CHICAGO — Gen Z is an easy target. Born between 1997 and 2012, they’ve been blamed for everything from the downfall of skinny jeans to the end of basic phone etiquette. And now, if headlines are to be believed, they’re destroying the wine industry too. Health-conscious, sober-curious and strapped for cash, they say, Gen Z barely drinks. And if they, do, they’re skipping wine in favor of hard seltzers, cocktails or cannabis infusions.

But is Gen Z truly to blame for wine’s decline? Or are they simply the most visible face of a broader cultural shift?

Statistics about Gen Z, wine and alcohol are murkier than headlines suggest. Much attention has been paid to reports that young adults drink less alcohol than older generations. However, recent data from drinks industry research group IWSR suggests Gen Z is catching up.

What’s clear is that alcohol consumption overall is trending downward, especially when it comes to wine. In 2024, global wine consumption fell to its lowest level in more than 60 years. Moderation in alcohol has become a cross-generational trend and Gen Z (currently aged 13-28) is coming of age in an increasingly different drinking culture than their parents or grandparents.

“It may not be that Gen Z is drinking less,” says Ting Ting Shi, 25, a sommelier at Miru, the Japanese restaurant at the St. Regis Chicago. “But they’re probably drinking less often,” she says.

For a lot of younger people, drinking tends to be more intentional than habitual, she describes. It’s more likely to be focused on specific occasions, she explains, a Friday night out, for instance, rather than a routine glass of wine with dinner or beer after work each night. And for many Gen Z drinkers, wine isn’t an obvious choice yet.

The choice overload effect

More than any other generation, Gen Z has been inundated with options, explains Olivia Gardner, 22, a recent graduate of DePaul University and server at Homeslice, the Lincoln Park pizzeria and bar.

When her parents were Gardner’s age, besides beer and liquor, they may have considered boxed wines or wine coolers, she says. Today, she and her peers face aisle after aisle of different flavored seltzers, beers and ready-to-drink cocktails.

“There are 16 different stores around you and DoorDash will deliver it all to your door,” she adds. With so many fast, easy choices, wine doesn’t often register as the most approachable or inviting choice.

Health and intentionality

Health is a driving force in this cultural shift surrounding alcohol. Gen Z came of age just as wellness culture entered the mainstream, and as drinking was increasingly framed in terms of mindfulness, balance and control. Sobriety and sober-curious lifestyles, once considered uncommon or taboo, are celebrated.

Ting Ting Shi, the sommelier at the restaurant Miru, 401 E. Wacker Drive in Chicago, walks through the dining room there on Wednesday, July 23, 2025. (Terrence Antonio James/Chicago Tribune/TNS)

It’s a generation with an innately “health-first mindset,” explains Daisy Siders, 26, a sommelier at RPM Italian in River North. “We drink, but we’re conscious, even overly conscious about the effects of alcohol on our bodies,” she says.

It’s somewhat of a Gen Z cliché, she admits, but “we close out our bar tabs (after each round) because we want to keep track of how much we’re drinking and spending.”

The crossroads of values and affordability

The wine industry has rushed to court younger drinkers, shaking off its stuffy, elitist reputation with appeals to perceived millennial and Gen Z values like authenticity, sustainability or emotional connection. Gen Z often favors products that align with their ideals, says Shi, but “overwhelmingly, I would argue that cost has been the biggest driver in Gen Z drinking habits.”

That reality isn’t unique to Gen Z, but rather a reflection of where they are in life. “As a younger demographic, we have less purchasing power,” says Shi. “And especially with so much talk about inflation and tariffs, it’s impossible not to be price conscious.”

Wine, in time

It shouldn’t be a surprise that many young Americans aren’t instinctively drawn to wine. In a country where wine culture is still relatively young, wine hasn’t been the obvious entry point for any generation of Americans.

“It’s really a familiarity thing,” says Shi. “Most young people know more about a margarita or an espresso martini than they do about sauvignon blanc or chardonnay.”

But Gen Z has so much potential to grow into an appreciation for wine, explains Jill Zimorski, a master sommelier and adjunct professor at DePaul University’s School of Hospitality and Sports Business, who describes herself as “an elderly millennial.”

Gen Z drinkers may not exhibit the confidence to navigate wine yet, but they’ve grown up in “a much more evolved wine culture than previous generations of Americans,” she says. More than any previous generation, Gen Z Americans are likely to have been raised by wine-drinking parents. “They’re already light years ahead of previous generations,” she says.

Ting Ting Shi, right, the sommelier at the restaurant Miru, 401 E. Wacker Drive in Chicago, talks to diners on the terrace there on Wednesday, July 23, 2025. (Terrence Antonio James/Chicago Tribune/TNS)

With time, career growth and more disposable income, their interest in wine is likely to deepen. “Our incline might not be as linear, but I do think we’ll get there eventually,” says Gardner, who took several of Zimorski’s courses.

After all, there’s a universality to what draws curious people to wine. Beyond its appeal as a beverage, wine offers a cultural and historical depth to explore. “The education journey never ends,” says Shi. “There are always more stories to tell, more places and techniques to learn about.”

But as Gen Z embarks on their journey, they ask for patience too.

“Older generations can be harsh” to younger wine drinkers, Siders says. “There’s still a lot of snobbery and gatekeeping, and it’s very much a ‘go out and figure it out yourself’ kind of culture.”

Despite the negative hype, there’s a lot to celebrate. With a new generation of moderate drinkers comes a greater consciousness of responsible alcohol consumption, and hopefully, a higher appreciation for better quality products, ethics and sustainability.

“Who knows,” Zimorski says. “Gen Z might actually be the saviors of wine culture.”

By Bram Sable-Smith, KFF Health News

Amy Frank said it took 17 hours on the phone over nearly three weeks, bouncing between her insurer and her local hospital system, to make sure her plan would cover her husband’s post-surgery care.

Many of her calls never got past the hold music. When they did, the hospital told her to call her insurer. The insurer told her to have the hospital fax a form to a special number. The hospital responded that they’d been instructed to send faxes to a different number.

“It was just a big loophole we were caught in, going around and around,” Frank said.

The couple was among 90,000 people in central Missouri caught in the middle of a contract dispute between University of Missouri Health Care, a Columbia, Missouri- based health system, and Anthem, the national health insurance provider. (Amy Frank/KFF Health News/TNS)

Frank and her husband, Allen, faced that ellipse of frustration because they were among 90,000 central Missouri patients caught in the middle of a contract dispute between University of Missouri, or MU, Health Care, a Columbia, Missouri-based health system, and Anthem, the couple’s health insurance provider. The companies let their contract expire in April after failing to strike a deal to keep the hospital system and its clinics in-network.

A growing number of Americans find themselves in a similar pinch. In New York City, negotiations between UnitedHealthcare and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center missed a June 30 deadline, briefly leaving some patients in limbo until a deal was reached the next day. In North Carolina, Duke Health recently announced it could leave the Aetna network unless the insurance company agreed to pay more favorable rates to the health system. And the Franks were nearly caught out-of-network previously, when a 2023 contract dispute between Anthem and a primary care group in Jefferson City, Missouri, prompted the couple to switch some providers to MU Health Care.

Indeed, 18% of non-federal hospitals experienced at least one documented case of public brinksmanship with an insurance company from June 2021 to May 2025, according to preliminary findings by Jason Buxbaum, a health policy researcher at the Brown University School of Health. Over the same period, 8% of hospitals ultimately went out-of-network with an insurer, at least for a time.

Industry observers say long-standing trends like hospital consolidation and rising health care costs contribute to the disputes, and Trump administration policies could make them more frequent as hospitals brace for about $1 trillion in cuts to federal health care spending as part of President Donald Trump’s sweeping budget law.

“They’re going to be more hard-nosed at negotiating with the health plans because they’re going to be in a survival mode,” said John Baackes, a retired insurance executive and former board member of America’s Health Insurance Plans, the national trade group representing the health insurance industry.

During the three-month stalemate between the insurer and the health system in Missouri, patients with Anthem plans lost in-network coverage with the region’s largest — and, for some specialties, only — medical provider.

Most people were unable to switch insurance midyear and faced the choice of paying higher prices upfront, delaying care, finding new providers, or running a paperwork gauntlet in hopes their medical conditions qualified for a 90-day coverage extension.

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The dispute came at a particularly inconvenient time for the Franks. Allen Frank was recovering from complications from falling off the roof while cleaning the siding of the couple’s home in Rich Fountain in October. When it happened, Amy drove him 24 miles to the nearest emergency room. The facility in Jefferson City had recently been taken over by MU Health Care, and Allen was soon transferred 30 miles farther by ground ambulance to the system’s main hospital in Columbia for surgery to insert two metal plates and several screws to repair his collarbone.

Health care consolidation has been booming nationwide for 30 years, with over 2,000 hospital mergers announced since 1998, including 428 from 2018 to 2023. Mergers may lead to some efficiencies and benefits for consumers, but they also reduce market competition and strengthen the hand of hospitals in negotiations with insurers.

“Insurer markets have been consolidated for a long time,” Brown’s Buxbaum said. “What’s changed is how consolidated the hospital markets have become.”

Now if a hospital system drops out of a network, he said, “it’s not just going to be one key hospital. It’s much more likely to be all the key facilities, or many of the critical mass of providers” in an area.

It’s a scary prospect for patients, making the public threat of a rupture a potent tool in negotiations between hospitals and insurers. That typically works in a hospital’s favor, Baackes said, “because the general assumption is the insurance is being greedy and the hospital is doing God’s work.”

In a statement, Buddy Castellano, spokesperson for Anthem’s parent company, Elevance Health, wrote, “We approach negotiations with a focus on fairness, transparency, and respect for everyone impacted. Health plan rate discussions are complex and require thoughtful collaboration to ensure long-term sustainability. Our commitment remains clear: ensuring access to care while keeping coverage affordable for the families, employers, and communities we serve.”

Allen Frank needed follow-up care in the months after his initial surgery, including a second surgery in July.

A federal law dubbed the No Surprises Act, which took effect in 2022, offers protections for some patients whose provider drops out of network due to a contract dispute. People getting treatment for serious conditions can keep their in-network rates for up to 90 days with their current providers, delaying the need to find a new one or face higher rates. So Amy Frank worked the phones to get that continuity of care for her husband.

“Our deductible was already met. If we go out-of-network, we’re going to have to start completely over for the out-of-network deductible,” she said.

Eventually, Anthem agreed to let Allen Frank continue his care with MU Health Care. But when he showed up for an appointment to get an injection in his injured shoulder, he was told the health system didn’t have a record of the approval. He refused to leave without being seen, and, eventually, a nurse was able to get through to Anthem to get a confirmation number and approval for the appointment.

“It’s just very frustrating,” Amy Frank said in early July, before the sides had reached a deal. “I’ve got my own medical issues, and I don’t feel like mine are bad enough to be fighting for a continuity of care.”

In an email, MU Health Care spokesperson Eric Maze wrote: “While our goal was to reach agreement prior to our contract terminating and to avoid disruption in care, we established processes and resources well in advance to facilitate continuity of care and reduce the burden for our patients. We understand and are sorry for the stress and concern being out of network created for many, and we are deeply grateful for the patience and trust placed in us during this time.”

Rising health care costs are fueling contract disputes. Hospital expenses grew 5.1% in 2024, according to a recent brief from the American Hospital Association, outpacing the 2.9% inflation rate. Labor costs are the biggest driver, with advertised nursing salaries rising 26.6% faster than inflation from 2020 to 2024, the brief noted.

Hospitals want to recoup those costs by pressing insurance companies to pay more for services.

Washington University in St. Louis health economist Tim McBride said that dynamic could be further enflamed by the massive tax-and-spending law. The measure makes significant cuts to federal health care spending over the next decade, including a $911 billion drop in Medicaid spending, and is expected to cause 10 million Americans to lose their insurance.

As negotiations between MU Health Care and Anthem broke down, the insurer claimed the hospital was seeking a 39% rate increase over three years, while the hospital said the insurer wouldn’t budge past 1%-2%.

On June 30, three months into the standoff, the Missouri Senate Insurance and Banking Committee called the two sides in for a hearing that broke months of deadlock and prompted new proposals from Anthem.

“Anthem doubled their rate increase offer,” Missouri Senate President Cindy O’Laughlin, a Republican whose district includes parts of central Missouri, wrote in a Facebook post on July 8, encouraging a deal.

“Yes I know that I’m not on the inside nor the CEO of either but from what I’ve been told this seems a reasonable offer.”

The sides announced an agreement one week later that was retroactive to April 1, the day the previous contract expired.

Amy Frank got several texts from friends and family about the agreement. She’d been so vocal about her frustrations, they wanted to make sure she’d seen the news. But her relief was subdued.

“So you put everybody through all of this for nothing?” she said the day after the deal was announced.

She had already sunk hours on the phone to ensure Allen’s July 31 surgery to repair the plates holding his clavicle together would be covered. She was in no rush to call her doctors to reschedule the appointments she’d skipped, figuring their phone lines would be busy. The experience had her wondering if the two sides were trying to get people upset as a bargaining tactic.

“That money that they’re fighting over — is that really worth all of the stress?” she said.

And after going through two disputes in three years, she can’t help but wonder: How long until the next one?

©2025 Kaiser Health News. Visit khn.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. ©2025 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By STAN CHOE, Associated Press Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street is heading for more records on Wednesday following a surprisingly encouraging report on inflation and a stunning forecast for growth from Oracle because of the artificial-intelligence boom.

The S&P 500 rose 0.5% and was on track to set an all-time high for a second straight day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 49 points, or 0.1%, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.5% higher after both likewise set records the day before.

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Stocks have been hitting records in large part because Wall Street is expecting the economy to pull off a delicate balancing act: slowing enough to convince the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates, but not so much that it causes a recession, all while inflation remains under control.

Many things must go right for that to happen, and an encouraging signal came from Wednesday’s report showing that inflation at the U.S. wholesale level unexpectedly slowed in August. It’s a relief following months of reports suggesting inflation would be tough to get under the Fed’s target of 2%, with President Donald Trump’s tariffs set to add only upward pressure on prices.

A potentially more important report is coming Thursday that will show how much prices are rising for U.S. households, but Wednesday’s update “essentially rolled out the red carpet for a Fed rate cut next week,” according to Chris Larkin, managing director, trading and investing, at E-Trade from Morgan Stanley.

Traders were already convinced that the Fed will deliver its first cut to interest rates of the year at its next meeting, but they need inflation data in the interim to come up mild enough not to derail those expectations. That’s because cuts to interest rates can push inflation higher, along with giving the economy a kickstart.

“The broader narrative is increasingly anchored on expectations that the Fed will deliver a rate cut at next week’s meeting,” said Ahmad Assiri, research strategist at Pepperstone.

On Wall Street, tech stocks helped lead the way after Oracle said AI-related demand is set to send its revenue soaring. CEO Safra Catz said Oracle signed four multi-billion dollar contracts during its latest quarter, and it expects cloud infrastructure revenue to jump 77% to $18 billion this fiscal year. After that, it expects the unit’s revenue to surge to $144 billion in just four years.

“AI Changes Everything,” Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison said in a statement.

Oracle stock soared 34.8% and was potentially heading for its best day since 1992, even though its results for the latest quarter came up just shy of analysts’ expectations.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., which makes chips used in AI, saw its stock that trades in the United States climb 3.1% after it said its revenue jumped nearly 34% in August from a year before.

Nvidia, the chip company whose stock has become the poster child of the AI boom, rose 3.7%. It was one of the strongest single forces lifting the S&P 500, along with Oracle.

On the losing side of Wall Street was Synopsys, which helps customers design and engineer chips. It fell 31.3% after reporting profit for the latest quarter that fell short of analysts’ expectations. So did its forecast for profit in the current quarter.

Klarna, the Swedish “buy now, pay later” financial services provider, will trade for the first time as a public company Wednesday after it announced a public offering of its shares at $40 each, about $4 higher than it previously estimated.

In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed in Europe after rising across much of Asia. South Korea’s Kospi rose 1.7%, and Hong Kong Hang Sang climbed 1% for two of the bigger moves.

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury eased to 4.05% from 4.08% late Tuesday after the encouraging inflation report on wholesale prices bolstered expectations for coming cuts to interest rates.

AP Business Writers Yuri Kageyama and Matt Ott contributed.

The investing information provided on this page is for educational purposes only. NerdWallet, Inc. does not offer advisory or brokerage services, nor does it recommend or advise investors to buy or sell particular stocks, securities or other investments.

Imagine a game of musical chairs. Except there are 12 chairs and 100 people.

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That’s what the job market is like right now, says Mandi Woodruff-Santos, a career coach and host of the “Brown Ambition” podcast.

“There’s not a lot of meat on the bone,” she says.

That’s why right now, many people who do have jobs are holding on to them for dear life, a concept that management consulting firm Korn Ferry called “job hugging” last month.

So many people are talking and writing about the term that “job hugging” is trending on Google.

It resonates. Are you hugging your current job right now? Maybe you feel stuck. Maybe you’re not able to gain the skills you want. Maybe you’d like a new position with new challenges or more money, but …

The job struggle is real

In July, the number of job openings (7.2 million), the number of new hires (5.3 million) and the number of people quitting jobs (3.2 million) were all pretty much unchanged, according to the latest numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In August, the economy added just 22,000 jobs, down from 79,000 in July.

Insert melting emoji.

“Unlike a few years ago, during the ‘Great Reshuffling,’ you just can’t leave your current job and effortlessly land in a better one,” says Elizabeth Renter, NerdWallet’s senior economist.

Uncertainty about the economy, largely driven by changing policy, is causing employers to hold back on hiring, she says.

“Investing in new workers takes some confidence that business will be good in the near future, and when you’re unsure about pricing due to tariffs, interest rates and consumer demand, it’s hard to have confidence,” she says.

Fear? Also real

“For workers, staying put feels much safer than joining the ranks of those seeking a better job among few job openings,” Renter says.

Jesse Wideman, a certified financial planner based in Charlotte, NC, says a few years ago he had a lot of clients, particularly in the tech industry, who job-hopped to get more money. Now though?

“There’s a lot more fear around job security,” says Wideman, who works for Zenith Wealth Partners.

He gets it. He says he’s gone through job loss, and he’s had both friends and clients go through job losses, too.

“They were out of work much longer than they thought,” he says. “Then, once they get in a new job, they don’t say, ‘I plan to be here a year or two.’”

They stay parked right where they are. Why? Because people are afraid to go through another job loss and think, “let me make sure I don’t have another five or six months where I don’t have enough money for it to be feasible to feed me and/or my family,” he says.

Job hugging does have benefits. Literally.

If your job provides your health care and you have people relying on you, that’s a strong case for staying put, says Woodruff-Santos, who has the nickname, “the Queen of Quitting” because she’s quit jobs to get more money and coached women of color to do the same.

Staying in your role means you and your financial planner, if you have one, have an idea of what your projected income and retirement look like, Wideman says. You know what’s in your 401(k) and what your company will match.

Believe it or not, some companies still have pensions, he says. If you leave, that’s money you may be leaving on the table.

But still, have a Plan B

Wideman says he’s seen emergency funds getting beefier. Instead of the traditional amount — enough money to cover three to six months’ worth of living expenses — he’s seeing more people want a reserve of six months or more.

Either they’ve been laid off before, or they want a cushion in case life starts life-ing and that job they’re hugging cuts them loose.

He recommends his clients put this cash in a high-yield savings account, primarily because of the liquidity that many of them offer.

There are tradeoffs, of course. If you’re putting more money in your emergency fund, that means less money for other things — a down payment on a house, a wedding, your retirement or your brokerage fund.

It just depends on your priorities. Also, how strong your fear is.

And when opportunity knocks, bet on yourself

If clients aren’t happy in their role and something better does come along, Wideman says he works with them to help them evaluate where they are and what their financial plan looks like if they stay or if they go.

Those discussions definitely come up less these days, Wideman says. But they still do come up.

Woodruff-Santos says if you’re hanging onto a job that seems secure and you get a rare opportunity to jump ship, but you’re scared of moving because of a possible last-in, first-out layoff, what does that mean for future you?

“It’s very comfortable to think ‘stay put.’ It’s the safe route,” says Woodruff-Santos. “But at the same time, what are y’all hugging? It ain’t hugging you back.”

How much more could you have saved, gotten ahead, paid off debt, or socked into your 401(k) if you quit and took that leap?

“There’s that risk, but also that reward,” she says. “What if things do work out? Because a lot of times, they do.”

Woodruff-Santos, who works with women of color, says they’ve long known that a job is just one source of income. She encourages her clients to keep their resumes and networks up to date and not count on that one job to be around forever.

“If you are job hugging naively, that is the worst mistake of all,” she says.

“Finding additional income streams is always the move.”

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Pamela de la Fuente writes for NerdWallet. Email: pdelafuente@nerdwallet.com.

The article Job Hugging: What It Is and What It Means for Your Money originally appeared on NerdWallet.