That's a little out of touch.

Most people don't have the financial resources to be out of work for a month or two, much less indefinitely. For most people it has nothing to do with the factors you listed.

I've been laid off twice in the past and each time I was fortunate to have enough savings to take several months off of work to relax and unwind. I'd quite happily do it forever if I could afford it. I loved being able to set my own routine, tell myself what to do, and find my own social context and sense of belonging while doing activities that I enjoyed, usually having nothing to do with work, like biking, skiing, creating open source projects, etc.

But watching your bank accounts slowly tick downwards is incredibly stressful, even when you have a long runway, and each time I ended up job hunting sooner than I had planned.

I don't have a job right now. I've been applying about 100 places a month. I just graduated with a phd in a quantitative field and have all the skills of an ml data scientist + my own domain expertise. And, it sucks. I am so broke. I have no money in my bank account now, maybe $7. Family helps me with rent but until then I can't bear to ask them for more money. I've been waiting on unemployment claims to process for a month now, even then the projection is around $150 a week out of that based on my former teaching income. I generally eat 1-2 meals a day these days. Some meals are things like a pile of peanuts or toast with butter. I go to bed hungry many nights. I haven't engaged in any of my hobbies since my teaching contract ended, hiking takes too much time and makes me too hungry and I can't afford to golf right now. Trying to fix my bike so I can start doing postmates with it and bring in some money to not be so dependent on other people while I am in this limbo during the job hunt. I don't have any health insurance right now. Haven't been able to see my therapist due to out of pocket costs. Routine panic attacks and anxiety. Three credit cards maxed out. Falling behind on other bills. Yeah, I'm in bad shape. Hoping things turn around for me soon. The silver lining is the jobs I'm qualified for would pay me at least 10k a month if I manage to land one. Four months of that I'll have all my debt paid off and be out of this hole.

> I think a lot of people simply don't know what to do with themselves when they don't have a job.

I would be perfectly happy without a job. It's the income I'm concerned about.

>I think a lot of people simply don't know what to do with themselves when they don't have a job.

Partly true. But today there is no way to live off the land either, as people used to in the past by raising cattle and pigs. Either it's illegal or you owe the govt taxes.

What are you talking about? That's not the issue for most people. For most people the issue is that if you don't have a job for long enough, the government will send people to throw you out on the streets to suffer and die.

I'm not sure, but that's still happening. At least it happened to me this year. I consider myself a decent developer (in every job I have landed, I was always considered the "best" in the team after not much time in the job). I'm not faang-silicon-valley level, though. I haven't written a compiler or an OS, or contributed to the linux kernel. I have read all the popular tech books out there, I do more or less know what companies (and interviewers) want to hear, and I'm easy to work with.

I'm in western europe. I think the situation in the US is way different, though. Also, for juniors (or people with less than 8-10 years of experience) is much harder, that's true.

The only way for anybody to have any good jobs at all is for millions to have none, and/or have nothing resembling formerly respectable pay.

And it's got to last years or there will be no recovery for shareholders from what they've already suffered with a stagnant economy.

In the 1970's it ended up 10x this bad or worse, in most technical fields at the time as well as non-tech.

There was nothing else that could be done except recognize it was a crap shoot.

There will be plenty of millions who do not lose their jobs, some will not even lose much momentum. There will be nowhere else for the "new normal" to coalesce around, after nothing else resembles the old normal for so long.

As before, only the relatively unscathed will write the economic history of these years, and many less-fortunate millions are slated to be forgotten.

The only other alternative is for everybody to take a steep pay cut, and all upwardly-mobile climbers to halt all momentum. What are the odds that could happen this time?

And that still wouldn't allow hiring as many early-career professionals as there will be available for quite some time to come.

Don't worry, employment is not where all the negative outcomes will affect future generations . . .

3 out of 3 jobs that I've had after college have been from submitting resumes into a form... It's not perfect but it can work

My kids are happy, thriving and optimistic about the future. For me, they bring more joy than I thought existed. Having kids is the best thing that happened to me ever and pretty they’re glad I did too. What world are you talking about?

You might like Ajit Varki's 2013 book which is entirely devoted to using evolutionary biology in answering that question.

Because otherwise all the reasonable people get replaced with unreasonable people.

Some say this has already happened...

I mean, if it's so cruel, then why wouldn't you just commit suicide?

The reason why it's not cruel (IMO) is that there's hope for a better future, if you don't have kids, you will never be able to know. That's choosing to just not play the game, total darkness. There isn't an alternative universe to choose from.