More Than 4 Million Gen Zers Are Unemployed 'NEETs' Due To 'Broken Promises' About The Economy, According To Experts
In short, they're simply drifting, and it's largely through no fault of their own.
Krakenimages.com | Shutterstock Gen Zers are up against some of the most difficult economic conditions in history, even if many people are loath to believe it. But it's more than just a challenging economy and ever-tightening job market. Experts say that while their forebears love to blame Gen Zers for being lazy and entitled, just like they did with Millennials and Gen Xers before them, the problem actually lies in decades of economic mistakes they had nothing to do with.
Experts say more than 4 million Gen Zers are unemployed 'NEETs.'
According to research from the Social Science Research Council, some 4.3 million Gen Z Americans are classified as so-called NEETs, an acronym for Not in Education, Employment or Training. It's a group that includes not only people who have already finished their education and training and are now unable to find work, but another cohort that is perhaps even sadder: Those who've simply given up after a fruitless attempt at joining an increasingly impenetrable job market.
And it's not just a US problem either. In the UK, more than 100,000 Gen Zers have joined the NEET cohort in the past year. In Spain, the country's half a million NEETs include people as young as 15 who've apparently decided education isn't worth the trouble anymore, let alone the cost. So what exactly is going on?
Some experts blame 'broken promises' about the economy and college degrees.
I often say to anyone who will listen that at 46, I'm old enough to remember that we lived in a completely different world before the Great Recession in 2008 — a world in which you could be reasonably assured that if you got some kind of education, you could get some kind of job that would pay for some kind of housing. It may not have been glamorous, and you may have needed roommates, but you could do it, in pretty much any part of the U.S.
I speak from experience here. In 2007, I lived in Los Angeles, making $32,000 a year. When I decided to leave, just months before the recession, I was considering New York or San Francisco. Both were in financial reach — I did my research and found that even if I couldn't find a similar job, I could hack both cities with roommates and a job waiting tables.
Since the recession "recovery" began, none of that has ever been true again, even in the supposedly "cheap" metro areas. And at this point, nearly 20 years later, the mere notion of that economy feels laughably implausible.
It is basically this exact situation that experts who spoke to Fortune said underpins this issue with Gen Z. "Universities aren’t deliberately setting students up to fail, but the system is failing to deliver on its implicit promise," Lewis Maleh, CEO of staffing and recruitment agency Bentley Lewis, told the site.
The promise in question, of course, being what I just wrote above: Get an education and you'll get a job that pays a living wage, an article of faith that has been pushed as a part of our government's official economic policy for decades now.
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Unfortunately, it hasn't been realistic for all but the lucky, privileged few for years — and nowadays, it's increasingly untrue even for them. That system was circling the drain for Millennials and, to a lesser extent, Gen X, too. But Gen Z has unfortunately landed in the "real world" at the exact point when that system has basically collapsed.
Older generations may balk at that assertion, but the numbers don't lie: As independent economists point out, when employment is measured based on whether the employed can actually survive on their wages, the unemployment rate is actually above 24% — less than a percentage point away from the all-time high unemployment during the Great Depression.
Experts say that better economic policy and steering young people away from costly degrees are crucial.
The trend in recent years of telling young people that college is a waste of time is a thorny issue, because it is all too often amplified by those aligned with recent waves of right-wing anti-intellectualism and political forces that seek to undermine education at every turn.
Still, there is simply no way around the extent to which the value of a college degree seems to be rapidly plummeting. The exorbitant cost no longer guarantees anything besides staggering amounts of debt that are not dischargeable in bankruptcy.
Jeff Bulanda, vice president of Jobs for the Future, a non-profit organization dedicated to job market growth, told Fortune that the answer is not necessarily skipping an education entirely. But he said we need a national "wake-up call" about the reality of the situation, one that values trade professions and blue-collar careers as much as it values a degree, especially as AI takes over.
“It’s critical that young people are empowered to be informed consumers about their education," Bulanda told Fortune. But instead of offering that vital context, our government and education systems have continued to hold up a college degree as the Holy Grail of American success, a narrative that's no longer true for everyone. So far, Gen Z is proof that until there are people in Washington willing to do the real work of changing that situation, a shift in perspectives among the rest of us is long overdue.
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.
