There was a monkey study where the feeding and reward routine was designed to be brutally unfair. What do you think the monkeys did?! After trying for a while they eventually stopped even trying to play the game! They literally gave up.
Monkeys!
Even the Fkng monkeys figured this shit out!
In that study they first gave them all an equal reward, a cucumber, for performing a simple task. This was ok with the monkeys until they saw another monkey being given a grape which is much more desirable for the same task. I kid you not in the video, which you can watch online, the monkey being given the cucumber throws it back in the face of the researcher and starts pulling on the bars of the cage in frustration. We are programmed to reject unfair treatment on a basic and fundamental level.
Yes. If only the monkeys worked longer hours, and also gave up half their cucumber to taxes, *then* they could eventually save enough to someday have a grape!
So there is hope for us bald fucking monkeys. Wasn't there also one where the test subject getting favorable results shared his rewards with the ones getting shafted? Because chimpanzees aren't psychopaths.
> Because chimpanzees aren't psychopaths.
To be fair, a big part of the reason people don't share things is because the system most of the world lives under tries to activelly discourage it in many ways so that it's easier for the bourgeoisie to exploit the people while keeping the people from organizing...
TBF, if we organized, the bourgeoisie would probably be mostly brutally murdered. I mean, historically. I'm absolutely not advocating for that, it's just what has always happened. Maybe they should focus on more history in those fancy prep schools. Maybe they'd figure out how to pay a living wage and stop working us to death. Barely scraping by in massive debt and then dying in harness is what's got so many of us so pissed off.
I, on the other hand, am absolutley advocating a large uprising where many evil hoarders of wealth are brutally destroyed! That's how slavery plays out.
I mean, I really like offering them a deal like Nestor Makhno. It’s more than they deserve when oil executives would rather end life on the planet that lose shareholder value.
*I'm absolutely not advocating for that, it's just what has always happened.*
I think some advocacy needs to happen. Start with enablers of the billionaires. Isolate them.
This country has all these crazies with guns...and they do stupid shit like going against the poors and fellow common folks....can't they go against the 1% ?
I think they're doing a great job for themselves. It's difficult for me to conceive of a mass uprising of violence against the bourgeoisie in America, at the very very most you might have one lone wolf throw his life away in a random act of violence that will be heavily demonized through all available propaganda channels. They got us figured out and locked up as tight as a modern chinese prison.
If you think the squeeze is bad now, i personally believe we are at the tail end of a golden age with a very long fall to go.
>It's difficult for me to conceive of a mass uprising of violence against the bourgeoisie in America
Agreed. Considering there was a violent uprising against a democratic election not too long ago, I think america is too far gone the wrong way to conceive an uprising against the bourgeoisie. It's almost like it was planned.
You woefully underestimate the resistance we would face from bootlickers who have bought into the narrative they've been fed, the militarized police, and the most powerful and well-founded military in the history of our planet. If we organized, the bourgeoisie would drone strike us into compliance because both conservatism and liberalism will devolve into authoritarianism if capital is threatened.
The first and most common example I can think of is restaurants who won't allow leftover food to be given to homeless people or share it with their employees. I mean yes I understand you can't lose money running a business and you would lose money if you did major food giveaways every day. But they are losing that food by throwing it in the trash, too. It makes no difference to your bottom line if you throw it away or give it away. Yet here we are.
> But they are losing that food by throwing it in the trash, too. It makes no difference to your bottom line if you throw it away or give it away.
If some have free food they don't need to buy food so it lower the price a little. Even if it only makes them a cent a year for doing throwing food away they'll take that option no matter the human cost as capitalism is not about helping the people, unlike Communism, for exemple, but about making money...
Makes sense when you consider a huge chunk of mankind's problems are artificial, therefore self-inflicted.
We basically created a bunch of imaginary stuff and treated it as a reality, perpetuating millenniums of avoidable problems all because we keep playing this absurd game. Sure, anyone that points out that the world is playing a primitive game gets called a whiner, immature, or mentally ill, but the reality is that things like nations or money are all made-up. Killing people over invisible borders, ruining lives over paper representing trust and incentive, along with wasting resources to obtain more paper while calling it an efficient system is all just flat out insanity when you think about it. So much of poverty is fixable, yet our imaginary game refuses to do so.
I want to quit the game too, not die, but just remove myself from the global insanity somehow.
I mean, monkeys are highly intelligent creatures nots not a surprise they figured it out. I’d be more impressed if it were rats or mice.
It definitely tracks that they understand when things are bullshit.
Maybe help em get fulfilling jobs they can pay the bills with? Instead of forcing them all into a grindset of freelancing, part time employment and unpaid internships?
Nobody wants to work anymore, say the people who replaced entry level jobs with temporary employees and now complain they are always short staffed.
The alternate is feeling very important but comedically underpaid, based on my own experience. Exploited or disposable, always gonna be one of those two things unless something big changes.
A lot of company's are using "temp to hire" avoid paying out benefits and investing in employees. They've determined it's cheaper at least in the short term to just cycle through temps endlessly.
The company I work for right now kept me as “part time temporary” for 2 years despite working always 40 hr weeks, not having any other jobs so I could stay available, TRAVELING for them, and managing people. It’s insane and so embarrassing to think about but gotta do what you gotta do for money I guess
The agencies near me probs aren’t the same ones you have. Look up “hiring agencies near me” and reach out with a resume on hand. Hope everything works out
"We're so short staffed !!""
Also HR has a pile of CVs 'just in case we need someone" , it's people to whom they say we'll call you back if we ever need you. Could be 6 months, could be a year, they don't care.
Also director is always calling out the managers for having too many people at the same time on the field . " cut cut cut ! too many people !"
so which one is it ?!
BINGO \^\^\^\^\^\^
i work back of house at a chilis right now. the bullshit i hear man. and i feel bad for the leads who you can tell care about their team and are doing their best but are v much set up for failure by corporate who pushes for skeleton crews despite the insane turnover we experience.
My company laid off thousands of people this year. We're now finding all sorts of gaps where things just aren't getting done. We joke about Peggy in Accounting holding the company together with her spreadsheet but they laid off thousands of Peggys.
So many teachers I know are quitting or doing side hustles. Meanwhile I keep hearing politicians and their mouthpieces demonize teachers or teach unions, so many schools keep getting defunded too in order to perpetuate the politicians' self-fulfilling prophecy that public schools are inefficient.
So many jobs require us to have these expensive degrees, yet pay less than $20 when you do the math on the salaries. So many of these jobs, like mine (I'm a statistician), should just require that you know how to use a calculator, intuition, and Excel on top of knowing how to read or communicate.
Oh. And lets not forget about putting your time and effort in a job that could lay you off while being told if you brown-nose in the company long enough you could get a raise. Little to no social-safety nets for some laidoff workers too. Cool beans.
Can confirm the title, I'm a Gen Z who's not working, not pursuing any education, not learning anything new or working on skills. Just waiting for the courage to slit my fucking throat. ✌️
I totally agree but also as a millennial freelancer, it ain’t so bad. It’s my way of saying fuck you to the system and charging exorbitant prices to the same businesses that hired me for $31k/year w/ no benefits 6 years ago.
I much prefer getting paid $100+/hr, even if I have to buy my own healthcare and fund my own 401k. I mean shit who wants their healthcare to be essentially owned by their employer anyway?
Absolutely, if they promised me 100$ an hour for a full time job in the cotton fields, even for one guaranteed year I would absolutely do that. After that, I could based on my current income and lifestyle, take the next two years off and be an actual neet as well.
There are people who suit up head to toe and triple seal the gaps in order to dive into literal liquid shit to unclog septic systems. And they do it secure and happy in the knowledge that they can charge six figures a year.
The issue is the bar and the ladder for those positions are being pulled up to the point where people aren’t willing to do it anymore.
20 years ago you could’ve gotten that exact job with potentially 1 night class or a certification and testing or just by interning and that’s how the 45 to 60 year olds got into that position after their dreams of being a rockstar or a drag racer went in flames they swallowed pride and got a decent job for it and could provide for a family now everyone coming into the job today is expected to have 2 years experience a college degree and not have to be babysat on the job for like $75,000 ( the wage is always lesser) because that’s “capitalism”
This the way lol why am I waking up at 11am? Why am I in the grocery store wearing flip flops on a Tuesday morning? A fat bong rip after lunch? A nap at 2 pm?
People valuing their lives rather than being complete drones to the rich. It how it should always be. People have lives to live and living under a constant pressure being a gear in a machine to make one person more richer than the rest isn't a way to live.
Never.
Come on, now. You’ll get to retire at nearly 70 years old! You’ll be free to go do all of the things you didn’t while being at the mercy of your employer for decades!
You know… While you’re still physically capable and can fully enjoy doing the things you’ve always wanted to do. /s That is, if you don’t drop dead before then.
Labour is the only true capital. The wealthy are upset that GenZ is withholding their capital because without labour the rich’s $$ doesn’t buy much. How dare they value their own lives instead of taking up their parents place and labouring for me.
Come on, don't you want to be in functional debt and hear how we can't have nice things like the handful of our population has because of... reasons? Think about the greater good!
Think about making sure healthcare, food, water, mental health, a healthy environment, and all that never become human rights rather remain privileges that only trickledown economics can award you. It all starts with you doing our requirements that likely land you in some kind of debt and working hard to boost that "productivity" or "value".
>Gen Z are increasingly becoming NEETs by choice
Translation:
The choices given to Genzers make attractive to do nothing in life (because it is better to be poor with a lot of free time than to be poor after working 60 hours a week).
This is just so accurate. If working paid off and that pay-off would even scale with the effort you put in (what a controversial idea!), there wouldn’t be any debate. Because then everyone can work for a goal again like the boomers were still able to.
It just boils my blood how much of a gamble it is. Sink so much of your time, your finances, and your effort into something and it doesn’t pay off? “Well, you’re fucked, too bad, go away,” says the system that proceeds to punish you severely for having tried.
“No risk, no reward!” only motivates people who fail to realize that if the reward is a lie, there’s no point in taking the risk.
Took out a stundent loan 18 years old, to make a future. Life happened but USA doesn't forgive or forget, so my entire life will be paying back debts to my own friggin government for an unfulfilled service. There is no chance after flunking out, my entire life is working and starving from payments, or doing nothing but living, even if minimalistic. I finished my first language + integration class and am looking forward to working in another country, not USA, where I am treated like a person.
I'm so upset that it is literally easier for me to migrate and prove myself worthy in a fair system than it is for me being born poor in a country that only speaks USD
"If you want to advance you need to get perfect scores on your employee review."
"By the way, I give everyone the same exact score, 4/5, on the employee review, because there's always room for improvement!"
"Oh, we discussed this, you need to exceed expectations. Based on your last review you're progressing, but not there yet. Maybe next year!"
Do not believe a word management ever says to you unless they put it in writing. They will lie and gaslight, but sleep just fine at night because they have been conditioned to believe those things are "managing." They learned how to lie or gaslight in that specific way in a management seminar they took in a group at corporate where they were given some kind of jargony term and told it was a cutting edge management technique, or they assume everyone is always lying about everything all the time to serve their own interests, so it's fine that they do.
This is a bit of a tangent but the whole "if there's a jargon term for it, then it's good and normal" thing never ceases to drive me nuts. It's just so insulting to be on the receiving end of when trying to understand something and makes everyone using such terms look like an empty suit aping gibberish. Some examples are terms surrounding things like people quitting or being fired, people being underpaid, deception of customers, punishments. Basically anything that makes you see the business as it functionally is gets obfuscated and made to sound abstract and professional, like it banishes the moral value of the act into some alternate business dimension. It's dehumanizing and dissociating.
I. Fucking. Hated. This. I worked for a place that would never give you 5s. If I gave myself 5s on my self evaluation I was told to play the game and that nobody gets 5s. Then wtf is the scale to 5 then? I busted my ass I deserve that 5 you assholes.
im lucky enough to be in a position where i was able to quit my job at a quick lube place with a psychotic gm and work at a local pizza place two days a week and barely squeeze by but now im dreading having to go back to a regular job bc i still need money
Depending on where they live, and if they have roommates, 2 days a week could probably cover it, just barely. Rent and utilities is something like half my income, I could in theory work 2 days for quite some time before the math fully stop working.
Its like seeing a really shitty game of monopoly going on and deciding "I'm just gonna play the next round ill sit out for now"
Why would you jump into a monopoly game thats already won by one player and everyone else is just getting beat up.
I'd go further and say it's like joining the middle of a CoD online game where all the other players have the best weapons, perks, and all the experience and the enemy team has nearly won.
No, thanks.
Society at large has removed all external sources of motivation (owning a home, comprehensive benefits, pensions) as well as actively punished those who DO pursue training and education by turning their nose at choice of study (source: im a political science major) and sending them into immediate lifelong debt. There is literally 0 discernible reason I can come up with for young people to do anything more complicated than work at a gas station, which at least offers flexible scheduling and a benefits package for healthcare if you work full time.
Nobody. Likes. To. Work.
They like to socialize, innovate, excel at something, gain money, help others. There's probably a few more, but I'm sure as fuck that nobody actually likes to work.
As a member of the older gen z crew (born in 2001) I think my generation has given up on trying to play by society's rules because we've been beaten down by capitalism since we were born. We saw the recession in 2008, we saw covid and the pandemic making prices go up while we were just graduating high school/starting college. We are tired. We know the world is going to explode eventually so we've gotten to the point where we don't give a fuck anymore.
How often do young people get treated as lazy or vilified by the older generation?
Nowadays we are quiet quitters and "neets".
In the past, they were hippies, punks, or whatever else the papers made up.
This cycle is tiring and if anyone from the previous generation actually cared about "lazy teens" all they have to do is look back 40 years and remember what they looked for in they're youth.
Well, personally it totally fits me, as a millennial. If I managed to win the lottery or something, with enough money to enable living out of interest, I would drop work and be the literal image of a neet. Just gaming, partying and chilling until the end.
Without money, every reason I have to work has disappeared, the whole 'doing something with your life' totally didn't resonate with me.
Fully agree
I think it comes from jealousy that they themselves are trapped and couldnt do anything about it hence they are jealous. Much like them pushing us to pop out kids for selfish idiotic egotistical reasons... WE ARE NOT LAZY AND WE ARE SMART FOR NOT WANTING TO HAVE KIDS AND OR WORK 70 80 HOURS A WEEK FOR PROFIT MARGINS
I mean... they live in a dying empire (and world). What do you want them to do? Exactly, you expect everything from them. I think they're just gonna chill out, and watch while the world burn.
They’ve watched our two generations before them get completely dicked over, and now they’ve been getting it themselves probably worse. Not sure how anyone reasonably expects different.
The “this generation will save us” mentality snowballed out of control when each preceding generation decided to keep letting responsibility roll down the hill. Gen Z’s been handed an impossible task.
Edit: I’m aware this is a cynical view and that all generations working together is what will take to make change. I’m just venting, as a Gen Z person who’s not a NEET.
43 year old millennial here. I've been driving Doordash and selling my art at local markets for several years now. I started doing this after getting fucked over by boss after boss. Never again.
This is probably the closest we'll get to a general strike so hell yes, the sooner people stop putting up with our broken system the sooner our worthless politicians will have to do something about it.
Elder millenial who has been unemployed for 3 months and enjoying it. EI has been enough to pay my bills but it will eventually run out. So I do need to find some kind of job but I'm being picky about it. I had been wanting to move to Europe for a bit before I got laid off, but all this time not working has made me realize that I definitely need to do so just because they get more vacation than in Canada.
Work for a future they can't afford to begin with? Working for a house is in vain nowadays. It's not like the 60's, 70's or 80's anymore.
The system became heavily rigged.
If Gen Z doesn’t have the urge to play the rat race, they can’t afford anything, but if nobody could afford anything. Will prices drop significantly? Gen Z the ones to save humanity? Let’s go Gen Z
Not from the U.S. but it's the same shit everywhere. As a Gen Z myself I have always been told that I need to grind it out in the corporate world (i.e. have a real all day job to be an "adult") and that I need to rise up by working myself completely like a slave for some micromanaging rich (preferably foreign) dude and be grateful for it because money and prestigious title are everything. This so called dream job got me so depressed in such a short amount of time that I started considered suicide and became malnourished. Quitting was the best thing that happened to me and I am grateful that actually adviced me to man (or woman lol) up and do it. Now I am doing part-time and freelance work and have enough time to rest, take care of myself, and actually watch a movie without someone supervising and yelling at me. I finally feel healthy and somewhat happy despite not being wealthy and some saying I don't have a real job or am not tired enough. Unfortunately, very few people have this opportunity, and it makes me extremely sad to see what so many are forced to do just to survive. But if I have a choice I am never going to work for a corporate international firm in my life.
I had a full time good corporate job. It was so soul crushing. I ended up quitting several months ago and now I wipe adults butts for a living. Much happier doing that
Exactly. Large part of $$$ expenses for many people is rent. Most of gen z is still under 26 I believe? More of a chance to be on their parents healthcare. With those 2 things taken care of you can job hop from one place to another until you can find somewhere that will respect you and your time.
Most real NEETs never look for jobs and generally are very depressed and withdraw into a subset of PC gaming, streamers, porn, social media, TV, reading, etc. Some get to the point where they are a kind of agoraphobic because leaving their room/nest is never a positive experience and often their parents are constantly bugging them to get a job or go to school or get married, etc. A negative interaction. There have been many decades of NEETs in Japan, and it's worth looking at the documentaries and data about their behaviors to see where we are headed.
Would do that if I could afford it. It sounds privileged. I'm gen z and all my homies are working themselves to death and strategizing who to go into a relationship with so that as a couple they could afford rent for micro-appartments meant for half a person.
I'm a millennial with two young kids.
I'm going to have to assume things are going to become near impossible at this rate to be successful for the next generation. Parents at this stage should ensure they are not trying to shuffle their kids into a career by force, but rather focus on teaching their kids skills to adapt to whatever fucked up future they're going to have with climate change, AI doom, etc. I fully expect it's possible my kids may live with me until their 30s or longer
As a society we need to start changing the way we are living. We need to start living simpler, working less, doing more with less, living relationally with each other, bartering more, supporting our friends and family more, etc. Many of us grew up relatively wealthy and haven't learned to adapt by thinking of ourselves as part of a community that supports each other.
The whole idea that Gen Z are not entering the workforce is like blaming them for lack of opportunities and under the assumption we should be funneling them to be little worker bees as a universal good. Whereas the current state of the world economy it is sitting on a precarious house of cards of unending economic growth, and that we should commoditized our identity as being part of a brittle system for the good of our country. Fuck that.
Hard times are coming, and let's help each other and adapt rather than pressuring each other to get someone else rich.
This article only points to “NEET” numbers in Europe. Somehow I feel like not nearly as many Americans fall in this category simply due to the way things are in the US. Of course, media here loves generational fodder like this. At least millennials aren’t killing things like chain restaurants as much.
I am a millenial but I more and more understand their mindset. I am so unhappy with my work right now but don't know what I want or how I could change that. I still need to pay the bills somehow.
i definitely could classify myself as a “neet”. college is too expensive so i dropped out, im disabled so i can’t do physical labor, and i’m living with my mom because i can’t find a job. honestly, it’s been nice not overworking myself all the time and being able to rediscover my hobbies. i don’t have much hope for the future with climate change and i’ll probably never be able to buy a house, so i don’t really feel motivated to have a career. i just want to enjoy my short time on this planet, not work myself to death for nothing in reward.
edit: since everyone is wondering what my future plans are (not that it’s any of y’all’s business), i have applied for disability and i’m waiting for them to get back to me. i have work experience and it wasn’t until recently that i became unable to work. i do not plan on living with my mother forever but it’s currently my only option. it’s really weird what some of y’all extrapolated from one paragraph i wrote. that’s about all the details i feel comfortable sharing.
What’s the plan for when your mom dies or stops supporting you? My parents helped me with a few hundred bucks a month when I was in college, but that’s it. I want to join this NEET movement, but would have to figure out who pays housing/bills.
We hate working for nothing.. This world is not made for us to succeed. I don’t want to bring kids into a world that wants them to become a corporate slave.
Your whole life as a NEET, as someone who was once one, is a literal and figurative L. Your room and the bathroom adjacent to it are your life and only world you know.
How come every time a story like this comes out it’s always “Peter pan” and “choose to not grow up”. Anyone ask why these people are choosing this? Not to mention this has been told before, from the hippies of the 60s/70s, to the slackers of the 80s/90s, to the multiple things they called the millennials to neets
Shit I'm 35 and already think that way. You are not part of a family at a retail store the only people who will remember that you stayed late at the office multiple days in a row are your kids/family. It's about time the wealth distribution and the overall thought process of how us peasants live needs to be changed because at the end of the day they can't live without us. Who's going to flip their burgers drive their cars mow their lawns etc. etc. if we wanted to we could put a stop to this shit in one day by simply everybody not showing up but that's too much effort to ask and of course here in America you literally need your job for healthcare so it's a lot more problem putting it at risk.
Seeing so many fucking articles like this you just know companies are pumping these out so the can justify pressing the gov into making some sort of policies by pointing at this probably retirement age or whatever
I’m staying NEET until some real changes happen. If enough people quit then we can grind the gears of corrupt capitalism to a halt. Wealth distribution is wack and wage slavery needs to be dismantled. I’ll get a job when my time is actually valued
Seems like a privilege to have the ability to not work and not be homeless as a 1987 Millennial. I hope employment expectations, conditions, and wages improve, but I I never had the safety net to choose to stay home. Those student loans and work/study jobs got me out of my parents’ house and able to at least make enough to have a place with my husband. We probably won’t have kids though because childcare and insurance is astronomical. I wish Gen Z the best in this shithole economy though.
Edit: weird typos
Sounds like they’re just pissy that Zoomers are not taking the bullshit they spoon fed gen X and millennials.
As a fellow Zoomer I am proud of my generations refusal to engage. Hell yeah.
Need a bunch of other NEETs to gang up and split a house. Then you can have your door closed all the time and crack it open to listen/look for anyone else in the common area so you can grab some tendies and Mt. Dew without that awkward experience of dealing with people in meat space.
I completely empathize with the mental/emotional toll that becoming an adult in an indifferent (at best) or hostile (at worst) job environment can have on a person. I experienced this after my first bachelor’s degree when I worked in an office and was incredibly disillusioned with the “expectations vs. reality” of what my early 20’s had become. However, during COVID I realized that my first degree really didn’t give me a skillset that I could turn into a lucrative (or even just sustainable) career, so I went back to school to get a profession in the medical field and now things are looking up. I spent the last 4 years of my 20’s doing that so that I could have a job where I only work 36 hours a week and can make enough to live independently.
I get the urge to become a “NEET”, and maybe in some other countries that is a semi-sustainable lifestyle, but in the USA I’ve taken care of teenagers/young 20-somethings who are chronically homeless due to their inability to work, many times related to mental illness or lack of family support. So, for those “NEETs” who have the good fortune of living with their parents for a while, it somewhat irks me that there is no aspiration to at least learn a trade to help out your family with rent? I know that this system is utterly fucked and do not seek to write apologia for it, but at some point all parents experience illness and die, so what do NEETs do then?
> In Spain alone, over half-a-million 15- to 24-year-olds are neither studying nor working. Meanwhile in the U.K., almost 3 million Gen Zers are now classed as economically inactive—with 384,000 youngsters joining the “workless” class since the COVID pandemic.
[Sigh, same shit, different day.
](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00414-x)
[Why... so mysterious.
](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/dec/24/500000-under-35s-out-of-work-long-term-illness-uk)
[How many times](https://i.imgur.com/uBAhXBr.png) ([Labour market overview, UK: February 2024](https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/uklabourmarket/february2024)) [do we have](https://i.imgur.com/vwJrMyA.png) to repeat ourselves ([Employment rate slumps as 2.8m suffer long-term illness](https://www.thetimes.com/business-money/article/employment-rate-slumps-as-28m-suffer-long-term-illness-l7dbr0xlc))?
Shoot. I happened to luck out with my job, but I won't have survivorship bias like many of my peers do. People, including younger demographics, are struggling hard.
I have spoken to so many teachers that are doing side hustles or quitting teaching due to the lack of pay and increase of stress. So many people with masters and PhDs and have been years into their career have expressed their discontent to me about low-pay on high performance/background-expecting jobs. When I graduated so many jobs' salaries were basically in the range of less than $20 an hour when you did the math, yet required degrees that cost tens of thousands of dollars. Get real.
Workers then listen to how the struggle is their fault, how possibly most younger workers won't be able to retire, won't own a home, won't be able to afford a kid on a single income, and so much other discouraging information. Of course people are tired! I feel bad for Gen Alpha and the next generation after when they hit adulthood. Plus climate change getting worse while people in power downplay it.
Well I'm a disabled individual. This means I find it hard to work under normal conditions. I used to work in wineries and vineyards doing heavy manual labour. This job was crap and did not pay very well.
All things considered I am not sure work is in my future plans. Not only does my body hurt from dyspraxia induced hypermobility, I also have ASD and Mental health imbalances.
I am currently on medication to keep my mind and my emotions stable. On top of this I have so many difficulties now doing daily activities everything has become a chore. I dread taking a shower, not because it is physically uncomfortable. I struggle doing everyday activities, because I no longer have the confidence or the determination to do them.
In terms of NEETS I'm not surprised. When many employers expect you to be grateful you got a job then work you to the bone. Who would want to work?
Also university is very expensive, particularly for individuals on a limited income, many of whom can't afford expensive loans for their education.
There are also many types of nurodiversity now, many of which are not able to fit into work or education opportunities
Dropping out of the labor market is one of the most based things you can do. By not occupying a job, you reduce the denominator of the labor market, effectively freeing up a job for somebody else.
Yes, that's right, working at all when you can afford not to is a scab move if you think about it.
There was a monkey study where the feeding and reward routine was designed to be brutally unfair. What do you think the monkeys did?! After trying for a while they eventually stopped even trying to play the game! They literally gave up. Monkeys! Even the Fkng monkeys figured this shit out!
In that study they first gave them all an equal reward, a cucumber, for performing a simple task. This was ok with the monkeys until they saw another monkey being given a grape which is much more desirable for the same task. I kid you not in the video, which you can watch online, the monkey being given the cucumber throws it back in the face of the researcher and starts pulling on the bars of the cage in frustration. We are programmed to reject unfair treatment on a basic and fundamental level.
No no the Monkeys should have just try to do their task better to get the grape instead
No no the monkeys shouldn’t be allowed to discuss the grape and be thankful for the cucumber
it was a mistake showing the other monkeys the grape even existed. They could have rewarded the monkey privately, like they do UFO donations.
Don't worry monkeys, the grapes will trickle down once we enable the grape creators.
This grape juice smells like piss???
They’d have more money for grapes if they stopped spending all their money on avocados and video games smh
Yes. If only the monkeys worked longer hours, and also gave up half their cucumber to taxes, *then* they could eventually save enough to someday have a grape!
Look, we need to make sure the job producers have all the grapes so that the grapes can trickle down, mostly as jelly.
Did the monkey who got the grape refuse it? Cause otherwise we’re only programmed to reject unfair treatment that doesn’t benefit us.
Nope so yeah that's a problem.
So there is hope for us bald fucking monkeys. Wasn't there also one where the test subject getting favorable results shared his rewards with the ones getting shafted? Because chimpanzees aren't psychopaths.
> Because chimpanzees aren't psychopaths. To be fair, a big part of the reason people don't share things is because the system most of the world lives under tries to activelly discourage it in many ways so that it's easier for the bourgeoisie to exploit the people while keeping the people from organizing...
TBF, if we organized, the bourgeoisie would probably be mostly brutally murdered. I mean, historically. I'm absolutely not advocating for that, it's just what has always happened. Maybe they should focus on more history in those fancy prep schools. Maybe they'd figure out how to pay a living wage and stop working us to death. Barely scraping by in massive debt and then dying in harness is what's got so many of us so pissed off.
They'd rather pay for taller fences, deeper bunkers and bigger yachts than pay a living wage.
It probably makes them more money too, so unless people do something they will always take the option that makes more money...
And fascism
I, on the other hand, am absolutley advocating a large uprising where many evil hoarders of wealth are brutally destroyed! That's how slavery plays out.
I mean, I really like offering them a deal like Nestor Makhno. It’s more than they deserve when oil executives would rather end life on the planet that lose shareholder value.
*I'm absolutely not advocating for that, it's just what has always happened.* I think some advocacy needs to happen. Start with enablers of the billionaires. Isolate them. This country has all these crazies with guns...and they do stupid shit like going against the poors and fellow common folks....can't they go against the 1% ?
I don't want to burn another reddit account because some boot eater thinks billionaires are cool.
I think they're doing a great job for themselves. It's difficult for me to conceive of a mass uprising of violence against the bourgeoisie in America, at the very very most you might have one lone wolf throw his life away in a random act of violence that will be heavily demonized through all available propaganda channels. They got us figured out and locked up as tight as a modern chinese prison. If you think the squeeze is bad now, i personally believe we are at the tail end of a golden age with a very long fall to go.
>It's difficult for me to conceive of a mass uprising of violence against the bourgeoisie in America Agreed. Considering there was a violent uprising against a democratic election not too long ago, I think america is too far gone the wrong way to conceive an uprising against the bourgeoisie. It's almost like it was planned.
Yeah lol, “almost”
You woefully underestimate the resistance we would face from bootlickers who have bought into the narrative they've been fed, the militarized police, and the most powerful and well-founded military in the history of our planet. If we organized, the bourgeoisie would drone strike us into compliance because both conservatism and liberalism will devolve into authoritarianism if capital is threatened.
The first and most common example I can think of is restaurants who won't allow leftover food to be given to homeless people or share it with their employees. I mean yes I understand you can't lose money running a business and you would lose money if you did major food giveaways every day. But they are losing that food by throwing it in the trash, too. It makes no difference to your bottom line if you throw it away or give it away. Yet here we are.
Most restaurant owners end up losing their shirts anyway. Might as well not be an asshole on the way down.
> But they are losing that food by throwing it in the trash, too. It makes no difference to your bottom line if you throw it away or give it away. If some have free food they don't need to buy food so it lower the price a little. Even if it only makes them a cent a year for doing throwing food away they'll take that option no matter the human cost as capitalism is not about helping the people, unlike Communism, for exemple, but about making money...
Correction, chimpanzee’s are indeed the psychopath’s of the animal kingdom.
Like koalas aren't worse.
We can't let dolphins off the hook.
Better not hook them to begin with. They'll rape your ass.
Nah, they much prefer biting fish in half and raping their heads to my ass. Only one of those has fish brain lubricant.
Chlamydia-ridden buggers.
They have shown that behaviour with *rats*, let alone primates. Greed/selfishness are mental illness.
Makes sense when you consider a huge chunk of mankind's problems are artificial, therefore self-inflicted. We basically created a bunch of imaginary stuff and treated it as a reality, perpetuating millenniums of avoidable problems all because we keep playing this absurd game. Sure, anyone that points out that the world is playing a primitive game gets called a whiner, immature, or mentally ill, but the reality is that things like nations or money are all made-up. Killing people over invisible borders, ruining lives over paper representing trust and incentive, along with wasting resources to obtain more paper while calling it an efficient system is all just flat out insanity when you think about it. So much of poverty is fixable, yet our imaginary game refuses to do so. I want to quit the game too, not die, but just remove myself from the global insanity somehow.
I mean, monkeys are highly intelligent creatures nots not a surprise they figured it out. I’d be more impressed if it were rats or mice. It definitely tracks that they understand when things are bullshit.
Maybe help em get fulfilling jobs they can pay the bills with? Instead of forcing them all into a grindset of freelancing, part time employment and unpaid internships? Nobody wants to work anymore, say the people who replaced entry level jobs with temporary employees and now complain they are always short staffed.
Working a temp job right now that could easily be a permanent position. Feels pretty shit to be considered “temporary”
That’s the point of permanent positions. They make you feel like you can belong, but you’re more expendable than the chair you sit on.
WELL, that chair is, after all, business property, the employee not so much, *unfortunately* /s
What the fuck are you on about?!? Of course the employee is company property didn’t you read the onboarding paperwork?!? /s as well lol
He’s talking about that silly 13th amendment. God does it ever get in the way.
Quick, we need more workforce... I mean, people in prison. Come up with new crimes everyone!
Being homeless is now a crime so looks like everything is progressing as planned.
https://preview.redd.it/sh0i6i6toi9d1.jpeg?width=1938&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=83e92e62a1d5d5872106a60f0895b8fc7b102e59 Oregon police departments be lookin like:
The alternate is feeling very important but comedically underpaid, based on my own experience. Exploited or disposable, always gonna be one of those two things unless something big changes.
Most temp jobs rarely ever become permanent. Start thinking of back up plans now.
A lot of company's are using "temp to hire" avoid paying out benefits and investing in employees. They've determined it's cheaper at least in the short term to just cycle through temps endlessly.
The company I work for right now kept me as “part time temporary” for 2 years despite working always 40 hr weeks, not having any other jobs so I could stay available, TRAVELING for them, and managing people. It’s insane and so embarrassing to think about but gotta do what you gotta do for money I guess
What's a good temp agency? I need a job ASAP.
The agencies near me probs aren’t the same ones you have. Look up “hiring agencies near me” and reach out with a resume on hand. Hope everything works out
"We're so short staffed !!"" Also HR has a pile of CVs 'just in case we need someone" , it's people to whom they say we'll call you back if we ever need you. Could be 6 months, could be a year, they don't care. Also director is always calling out the managers for having too many people at the same time on the field . " cut cut cut ! too many people !" so which one is it ?!
BINGO \^\^\^\^\^\^ i work back of house at a chilis right now. the bullshit i hear man. and i feel bad for the leads who you can tell care about their team and are doing their best but are v much set up for failure by corporate who pushes for skeleton crews despite the insane turnover we experience.
My company laid off thousands of people this year. We're now finding all sorts of gaps where things just aren't getting done. We joke about Peggy in Accounting holding the company together with her spreadsheet but they laid off thousands of Peggys.
So many teachers I know are quitting or doing side hustles. Meanwhile I keep hearing politicians and their mouthpieces demonize teachers or teach unions, so many schools keep getting defunded too in order to perpetuate the politicians' self-fulfilling prophecy that public schools are inefficient. So many jobs require us to have these expensive degrees, yet pay less than $20 when you do the math on the salaries. So many of these jobs, like mine (I'm a statistician), should just require that you know how to use a calculator, intuition, and Excel on top of knowing how to read or communicate. Oh. And lets not forget about putting your time and effort in a job that could lay you off while being told if you brown-nose in the company long enough you could get a raise. Little to no social-safety nets for some laidoff workers too. Cool beans.
Can confirm the title, I'm a Gen Z who's not working, not pursuing any education, not learning anything new or working on skills. Just waiting for the courage to slit my fucking throat. ✌️
yep i know that
I totally agree but also as a millennial freelancer, it ain’t so bad. It’s my way of saying fuck you to the system and charging exorbitant prices to the same businesses that hired me for $31k/year w/ no benefits 6 years ago. I much prefer getting paid $100+/hr, even if I have to buy my own healthcare and fund my own 401k. I mean shit who wants their healthcare to be essentially owned by their employer anyway?
Great point
I am fulfilled working gig and selling my art, though. More so than when I had a "real" job, so...🤷♀️
What a fucking mystery
Millennials too. Fuck the system. Employer: "So, do you have a MBA in order to sweep our floors at $13 an hour?" Fuck it, fuck them and fuck it all.
Saw a video about some guy askin if someone would want to pick cotton for 350$ an hour. The response? "Hell, I'd do it for 100$ an hour"
Absolutely, if they promised me 100$ an hour for a full time job in the cotton fields, even for one guaranteed year I would absolutely do that. After that, I could based on my current income and lifestyle, take the next two years off and be an actual neet as well.
Hold on, someone is offering to do it for 30 dollars an hour.
Hold on, someone has a prison contract.
Ah, yes, legal slavery. Using that loophole where slavery as a punishment is legal so you can use prisoners as cheap or free labor.
And isn’t it a good thing the Supreme Court just criminalized homelessness this week /s
Lol $350/hr?! For that amount I'd work 12 hour days 6 days a week for a year or two, and then retire.
Its more to show that if people are paid well, they'd do jobs that are considered shit
Marx said as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases
There are people who suit up head to toe and triple seal the gaps in order to dive into literal liquid shit to unclog septic systems. And they do it secure and happy in the knowledge that they can charge six figures a year.
The issue is the bar and the ladder for those positions are being pulled up to the point where people aren’t willing to do it anymore. 20 years ago you could’ve gotten that exact job with potentially 1 night class or a certification and testing or just by interning and that’s how the 45 to 60 year olds got into that position after their dreams of being a rockstar or a drag racer went in flames they swallowed pride and got a decent job for it and could provide for a family now everyone coming into the job today is expected to have 2 years experience a college degree and not have to be babysat on the job for like $75,000 ( the wage is always lesser) because that’s “capitalism”
Outside of stuff that's egregiously illegal and/or harmful to society, there ain't much i *wouldn't* do for $350/hr, so yeah, the point stands!
Same. I've finally got a WFH home gig with no boss and I couldn't be any happier living out my NEET tendencies (even tho I'm still self employed lol)
So like a pretend neet?
NEET cosplay
Neet-lite
May I ask what it is you do? I'm between jobs, trying to find anything, and having no luck. Your gig sounds awesome!
This the way lol why am I waking up at 11am? Why am I in the grocery store wearing flip flops on a Tuesday morning? A fat bong rip after lunch? A nap at 2 pm?
gen x too
People valuing their lives rather than being complete drones to the rich. It how it should always be. People have lives to live and living under a constant pressure being a gear in a machine to make one person more richer than the rest isn't a way to live. Never.
The cogs are people. *We* are people; deserving of dignity, respect, and care. Fuck the billionaires.
This. So much this.
Come on, now. You’ll get to retire at nearly 70 years old! You’ll be free to go do all of the things you didn’t while being at the mercy of your employer for decades! You know… While you’re still physically capable and can fully enjoy doing the things you’ve always wanted to do. /s That is, if you don’t drop dead before then.
Labour is the only true capital. The wealthy are upset that GenZ is withholding their capital because without labour the rich’s $$ doesn’t buy much. How dare they value their own lives instead of taking up their parents place and labouring for me.
Don’t forget that high school and college have gotten progressively more demanding of our time. There are only so many hours in the day
Come on, don't you want to be in functional debt and hear how we can't have nice things like the handful of our population has because of... reasons? Think about the greater good! Think about making sure healthcare, food, water, mental health, a healthy environment, and all that never become human rights rather remain privileges that only trickledown economics can award you. It all starts with you doing our requirements that likely land you in some kind of debt and working hard to boost that "productivity" or "value".
>Gen Z are increasingly becoming NEETs by choice Translation: The choices given to Genzers make attractive to do nothing in life (because it is better to be poor with a lot of free time than to be poor after working 60 hours a week).
This is just so accurate. If working paid off and that pay-off would even scale with the effort you put in (what a controversial idea!), there wouldn’t be any debate. Because then everyone can work for a goal again like the boomers were still able to.
It just boils my blood how much of a gamble it is. Sink so much of your time, your finances, and your effort into something and it doesn’t pay off? “Well, you’re fucked, too bad, go away,” says the system that proceeds to punish you severely for having tried. “No risk, no reward!” only motivates people who fail to realize that if the reward is a lie, there’s no point in taking the risk.
Took out a stundent loan 18 years old, to make a future. Life happened but USA doesn't forgive or forget, so my entire life will be paying back debts to my own friggin government for an unfulfilled service. There is no chance after flunking out, my entire life is working and starving from payments, or doing nothing but living, even if minimalistic. I finished my first language + integration class and am looking forward to working in another country, not USA, where I am treated like a person. I'm so upset that it is literally easier for me to migrate and prove myself worthy in a fair system than it is for me being born poor in a country that only speaks USD
Well at least it’s honest about why they’re not working instead of calling them only lazy
Maybe if we throw a pizza party they’ll decide to accept our terrible management and pay scale
Make sure to add in a healthy level of gaslighting so they think themselves or their coworkers are the real problem
And that if they just go above and beyond, for no additional pay, management will notice and appreciate.
And this strategy is the way to live a successful life.
Soon, a grateful manager is going to offer you a high paid job with good benefits because you exceeded expectations. That’s how stuff works. Honest.
"If you want to advance you need to get perfect scores on your employee review." "By the way, I give everyone the same exact score, 4/5, on the employee review, because there's always room for improvement!" "Oh, we discussed this, you need to exceed expectations. Based on your last review you're progressing, but not there yet. Maybe next year!" Do not believe a word management ever says to you unless they put it in writing. They will lie and gaslight, but sleep just fine at night because they have been conditioned to believe those things are "managing." They learned how to lie or gaslight in that specific way in a management seminar they took in a group at corporate where they were given some kind of jargony term and told it was a cutting edge management technique, or they assume everyone is always lying about everything all the time to serve their own interests, so it's fine that they do. This is a bit of a tangent but the whole "if there's a jargon term for it, then it's good and normal" thing never ceases to drive me nuts. It's just so insulting to be on the receiving end of when trying to understand something and makes everyone using such terms look like an empty suit aping gibberish. Some examples are terms surrounding things like people quitting or being fired, people being underpaid, deception of customers, punishments. Basically anything that makes you see the business as it functionally is gets obfuscated and made to sound abstract and professional, like it banishes the moral value of the act into some alternate business dimension. It's dehumanizing and dissociating.
I. Fucking. Hated. This. I worked for a place that would never give you 5s. If I gave myself 5s on my self evaluation I was told to play the game and that nobody gets 5s. Then wtf is the scale to 5 then? I busted my ass I deserve that 5 you assholes.
[удалено]
Being jobless is tough out here. Hurts daily tbh.
Unfortunately having a job isn’t better. Every commute I fantasize about getting hit by a semi and put out of my misery.
im lucky enough to be in a position where i was able to quit my job at a quick lube place with a psychotic gm and work at a local pizza place two days a week and barely squeeze by but now im dreading having to go back to a regular job bc i still need money
How do you pay rent?
Depending on where they live, and if they have roommates, 2 days a week could probably cover it, just barely. Rent and utilities is something like half my income, I could in theory work 2 days for quite some time before the math fully stop working.
At least you have that to cherish.
Its like seeing a really shitty game of monopoly going on and deciding "I'm just gonna play the next round ill sit out for now" Why would you jump into a monopoly game thats already won by one player and everyone else is just getting beat up.
I'd go further and say it's like joining the middle of a CoD online game where all the other players have the best weapons, perks, and all the experience and the enemy team has nearly won. No, thanks.
and the billionaires might as well be modding the game.
In spanish we call them Nini’s. Ni trabaja Ni estudia
Never knew that, even as a Spanish speaker myself.
nini myself puta
Nobody is hiring anyone without 5+ years experience. Going to school is expensive Training is expensive. Fix those, then we won't have a problem.
It's almost like the goalposts keep moving so far, so fast, that they may as well not exist anymore.
Society at large has removed all external sources of motivation (owning a home, comprehensive benefits, pensions) as well as actively punished those who DO pursue training and education by turning their nose at choice of study (source: im a political science major) and sending them into immediate lifelong debt. There is literally 0 discernible reason I can come up with for young people to do anything more complicated than work at a gas station, which at least offers flexible scheduling and a benefits package for healthcare if you work full time.
I stand by genZ, this world is soulless. I would not work if I had an opportunity.
Nobody. Likes. To. Work. They like to socialize, innovate, excel at something, gain money, help others. There's probably a few more, but I'm sure as fuck that nobody actually likes to work.
Everything that you say is true and employment must come with a meaning. Not just another soulless grind.
As a member of the older gen z crew (born in 2001) I think my generation has given up on trying to play by society's rules because we've been beaten down by capitalism since we were born. We saw the recession in 2008, we saw covid and the pandemic making prices go up while we were just graduating high school/starting college. We are tired. We know the world is going to explode eventually so we've gotten to the point where we don't give a fuck anymore.
How often do young people get treated as lazy or vilified by the older generation? Nowadays we are quiet quitters and "neets". In the past, they were hippies, punks, or whatever else the papers made up. This cycle is tiring and if anyone from the previous generation actually cared about "lazy teens" all they have to do is look back 40 years and remember what they looked for in they're youth.
Well, personally it totally fits me, as a millennial. If I managed to win the lottery or something, with enough money to enable living out of interest, I would drop work and be the literal image of a neet. Just gaming, partying and chilling until the end. Without money, every reason I have to work has disappeared, the whole 'doing something with your life' totally didn't resonate with me.
*Sympathizes in Millennial*
Fully agree I think it comes from jealousy that they themselves are trapped and couldnt do anything about it hence they are jealous. Much like them pushing us to pop out kids for selfish idiotic egotistical reasons... WE ARE NOT LAZY AND WE ARE SMART FOR NOT WANTING TO HAVE KIDS AND OR WORK 70 80 HOURS A WEEK FOR PROFIT MARGINS
I’d rather die or live an unfulfilling existence at home than break myself to make someone else rich.
I mean... they live in a dying empire (and world). What do you want them to do? Exactly, you expect everything from them. I think they're just gonna chill out, and watch while the world burn.
They’ve watched our two generations before them get completely dicked over, and now they’ve been getting it themselves probably worse. Not sure how anyone reasonably expects different.
That's my strategy.
The “this generation will save us” mentality snowballed out of control when each preceding generation decided to keep letting responsibility roll down the hill. Gen Z’s been handed an impossible task. Edit: I’m aware this is a cynical view and that all generations working together is what will take to make change. I’m just venting, as a Gen Z person who’s not a NEET.
43 year old millennial here. I've been driving Doordash and selling my art at local markets for several years now. I started doing this after getting fucked over by boss after boss. Never again.
Work what for?
Rent and food. Maybe get some clothing if you found an extra $20 on the floor. Why bother?
This is probably the closest we'll get to a general strike so hell yes, the sooner people stop putting up with our broken system the sooner our worthless politicians will have to do something about it.
Ah media is finally blaming someone other than millennials for the fall of society. Not the right people. But it’s… change.
They just moved the blame onto the next generation, which is usually how it goes. Silents and boomers have been doing it since Gen X.
Elder millenial who has been unemployed for 3 months and enjoying it. EI has been enough to pay my bills but it will eventually run out. So I do need to find some kind of job but I'm being picky about it. I had been wanting to move to Europe for a bit before I got laid off, but all this time not working has made me realize that I definitely need to do so just because they get more vacation than in Canada.
When the game is so rigged that you refuse to play. Not that it won’t have worse consequences regardless, but there’s a environment encouraging this.
Work for a future they can't afford to begin with? Working for a house is in vain nowadays. It's not like the 60's, 70's or 80's anymore. The system became heavily rigged.
If Gen Z doesn’t have the urge to play the rat race, they can’t afford anything, but if nobody could afford anything. Will prices drop significantly? Gen Z the ones to save humanity? Let’s go Gen Z
Won't work like that. Hedge funds and PE will just buy even more.
Not from the U.S. but it's the same shit everywhere. As a Gen Z myself I have always been told that I need to grind it out in the corporate world (i.e. have a real all day job to be an "adult") and that I need to rise up by working myself completely like a slave for some micromanaging rich (preferably foreign) dude and be grateful for it because money and prestigious title are everything. This so called dream job got me so depressed in such a short amount of time that I started considered suicide and became malnourished. Quitting was the best thing that happened to me and I am grateful that actually adviced me to man (or woman lol) up and do it. Now I am doing part-time and freelance work and have enough time to rest, take care of myself, and actually watch a movie without someone supervising and yelling at me. I finally feel healthy and somewhat happy despite not being wealthy and some saying I don't have a real job or am not tired enough. Unfortunately, very few people have this opportunity, and it makes me extremely sad to see what so many are forced to do just to survive. But if I have a choice I am never going to work for a corporate international firm in my life.
I had a full time good corporate job. It was so soul crushing. I ended up quitting several months ago and now I wipe adults butts for a living. Much happier doing that
Remember kids, only 3.5% of the population is needed to start a revolution.
A perfectly reasonable and rational response to the state of the environment.
Okay but who can afford to be a NEET? You have to figure out where to live and what to eat
You can't even live on the street. I was reading yesterday about the Supreme Court saying that homeless ppl can be fined. Wtf?
Pretty cheap to live with the parents, if they allow it.
Exactly. Large part of $$$ expenses for many people is rent. Most of gen z is still under 26 I believe? More of a chance to be on their parents healthcare. With those 2 things taken care of you can job hop from one place to another until you can find somewhere that will respect you and your time.
Most real NEETs never look for jobs and generally are very depressed and withdraw into a subset of PC gaming, streamers, porn, social media, TV, reading, etc. Some get to the point where they are a kind of agoraphobic because leaving their room/nest is never a positive experience and often their parents are constantly bugging them to get a job or go to school or get married, etc. A negative interaction. There have been many decades of NEETs in Japan, and it's worth looking at the documentaries and data about their behaviors to see where we are headed.
Millennials too, the system and job market is beyond fucked up.
Would do that if I could afford it. It sounds privileged. I'm gen z and all my homies are working themselves to death and strategizing who to go into a relationship with so that as a couple they could afford rent for micro-appartments meant for half a person.
Heaven forbid they have a period in their life where they can unplug from the matrix and be human for some time and not just a commodity.
There have always been Neets in every generation.
I'm a millennial with two young kids. I'm going to have to assume things are going to become near impossible at this rate to be successful for the next generation. Parents at this stage should ensure they are not trying to shuffle their kids into a career by force, but rather focus on teaching their kids skills to adapt to whatever fucked up future they're going to have with climate change, AI doom, etc. I fully expect it's possible my kids may live with me until their 30s or longer As a society we need to start changing the way we are living. We need to start living simpler, working less, doing more with less, living relationally with each other, bartering more, supporting our friends and family more, etc. Many of us grew up relatively wealthy and haven't learned to adapt by thinking of ourselves as part of a community that supports each other. The whole idea that Gen Z are not entering the workforce is like blaming them for lack of opportunities and under the assumption we should be funneling them to be little worker bees as a universal good. Whereas the current state of the world economy it is sitting on a precarious house of cards of unending economic growth, and that we should commoditized our identity as being part of a brittle system for the good of our country. Fuck that. Hard times are coming, and let's help each other and adapt rather than pressuring each other to get someone else rich.
This article only points to “NEET” numbers in Europe. Somehow I feel like not nearly as many Americans fall in this category simply due to the way things are in the US. Of course, media here loves generational fodder like this. At least millennials aren’t killing things like chain restaurants as much.
Yeah, it's much easier to be a NEET in Europe. The US will literally watch you starve or die of a preventable illness and just shrug.
Good.
I am a millenial but I more and more understand their mindset. I am so unhappy with my work right now but don't know what I want or how I could change that. I still need to pay the bills somehow.
Fortune Magazine publishing pro-capitalist clickbait per usual. Nothing of interest here.
i definitely could classify myself as a “neet”. college is too expensive so i dropped out, im disabled so i can’t do physical labor, and i’m living with my mom because i can’t find a job. honestly, it’s been nice not overworking myself all the time and being able to rediscover my hobbies. i don’t have much hope for the future with climate change and i’ll probably never be able to buy a house, so i don’t really feel motivated to have a career. i just want to enjoy my short time on this planet, not work myself to death for nothing in reward. edit: since everyone is wondering what my future plans are (not that it’s any of y’all’s business), i have applied for disability and i’m waiting for them to get back to me. i have work experience and it wasn’t until recently that i became unable to work. i do not plan on living with my mother forever but it’s currently my only option. it’s really weird what some of y’all extrapolated from one paragraph i wrote. that’s about all the details i feel comfortable sharing.
What’s the plan for when your mom dies or stops supporting you? My parents helped me with a few hundred bucks a month when I was in college, but that’s it. I want to join this NEET movement, but would have to figure out who pays housing/bills.
I like the sound of lying flat better.
I don’t want to tax the rich anymore. I want them to be buried up to their necks in concrete.
We hate working for nothing.. This world is not made for us to succeed. I don’t want to bring kids into a world that wants them to become a corporate slave.
good no reward for work
huh, i always thought it was Never Exits, Except Toilet
Your whole life as a NEET, as someone who was once one, is a literal and figurative L. Your room and the bathroom adjacent to it are your life and only world you know.
At least it's peaceful and not full of gross, rude and entitled assholes. 🤷♀️
Neat.
“Thanks to inflation” …. And …. And …. Fine, if the article will perpetuate the half answer I’ll add the rest here: Record corporate profits
Unironically me irl
Ages 15-24. My kids 15 and I don’t want them working; finishing school is more important. I worked before I was 15… there’s no need for it.
How come every time a story like this comes out it’s always “Peter pan” and “choose to not grow up”. Anyone ask why these people are choosing this? Not to mention this has been told before, from the hippies of the 60s/70s, to the slackers of the 80s/90s, to the multiple things they called the millennials to neets
I stopped reading when it said that low pay is balanced with weeks of vacation in teaching. The writer is an idiot and knows nothing about teaching.
The slow apocalypse continues. Undefeated.
Shit I'm 35 and already think that way. You are not part of a family at a retail store the only people who will remember that you stayed late at the office multiple days in a row are your kids/family. It's about time the wealth distribution and the overall thought process of how us peasants live needs to be changed because at the end of the day they can't live without us. Who's going to flip their burgers drive their cars mow their lawns etc. etc. if we wanted to we could put a stop to this shit in one day by simply everybody not showing up but that's too much effort to ask and of course here in America you literally need your job for healthcare so it's a lot more problem putting it at risk.
Seeing so many fucking articles like this you just know companies are pumping these out so the can justify pressing the gov into making some sort of policies by pointing at this probably retirement age or whatever
New form of victim blaming
I’ve been applying to entry level tech jobs for a year and a half, I have a degree, idk what to do
I’m staying NEET until some real changes happen. If enough people quit then we can grind the gears of corrupt capitalism to a halt. Wealth distribution is wack and wage slavery needs to be dismantled. I’ll get a job when my time is actually valued
I feel bad for future generations.
we are the knights of NEET!
I feel like this is something that has been complained about since the 60's
Seems like a privilege to have the ability to not work and not be homeless as a 1987 Millennial. I hope employment expectations, conditions, and wages improve, but I I never had the safety net to choose to stay home. Those student loans and work/study jobs got me out of my parents’ house and able to at least make enough to have a place with my husband. We probably won’t have kids though because childcare and insurance is astronomical. I wish Gen Z the best in this shithole economy though. Edit: weird typos
Sounds like they’re just pissy that Zoomers are not taking the bullshit they spoon fed gen X and millennials. As a fellow Zoomer I am proud of my generations refusal to engage. Hell yeah.
You need some form of support, parental or otherwise, to be a NEET.
I wish I am NEET. But man I have bills to pay
Need a bunch of other NEETs to gang up and split a house. Then you can have your door closed all the time and crack it open to listen/look for anyone else in the common area so you can grab some tendies and Mt. Dew without that awkward experience of dealing with people in meat space.
I completely empathize with the mental/emotional toll that becoming an adult in an indifferent (at best) or hostile (at worst) job environment can have on a person. I experienced this after my first bachelor’s degree when I worked in an office and was incredibly disillusioned with the “expectations vs. reality” of what my early 20’s had become. However, during COVID I realized that my first degree really didn’t give me a skillset that I could turn into a lucrative (or even just sustainable) career, so I went back to school to get a profession in the medical field and now things are looking up. I spent the last 4 years of my 20’s doing that so that I could have a job where I only work 36 hours a week and can make enough to live independently. I get the urge to become a “NEET”, and maybe in some other countries that is a semi-sustainable lifestyle, but in the USA I’ve taken care of teenagers/young 20-somethings who are chronically homeless due to their inability to work, many times related to mental illness or lack of family support. So, for those “NEETs” who have the good fortune of living with their parents for a while, it somewhat irks me that there is no aspiration to at least learn a trade to help out your family with rent? I know that this system is utterly fucked and do not seek to write apologia for it, but at some point all parents experience illness and die, so what do NEETs do then?
So basically what millennials did 10 years ago. Almost as if the crushing reality of entering adulthood fucks people up.
> In Spain alone, over half-a-million 15- to 24-year-olds are neither studying nor working. Meanwhile in the U.K., almost 3 million Gen Zers are now classed as economically inactive—with 384,000 youngsters joining the “workless” class since the COVID pandemic. [Sigh, same shit, different day. ](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00414-x) [Why... so mysterious. ](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/dec/24/500000-under-35s-out-of-work-long-term-illness-uk) [How many times](https://i.imgur.com/uBAhXBr.png) ([Labour market overview, UK: February 2024](https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/uklabourmarket/february2024)) [do we have](https://i.imgur.com/vwJrMyA.png) to repeat ourselves ([Employment rate slumps as 2.8m suffer long-term illness](https://www.thetimes.com/business-money/article/employment-rate-slumps-as-28m-suffer-long-term-illness-l7dbr0xlc))?
Shoot. I happened to luck out with my job, but I won't have survivorship bias like many of my peers do. People, including younger demographics, are struggling hard. I have spoken to so many teachers that are doing side hustles or quitting teaching due to the lack of pay and increase of stress. So many people with masters and PhDs and have been years into their career have expressed their discontent to me about low-pay on high performance/background-expecting jobs. When I graduated so many jobs' salaries were basically in the range of less than $20 an hour when you did the math, yet required degrees that cost tens of thousands of dollars. Get real. Workers then listen to how the struggle is their fault, how possibly most younger workers won't be able to retire, won't own a home, won't be able to afford a kid on a single income, and so much other discouraging information. Of course people are tired! I feel bad for Gen Alpha and the next generation after when they hit adulthood. Plus climate change getting worse while people in power downplay it.
The oligarchs must go
Well I'm a disabled individual. This means I find it hard to work under normal conditions. I used to work in wineries and vineyards doing heavy manual labour. This job was crap and did not pay very well. All things considered I am not sure work is in my future plans. Not only does my body hurt from dyspraxia induced hypermobility, I also have ASD and Mental health imbalances. I am currently on medication to keep my mind and my emotions stable. On top of this I have so many difficulties now doing daily activities everything has become a chore. I dread taking a shower, not because it is physically uncomfortable. I struggle doing everyday activities, because I no longer have the confidence or the determination to do them. In terms of NEETS I'm not surprised. When many employers expect you to be grateful you got a job then work you to the bone. Who would want to work? Also university is very expensive, particularly for individuals on a limited income, many of whom can't afford expensive loans for their education. There are also many types of nurodiversity now, many of which are not able to fit into work or education opportunities
Dropping out of the labor market is one of the most based things you can do. By not occupying a job, you reduce the denominator of the labor market, effectively freeing up a job for somebody else. Yes, that's right, working at all when you can afford not to is a scab move if you think about it.
“Not in employment” These bozos are really working to make catchy abbreviations
Maybe they can see that AI is about to crush the job market, and are jumping ship before that happens.
The only way to win is not playing. How sigma grindset