News Flash: Young Workers Are Not Happy. Who Knew?
August 12, 2025
No AI. Just a dinobaby being a dinobaby.
My newsfeed service pointed me to an academic paper in mid-July 2025. I am just catching up, and I thought I would document this write up from big thinkers at Dartmouth College and University College London and “Rising young Worker Despair in the United States.”
The write up is unlikely to become a must-read for recent college graduates or youthful people vaporized from their employers’ payroll. The main point is that the work processes of hiring and plugging away is driving people crazy.
The author point out this revelation:
ons In this paper we have confirmed that the mental health of the young in the United States has worsened rapidly over the last decade, as reported in multiple datasets. The deterioration in mental health is particularly acute among young women…. ted the relative prices of housing and childcare have risen. Student debt is high and expensive. The health of young adults has also deteriorated, as seen in increases in social isolation and obesity. Suicide rates of the young are rising. Moreover, Jean Twenge provides evidence that the work ethic itself among the young has plummeted. Some have even suggested the young are unhappy having BS jobs.
Several points jumped from the 38 page paper:
- The only reference to smart software or AI was in the word “despair”. This word appears 78 times in the document.
- Social media gets a few nods with eight references in the main paper and again in the endnotes. Isn’t social media a significant factor? My question is, “What’s the connection between social media and the mental states of the sample?”
- YouTube is chock full of first person accounts of job despair. A good example is Dari Step’s video “This Job Hunt Is Breaking Me and Even California Can’t Fix It Though It Tries.” One can feel the inner turmoil of this person. The video runs 23 minutes and you can find it (as of August 4, 2025) at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxPbluOvNs8&t=187s&pp=ygUNZGVtaSBqb2IgaHVudA%3D%3D. A “study” is one thing with numbers and references to hump curves. A first-person approach adds a bit is sizzle in my opinion.
A few observations seem warranted:
- The US social system is cranking out people who are likely to be challenging for managers. I am not sure the get-though approach based on data-centric performance methods will be productive over time
- Whatever is happening in “education” is not preparing young people and recent graduates to support themselves with old-fashioned jobs. Maybe most of these people will become AI entrepreneurs, but I have some doubts about success rates
- Will the National Bureau of Economic Research pick up the slack for the disarray that seems to be swirling through the Bureau of Labor Statistics as I write this on August 4, 2025?
Stephen E Arnold, August 12, 2025
Comments
Got something to say?
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
