Culture Over 4 million Gen Zers are jobless—and experts blame colleges for ‘worthless degrees’ and a system of broken promises for the rising number NEETs

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/careersandeducation/over-4-million-gen-zers-are-jobless-and-experts-blame-colleges-for-worthless-degrees-and-a-system-of-broken-promises-for-the-rising-number-neets/ar-AA1BDzqp

https://ghostarchive.org/archive/FYYTA

• Over 4 million Gen Zers are not in school or work in the U.S. and in the U.K. 100,000 young people joined the NEETs cohort. But it’s not generational laziness that’s to blame. Experts are taking swipes at “worthless degrees” and a system that “is failing to deliver on its implicit promise.”

There’s been a mass derailment when it comes to Gen Z and their careers: about a quarter of young people are now deemed NEETs—meaning they are no longer in education, employment, or training.

While some Gen Zers may fall into this category because they are taking care of a family member, many have become frozen out of the increasingly tough job market where white-collar jobs are becoming seemingly out of reach.

In the U.S., this translates to an estimated over 4.3 million young people not in school or work. Across the pond in the U.K., the situation is also only getting worse, with the number of NEET young people rising by over 100,000 in the last year alone.

A British podcaster went so far as to call the situation a “catastrophe”—and cast a broad-stroke blame on the education system.

“In many cases, young people have been sent off to universities for worthless degrees which have produced nothing for them at all,” the political commentator, journalist and author, Peter Hitchens slammed colleges last week. “And they would be much better off if they apprenticed to plumbers or electricians, they would be able to look forward to a much more abundant and satisfying life.”

With millions of Gen Zers waking up each day feeling left behind, there needs to be a “wake-up call” that includes educational and workplace partners stepping up, Jeff Bulanda, vice president at Jobs for the Future, tells Fortune.

Higher education’s role in the rising number of NEET Gen Zers​

There’s no question that certain fields of study provide a more direct line to a long-lasting career—take, for example, the healthcare industry. In the U.S. alone, over a million net new jobs are expected to be created in the next decade among home health aids, registered nurses, and nurse practitioners.

On the other hand, millions of students graduate each year with degrees with a less clear career path, leaving young adults underemployed and struggling to make ends meet. And while the long-term future may be bright—with an average return on investment for a college degree being 681% over 40 years, plus promises of Great Wealth Transfer—it may be coming too late for students left with ballooning student loans in an uncertain job market.

Too much time has been focused on promoting a four-year degree as the only reliable route, despite the payoff being more uneven and uncertain, says Bulanda. Other pathways, like skilled trade professionals, should be a larger share of the conversation.

“It's critical that young people are empowered to be informed consumers about their education, equipped with the information they need to weigh the cost, quality, and long-term value of every path available to them,” Bulanda says.

Lewis Maleh, CEO of Bentley Lewis, a staffing and recruitment agency, echoes that colleges should do better at communicating with students about career placement as well as non-academic barriers to entering the workforce, like mental health support and resilience development.

“Universities aren't deliberately setting students up to fail, but the system is failing to deliver on its implicit promise,” Maleh tells Fortune.

“The current data challenges the traditional assumption that higher education automatically leads to economic security.”

What’s caused a NEET crisis—and what can be done?​

Rising prices on everything from rent and gasoline to groceries and textbooks have put a damper on Gen Z, with some even having to turn down their dream job offers because they cannot afford the commute or work clothes.

Plus, with others struggling to land a job in a market changing by the minute thanks to artificial intelligence, it’s no wonder Gen Z finds doomscrolling at home more enjoyable than navigating an economy completely different than what their teachers promised them.

The United Nations agency warns there are still “too many young people” with skills gaps, and getting millions of young people motivated to get back into the classroom or workforce won’t be easy.

Efforts should include ramping up accessible entry points like apprenticeships and internships, especially for disengaged young people, as well as building better bridges between industries and education systems, Maleh says.

Above all, better and more personalized career guidance is key, Bulanda adds.

“When you don’t know what options exist, no one is helping you connect the dots, and the next step feels risky or out of reach—it’s no surprise that so many young people pause,” he says. “The question isn’t why they disconnect; it’s why we haven’t done a better job of recognizing that the old ways aren’t working anymore, and young people need more options and better support to meet them where they are.”

 

[Fount of BadSpeak]

I find it hard to blame young guys for not wanting to work for a society that hates them and blames them for everything wrong, when the rewards available range from nonexistent to borderline impossible to reach. Our society has been nosediving since the sixties, and it feels like a total kick in the balls when gramps or some old timer tells you how he bought a house and a hotrod off his department store job and got married at 22, but you might, MAYBE get half of that when you're forty with a "real job". I personally have tripled my income in the last 7 years, but it's wild how little it feels like things have meaningfully changed, especially because houses have pretty much matched my income increases step for step, so they feel just as out of reach as they did when I was broke. Even if I did go for it, the interest on them has tripled too, just to really kick you in the nuts and show you that your hard work equates to just running on a treadmill; you'll get flung off and eat shit if you slow down, but you'll never outrun it either. Of course it's a lot more than just economics, but I am trying to stay on the OP topic.

The governmental response is to just replace these unmotivated young men with foreigners, but the amusing thing I have found is most these foreign men, and later their sons either want to make enough money to go back home and live like a king, or rapidly end up as unmotivated as the native population because the root cause of the problem is totally unaddressed. Considering Trump has promised to replace American men with even more foreign scabs despite his supposed America First policy, I expect this problem to worsen dramatically in the coming years.

 

[Alexander Thaut]

I read an article a few years back on why millennial work ethic is so shitty. It essentially boiled down to one word - entitlement. They want to be "part of something bigger" and don't realize that you have to work to get there. You don't just start from the top.

I really despise my generation (millennials, I'm a very late one) and early zoomers. I just hate all the pandering and pushing political agendas. Can't we all just do the work, get something done, and etc.

Millennials got this odd placement in the world where every single one of them is either highly hyper rich or dollar-general broke ass nigga trash. There is no middle-class millennial.

Pretty much. I know a few that are kinda middle class but they just went through hoops to get to that.

I find it hard to blame young guys for not wanting to work for a society that hates them and blames them for everything wrong, when the rewards available range from nonexistent to borderline impossible to reach. Our society has been nosediving since the sixties, and it feels like a total kick in the balls when gramps or some old timer tells you how he bought a house and a hotrod off his department store job and got married at 22, but you might, MAYBE get half of that when you're forty with a "real job". I personally have tripled my income in the last 7 years, but it's wild how little it feels like things have meaningfully changed, especially because houses have pretty much matched my income increases step for step, so they feel just as out of reach as they did when I was broke. Even if I did go for it, the interest on them has tripled too, just to really kick you in the nuts and show you that your hard work equates to just running on a treadmill; you'll get flung off and eat shit if you slow down, but you'll never outrun it either. Of course it's a lot more than just economics, but I am trying to stay on the OP topic.

The governmental response is to just replace these unmotivated young men with foreigners, but the amusing thing I have found is most these foreign men, and later their sons either want to make enough money to go back home and live like a king, or rapidly end up as unmotivated as the native population because the root cause of the problem is totally unaddressed. Considering Trump has promised to replace American men with even more foreign scabs despite his supposed America First policy, I expect this problem to worsen dramatically in the coming years.

I'm just so tired of it all. Every entry level white collar job has a billion barriers. Like, fuck, even data entry stuff's out of reach in my region. I don't get how it came to this.

You can't even get a mail clerk job any more. How the fuck did this happen.

 

[Drain Todger]

Also aren't you a longshoreman? because of the unions thats just office level work but in the trades, you're stealing valor like a motherfucker. even the most retarded college students know you always say yes to union jobs.

No, Engine Crew.

I find it hard to blame young guys for not wanting to work for a society that hates them and blames them for everything wrong, when the rewards available range from nonexistent to borderline impossible to reach. Our society has been nosediving since the sixties, and it feels like a total kick in the balls when gramps or some old timer tells you how he bought a house and a hotrod off his department store job and got married at 22, but you might, MAYBE get half of that when you're forty with a "real job". I personally have tripled my income in the last 7 years, but it's wild how little it feels like things have meaningfully changed, especially because houses have pretty much matched my income increases step for step, so they feel just as out of reach as they did when I was broke. Even if I did go for it, the interest on them has tripled too, just to really kick you in the nuts and show you that your hard work equates to just running on a treadmill; you'll get flung off and eat shit if you slow down, but you'll never outrun it either. Of course it's a lot more than just economics, but I am trying to stay on the OP topic.

The governmental response is to just replace these unmotivated young men with foreigners, but the amusing thing I have found is most these foreign men, and later their sons either want to make enough money to go back home and live like a king, or rapidly end up as unmotivated as the native population because the root cause of the problem is totally unaddressed. Considering Trump has promised to replace American men with even more foreign scabs despite his supposed America First policy, I expect this problem to worsen dramatically in the coming years.

The pain that the system has caused to ordinary people is intentional. We have leaders who intentionally tanked our birth rates, less trust and goodwill between the sexes than ever before, institutional investors using housing as a store of value, and a class of parasitic slavers that makes contradictory demands of both frugality and consumption from us. Their answer to the problem of population decline is replacement migration. No matter how demoralized we get, someone still has to work the shitty jobs and pay the taxes.

The system as it currently exists makes more sense once you realize that it is a simulacrum of a functional society. It’s not supposed to work for anyone, only give off the appearance of doing so.