Gen Z dropouts could be your future boss: 20-something year olds without degrees are leading the charge in side gigs

• Forget an MBA or climbing the corporate ladder. The Jeff Bezos and Elon Musks of tomorrow could be Gen Z dropouts. That’s because new research shows they’re most likely to be working on their own side hustles outside of their 9-to-5 jobs.  

It’s no secret that Gen Z grads are feeling the burn after spending a small fortune on their degree, only to realize the qualification is pretty “useless” and won’t even increase their chances of getting employed anymore. They’re about to feel even more vengeful.

That’s because new research highlights they could one day wind up reporting into a Gen Z dropout. 

A staggering 58% of the generation have a side hustle outside of their everyday job—with young men around 8% more likely to be moonlighting as their own boss after work and on weekends. But the most likely person to be running their own business after hours? Gen Zers without a degree. 

In fact, the research from Resume Genius reveals that the likelihood of having a side hustle decreases as Gen Z workers’ level of formal education increases. 7 in 10 Gen Z workers with some college experience (suggesting that they dropped out before completing their course) are currently running their own gig on the side. In comparison, this drops to just around 55% for those with a bachelor’s degree or master’s.

It comes as the youngest generation of workers increasingly opts to ditch the corporate ladder and favour of running their own business. The second-fastest-growing job title among Gen Z right now is “founder,” according to LinkedIn. Another study echoes that half of the 18 to 35-year-olds who’ve started a side gig or plan to start one say their primary motivation is to be their own boss.

And while not every Gen Zer with a side hustle become the next tech titan on the Fortune 500, they’re still one step closer than those without one. 

Billion-dollar side hustles from Apple to Airbnb

Some of the world’s biggest companies started as scrappy side hustles built in basements, garages, or during lunch breaks.

Take Apple: Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs met in 1971 while working at the tech giant HP. Within a year they had their first side-hustle, selling “blue boxes” that enabled people to make long-distance phone calls at no cost. They then worked on the computer Apple 1, often meeting up to brainstorm in the garage of Jobs’ Los Altos childhood home while still working other full-time tech jobs.

Jack Dorsey was working as a web designer at a podcast company called Odeo when he started designing Twitter.

Instagram was just a side project, spun off from a more complicated app called “Burbn” that ex-Google employee Kevin Systrom came up with while working at start-up travel recommendation website Nextstop. 

Under Armour, Etsy, and Airbnb were all once side gigs, too. But you don’t just look at the world’s most famous billionaires for examples of side hustles turned into full time gigs. 

Chase Gallagher was 12 years old when he started mowing his neighbors’ lawns in Pennsylvania for $35 a pop in the summer of 2013. By 16, Gallagher had already turned over $50,000 from his lawn mowing side hustle. Today, it’s evolved into a landscaping business that employs 10 people and does “everything from stormwater management and drainage work to pavers and lighting,” the now 23-year-old told Fortune. Last year, CMG Landscaping generated more than $1.5 million in revenue.

Likewise, Ed Fuller told Fortune how he turned his side hustle for Amex into a $27 million-a-year marketing agency that works with MrBeast. And House of CB—the cult fashion brand with over 6 million social media followers and a Kardashian fanbase—started out as a teenage side hustle on eBay.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com