Worried student hiding behind notebook and sitting between two friends. Three fellow students preparing for exam on sofa in library. Education and exam concept. AI is answering more. Gen Z is reading less. A generation turning away from books is colliding with a technology that supplies answers. That collision is shaping tomorrow’s workforce. The Walton Family Foundation and Gallup 2025 Voices of Gen Z study found that 35% of Gen Z students say they dislike reading, and 43% say they rarely or never read for fun. In an age of ready-made answers, fewer are wrestling with words on their own. The result may be a workforce fluent in tools but thin on imagination. The Cost of Less Reading For me, reading was never an assignment. As a young person, I tore through Huckleberry Finn and Treasure Island. Those books opened up entire worlds. I didn’t need secondhand thrills from television or movies—though when I eventually watched them, I realized many of my early visualizations had already been formed by the words on a page. Reading created its own theater of the mind. The data shows how rare that experience is becoming. Reading scores on the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress fell two points, on average, for both 4th and 8th graders, sustaining a steady decline in the subject that predates COVID-era disruptions. The pandemic didn’t start the slide. It revealed how far reading had already slipped. The Gallup/Walton study found a similar pattern: while most Gen Zers say they at least “somewhat like” reading, 35% of middle and high school students say they dislike it. By comparison, only 17% of Gen Z adults say the same. International evidence reinforces the point. The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has consistently shown that enjoyment of reading—not simply hours spent—predicts better outcomes. Students who enjoy reading are stronger performers, and enjoyment itself is the differentiator. Take away the patience of reading and what’s left is borrowed imagination—secondhand thoughts packaged as finished answers. MORE FOR YOU What This Means for Future Talent A workforce shaped this way may excel at speed but struggle with originality. Code can automate a process. It cannot give perspective. Perspective comes from wandering across history, fiction and biography—where ideas collide and recombine into something new. Reading teaches us to hold ambiguity and to wrestle with contradictions. The Gallup/Walton study shows the stakes clearly: students who enjoy reading are more likely to report strong overall academic performance. Enjoyment translates into stronger habits of interpretation, synthesis and resilience. Without those habits, companies may inherit a generation of doers who can execute but hesitate to interpret. AI will supply the answer, but without the mental muscle of building questions, imagination weakens. The challenge doesn’t stop at graduation. Gallup workplace research shows that only 41% of employees strongly agree they have time to learn in their jobs. By the time students arrive at work, they’re already under-read. Then they join companies that don’t give them time to learn. It’s a bottleneck designed into the system. What the Rest of the World Reminds Us Not every country or institution is surrendering to the decline. Finland makes reading a civic ritual, embedding it in family life from preschool onward. Iceland turns books into gifts during its annual Jólabókaflóð (aka Christmas Book Flood), when families spend the holidays reading together. Japan sustains a culture where books and manga remain part of everyday life—even in the midst of a hyper-digital economy. Singapore invests in national reading challenges and library systems that connect literacy with aspiration. Schools also offer a counterweight. Waldorf models protect imagination by delaying technology and emphasizing storytelling and books in early years. In the U.S., charter networks like Valor Education and Great Hearts ground their learning in classical education, where students engage deeply with literature and philosophy in seminar-style dialogue. A typical seminar at Valor or Waldorf doesn’t look like a lecture. Students sit in a circle with Plato, Shakespeare or C.S. Lewis in hand, asking questions, debating ideas, and learning to follow a thought across texts and centuries. International Baccalaureate (IB) programs worldwide ask students to write extended essays and wrestle with cross-disciplinary texts, shaping habits of inquiry rather than passive consumption. Small disclaimer: my children have experienced IB, Waldorf and Valor programs. These examples remind us that reading is less about mastering content and more about developing minds that can hold tension, question deeply, and imagine broadly. What Education Must Do Differently The Gallup/Walton data shows the connection clearly: Gen Z students who enjoy reading also report stronger academic performance. Enjoyment is the entry point, and schools need to lean into it. A few shifts that matter: Integrate reading with dialogue. Every great book deserves a debate. The point isn’t memorization, but interpretation. Seminar-style discussions bring joy back into reading by making it social. Expand what counts as reading. Beyond classics, long-form journalism, plays, essays and graphic novels all demand deeper engagement. Enjoyment grows when students have choice. Tie reading to creation. Ask students not only to summarize but to write, argue and reimagine. Turning reading into output deepens ownership. The goal isn’t simply to create skilled workers. It’s to create thinkers. And as PISA and Gallup data suggest, thinkers are far more likely to thrive. What Companies Must Do Employers can’t wait for schools alone to close this gap. Many new hires will arrive fluent in tools but light on interpretation. To counter this, leaders can: Start book clubs. Move beyond technical manuals and encourage employees to read history, literature, and philosophy together. Management and work oriented books work too. But make sure that the small library in your office is often used. Consider book clubs over zoom or provide web-based learning resources that go beyond skill building. These sessions and resources give people shared references no training module can replicate. Model curiosity. When executives talk about what they’re reading—whether The Art of War for strategy, or The Odyssey to think about resilience—they signal that great ideas don’t just come from dashboards and metrics. Use classics as models. Amazon requires leaders to write six-page narrative memos instead of PowerPoints, forcing them to think through story, evidence, and coherence. That discipline shows how companies can tie strategic thinking to the habits reading builds. Replace jargon with narrative. Too many corporate strategies arrive as lifeless decks: buzzwords, bullet points, abstractions. I once sat through a session where slides ran for an hour, each filled with “synergize capabilities” and “optimize verticals.” Nobody remembered the charts the next day. Contrast that with a leader who frames strategy as a story: where the company is now, the tension it faces, and the future it’s moving toward. A spreadsheet explains where you are. A story tells people why it matters enough to move. Reward synthesis. Recognize employees who connect dots across disciplines, not just those who respond quickly. Pair reading with storytelling. Ask employees to translate insights from books into narratives that influence teams and customers. Companies that weave reading and storytelling into their culture don’t just build stronger teams. They create leaders who can interpret, adapt, and imagine—skills no algorithm can supply. The Next Leap The future workforce will live surrounded by synthetic output. What will distinguish great talent is the ability to add something human: imagination, interpretation, perspective. If code becomes fluent and imagination does not, we will have Gen Z workers who can run systems but can’t see beyond them. We must do better than that. Editorial StandardsReprints & Permissions