More young men are becoming NEETs than women
fortune.com
fortune.com
This is a question a lot of people are unwilling to even consider.
EDIT: out of replies for today, here's what I would have written.
I can say as someone who's been employed at multiple large companies, modern employment does not necessarily (if ever?) provide that (something to work towards.) Who wakes up in the morning and thinks "Ah yes, I just live for the CICD/security patch treadmill. I can't wait for scrum!" Serious carrier jobs these days are largely administrative in nature and I've found that I have to have side projects and hobbies to fulfill the need you're talking about. None of these are particularly expensive and during periods of unemployment I've continued them completely uninterrupted (in fact I did much better since work wasn't sucking away my emotional energy.)
For bell-cot:
Employment doesn't have great prospects either. For marriage and family formation very few men are even dating now and almost everyone gets divorced which in most place means losing half of what you've worked for. The women have destroyed themselves so a lot of men are wondering if they're even worth pursuing.
As far as purely economic goals go modern employment doesn't really provide stability the way it used to and shelter is so expensive saving is extremely hard for most people and home ownership is right out until maybe your mid thirties. In many ways most men except the long tail of ambitious/skilled ones may actually be able to expect a more stable life just living with their parents.
Now if you are a NEET with a healthy social life and fulfilling hobbies, that may work but I would hazard a guess that this is the exception, not the norm.
If your parents will have you and you haven’t made the mistake of kids in the current macro, why be meat for the grinder? Enjoy your one life. To have no obligations is to then be free. Dating scene is suboptimal, just as bad as job interviews I have heard anecdotally.
(43% of first marriages fail, the cost to raise a child is now ~$330k (2023), the cost of real estate continues to increase at a rate faster than wages; the only way to win is to not play)
If they are wealthy enough to own it free and clear, and you have no siblings, and their residual savings are enough to let you keep living there, long-term, then maybe that'd work.
But you might want to look into just how fast end-of-life expenses can burn through savings. And at the modern costs of owning a house.
Realistically, I'd say that's only a solution for the 1%-to-0.1% crowd.
Agree that a lot of folks will have no options [2] [3], ending up homeless or some other terrible transient situation until death, dying with nothing (in my experience). Play to win, no one is coming to save you and the system is rigged against you (rando opinion of casual observer of a dysfunctional system, your opinion may vary).
[1] https://www.npr.org/2024/04/18/1244171720/baby-boomers-large...
[2] https://press.aarp.org/2024-4-24-New-AARP-Survey-1-in-5-Amer...
The NEET category includes the unemployed (individuals without a job and seeking one), as well as individuals outside the labour force (without a job and not seeking one). It is usually age-bounded to exclude people in old-age retirement. per https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEET
One in five is 20%, so it's not a "jump" to 11.2% in the US. That wording makes it sound like more than 1 in 5 in the US, when it's more like half that. I quit reading since the author can't do simple math.
Even the title is shitty: they don't even mention how many men are becoming women.
Don't forget the fashion for work at home these days then you don't need to worry about "entering the workforce makes me ill". Try to learn new skills, online stuff like programming or whatever. Good luck!
This is manipulative bullshit.
Especially for tech, there are even fewer 'stepping-stone' roles than actual real ones, so the choice is between enduring the pain of keeping applying without results, in order to get into, or continue in, your chosen career, versus accepting a job in a different field, to be comfortable today.
Maybe this is a factor in the gender difference. Sure it may be more pragmatic to just get any job, instead of "wasting time" looking for a role that will lead where you want, but there is an opportunity costs in that.
The kids don’t even drink beer.
I tend to agree with that quote, but what these young people may not realize, the longer you are unemployed, the harder it is to find work.
When I graduated, the job market was as bad and I believe far worse than now. I took a series of work unrelated to my BS Degree, eventually landing in Programming which is what I was aiming for.
I think these people should at least work, even if in an unrelated field, it shows the interviewer you are flexible enough to do anything.
Men aren't working because they feel there's nothing in it for them anymore. The pay barely keeps them spinning their wheels, their prospects of having something higher than themselves to live for, such as a family, are bleak, and there's no security in employment.
I know, for me, I focused on cost cutting rather than revenue generation, reduced the amount of time I have to work to virtually nothing, and instead of feeling useless, living in squalor, my standard of living went way up, not down. I get to focus on whatever I want, a lot of the time that's nothing at all, but often enough it's extremely rewarding endeavors, like FLOSS, learning, finding love and starting a family, being out in nature, cooking, constructive hobbies. I don't have a commute, I don't sit in traffic, I don't have a 4 figure rent, I've got nobody to compete with via conspicuous consumption.