A NEET, an acronym for "Not in Education, Employment, or Training", is a person who is unemployed and not receiving an education or vocational training.
If you're Gen-Z, the economy you're expected to navigate is almost entirely centered around asset bubbles and content creation.
That's no joke. The value of labor has gone down so much that it's making everything from college-degree-required careers to trades non viable if you want to live independently as a grown adult. Young men are simply giving up because there's no point in working full time just to come home to your childhood bedroom or a house with 10 roommates. Bootstraps people don't understand what life is like growing up after the great reset. There's no real hope unless you're able to pull a rabbit out of the hat with some business or catch the last bus to some dying industry.
Inflation has been bad in the past. I'm sure people who came of age under Carter think I'm being overdramatic. But in the 70s, you could show up and get a decent job that paid well. If you worked hard every day, you could expect decent pay and a pension. I'm sure it wasn't easy, but there was incentive. Now there's no incentive.
People are applying for 400+ jobs and getting 2 competitive interviews months after graduating college. AI is literally used to survey resumes now so most aren't even being seen by a real human being. I don't know a single person my age who would rather live now than 50 years ago. Our economy is dead. Our society is dead. There's no point in playing into a system that's obviously on it's death bed. We'll be living under socialism or some sort of "fall of Rome" scenario but our achievements in this world will count for nothing by the time we're old enough to allegedly be able to retire.
All of my kids started careers (in tech) making more than I have ever. Do t know how but maybe they are lucky. But yeah, one spends his entire after work on video games and fantasy football. Can’t change a spare tire though.