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Young Men Are Working Less. Some Economists Think It's Because They're Home Playing Video Games. (nytimes.com)
Video games are instrumental in understanding why younger men are working fewer hours, according to a paper published Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research. From an article: By 2015, American men 31 to 55 were working about 163 fewer hours a year than that same age group did in 2000. Men 21 to 30 were working 203 fewer hours a year. One puzzle is why the working hours for young men fell so much more than those of their older counterparts. The gap between the two groups grew by about 40 hours a year, or a full workweek on average. Other experts have pointed to a host of reasons -- globalization, technological change, the shift to service work -- that employers may not be hiring young men. Instead of looking at why employers don't want young men, this group of economists considered a different question: Why don't young men want to work? Economists Erik Hurst and his colleagues estimate that, since 2004, video games have been responsible for reducing the amount of work that young men do by 15 to 30 hours over the course of a year (syndicated source). Using the recession as a natural experiment, the authors studied how people who suddenly found themselves with extra time spent their leisure hours, then estimated how increases in video game time affected work. Between 2004 and 2015, young men's leisure time grew by 2.3 hours a week. A majority of that increase -- 60 percent -- was spent playing video games, according to government time use surveys. In contrast, young women's leisure time grew by 1.4 hours a week. A negligible amount of that extra time was spent on video games. Likewise for older men and older women: Neither group reported having spent any meaningful extra free time playing video games.
Or not. At least in the USA, the phrases "left the work force" and "unemployment rate" are completely disconnected. If you're unemployed for a signficant period, you have "left the workfirce", and are no longer counted as unemployed.
Which is one of the many things that make our definition of "unemployment rate" pretty much meaningless.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
The NEET phenomenon
NEET means "Not in Education, Employment, or Training" so I don't know why you are talking about master degrees and apprenticeships and such. NEETs don't do any of that.
As a Brit, I think that is insane, I have 5.6 weeks of legally mandated paid leave per year, that is the minimum they are allowed to get away with. My old job gave me 32 days per year, Americans are all bonkers for putting up with the way companies treat you.
People want cheaper commodities and cutting out expensive western manufacturing labor is one way of meeting that demand. The majority of the products of off shoring production are sold back to western consumers.
I WANT reliable, well-made, lasting commodities. I can only AFFORD cheap, poorly-made, easily-wearing commodities. So I either do without (and try to save up to afford the reliable stuff far down the line, assuming it's a want and not a need-to-survive commodity) or I buy the cheap stuff.
I've spent the last three years job-hunting for something better, both while employed and not, and the best I've been able to source was a job that had benefits that I would pay 50% for as an optional opt-in, with no increase in pay or other benefits.