultimately destroy more jobs than it creates.

He also noted that labor supply has “come down quite sharply” due to a drop in immigration and participation.

A misread could become especially dangerous given the fiscal backdrop. Swonk notes that “expansions to tax cuts last year will show up as a record high tax refunds in early 2026,” warning that the windfall could “further entrench inflation much like we saw in the wake of the pandemic.” 

At the same time, federal debt is projected to surpass GDP for the first time since World War II, marking a level of issuance that is “a lot of debt for bond markets to absorb.”

Swonk also flags mounting risks to credibility inside the Fed itself.

Six participants wanted to hold rates steady, and the market openly dismissed Powell’s attempt at a hawkish spin: investors “priced in more cuts after the meeting,” she notes. Powell now appears to be one of the more dovish voices on the committee, raising questions about the direction of policy if the administration installs a new chair aligned with Miran’s more aggressive easing stance.

Swonk expects the Fed to pause early next year, but warns that if inflation fails to cool as expected, “the bond market could grow more skittish about rate cuts.”



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TV producer behind ‘I Married a Murderer’ makes FBI Most Wanted list on claim she got a $14.7 million bank loan as a fake heiress

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December 10, 2025

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The former head of a California company that produced true crime TV shows has been added to the FBI’s Most Wanted list, years after being charged with portraying herself as an heiress to get millions of dollars from lenders.

Mary Carole McDonnell, 73, is believed to be in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, the FBI said on Dec. 5.

McDonnell is the former chief executive at Bellum Entertainment LLC, based in Burbank, California, which produced shows such as “It Takes a Killer” and “I Married a Murderer.”

Bellum was having financial problems in 2017. McDonnell was able to get a $14.7 million loan from a bank after falsely claiming she was related to the founders of McDonnell Douglas, a leading aviation and aerospace company, and had $28 million in a trust account, according to court documents.

“It is alleged that McDonnell also defrauded additional financial institutions in a similar fashion, with an estimated loss of over $15 million,” the FBI said.

A grand jury indicted McDonnell in 2018 on charges of fraud and identity theft. She has not been found. The case is filed in federal court in Santa Ana, California.

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