Where Did All the Workers Go?

Our young workforce is evaporating. As a result, employers struggle to find workers. We have no one to blame but our new virtuous and smarter-than-thou cancel culture of hate.

As a person who has executed a significant amount of corporate strategy, and has had to deal with some of these related issues in conducting staffing planning for my clients – I hope at least, that I bear a clean and direct grasp of how the employment market is affected by certain factors. This may not be popular, and my intention is not to excuse-make for this generation – nonetheless it is the truth.

These conditions did not exist 15 years ago and earlier – so be careful about quick comparisons to one’s ‘bootstrapping’ past. As a 24 year old in the United States of America (this is not me, this is a collection summarizing what I have heard or observed from this generation)1

  1. I don’t need a car, as I can Uber or Lyft.
  2. Nor especially do I desire to have car insurance, which both penalizes me for being 24 and rises 12% a year. They use all that obscene profit to compete for the most clever and worn-out ad campaign. Hey ‘Flo’, how ’bout you bundle this. Fuck that lizard and oversized turkey.
  3. My parents’ house has appreciated 150% since I was in high school and offers ample room for a home improvement loan since they have been paying their mortgage for 28 years now.
  4. My brother is disabled with autism spectrum disorder. This crushed my mom. She needs me, and sometimes it is like I am her only friend. Between them both working to make ends meet, I cannot leave them without help.
  5. My parents are both ill/addicted, and hide this from their friends and employers. I am there to help out so things don’t unravel.
  6. Homeowner’s and renter’s insurance goes up by 14% a year for absolutely no reason. We’ve never had a claim be accepted in 28 years, yet it is ‘mandatory’ – I get the game.
  7. The coffee I make for myself and my parents is better and less costly than you can get at an office or Starbucks by far.
  8. Taxes skyrocket between 40 K and 80K in income… the extra insane level of effort is not worth it at all. I pay very little to no tax now.
  9. If I make $40,000 in income or less, I get free healthcare now. If I make $80,000 I have to pay hundreds of dollars a month for it. Fuck that… The doctor does not listen to, nor help me, anyway. Why should I then also pay for that?
  10. President Barack Obama in a June 3, 2020 ‘Town Hall’ meeting, placed a Mark of Cain upon my race, deeming it a ‘plague of our society’ and declared that I bore an ‘original sin’, one which I carry because of my skin color and/or gender. There are no measurable objectives of success in this, so it will never end – I am forbidden to speak my view or exist as a full rights-bearing citizen in the meantime. I am not the horrible monster these people have crafted as the focus of their hate.
  11. Rent is just a useless and overpriced expense, it builds nothing for the future. Plus I have to have a ‘roommate’ in order to afford it now.
  12. Renting forces me to live in dangerous places where crime is skyrocketing and I might be a target because of my gender. Rent forces me to earn more (diluted enormously by taxes and healthcare premiums) as well.
  13. I survive on 1 meal a day because my endocrine/microbiome system is so damaged that if I do not fast most of the day, I gain weight like crazy. This also keeps food costs low.
  14. I feel like crap most of the time. My asthma, allergies, and food sensitivities are insane. I am gluten intolerant and it is almost impossible to avoid that shit. I have to avoid so many foods now that eating out is a disaster to my body.
  15. If I am to work, I have to shave and shower every day, and workout for an hour each day in order to be at my optimal appearance. I can do that, but what a pain in the ass, just to pay bigger tax, gas, auto insurance, and medical insurance bills.
  16. The Maskuerade.
  17. I can work from home in my lower income part time endeavor. I can work my own hours.
  18. No traffic. What idiot thinks I am going to sit in a car for them, for 2 hours a day any more? Not someone I trust.
  19. Employers want me to get three or four shots, and accept a subscription to more shots, just for the ‘privilege’ of working under some Boomer-fanatic overseer who wants 10+ hours per day out of me to show my ‘commitment’ and that I have a ‘work ethic’. I am willing to work very hard, but I am not an idiot.
  20. My gender and/or skin color is very unpopular now – I am already a minority in colleges, and yet I still cannot attend the college of my first choosing, and I won’t get promoted, so it is better to be in business for myself where I will not face discrimination.
  21. Being intelligent does not get one into university, rather you can be dumb as a door-post as long as you have straight A’s. It is just not worth the effort of kissing teacher asses, who are politically biased against you by their Union in the first place, in order to convert a couple B’s into A’s.
  22. My boss will be frightened, nepotistic, and chosen for their correctness, not competence. I am not willing to cast my pearls before swine.
  23. Knowing a trade is much more valuable than having a degree now. Work for yourself, part time is the way to go. If you can fix a pipe, circuit board, or electric motor, you are far more valuable than a college educated cubicle-dweller managing the overdue payment notification team.
  24. I refuse to be put on a unit-rate based ‘performance enhancement system’ which only offers me a livable wage if I work at an unsustainable pace – leaving me little work/personal life energy balance.
  25. Video games are incredibly real and immersive now, and highly addictive, on large 4K screens with fantastic sound. There is a new one each week. The social network around them is incredible, a lot of people just like me.
  26. My chances of catching Covid are higher the more I go out and huddle with people in small, poorly ventilated work spaces or restrooms. I cannot afford to give Covid to my parents. What would I do if one of them dies?
  27. I am constantly instructed as to how incorrect and unacceptable I am, in the workplace. It is justice and virtue to have fewer of me around, thus they will get their wish.
  28. I’ve witnessed what the corporate workplace did to crush/steal from my once vibrant and loving parents and disrupt my home, and I will never let that happen in my life. I’m not funding the next oligarch war or Greek island yacht from my hard efforts. If I work hard, it is going to be for me, and not some pocket-kerchiefed glad-handing idiot.
  29. Online porn is far less trouble than a real live friend of the opposite sex. Having one of those is like owning a monkey, with a chance of accidental pregnancy. Plus, after all, I live in my parents’ basement
  30. Cancel culture has made existence in public a miserable chore. Some people literally believe they hold a righteous license to truth and regard me as a ‘Nazi’ the moment they get the notion that I might not agree with their Narrative 100%. Go scream at someone else.
  31. I can get my food and booze delivered to me at my doorstep.
  32. Living in a micro environment so as not to place undue burden on my parents, is actually kinda’ cool. Plenty of savvy devices to make life workable. YouTube shows how it is both do-able and fun.
  33. I enjoy three-day excursion outdoor activities. It is a very rewarding and refreshing break from the same-same. I cannot do that with a ‘job’.
  34. I can’t take the risk of arrest, drug test detection by an employer, or accidental overdose by having to find a new supplier for the drug of ‘my choice’.
  35. I don’t want the burden of children. I probably should not be a parent either – how the hell am I going to inspire them? I don’t want to subject anyone to this life, especially an innocent person and against their own choice.
  36. I don’t want to introduce children who look like me, into a world which will vilify, hate, and disadvantage them by their appearance. So there is no reason to get married.
  37. My eyes have been opened to the fact that there is more going on around us than is acknowledged. I don’t know exactly what it is, but enough evidence is there to conclude that we have been lied to significantly. I do not possess an aversion to a new paradigm or ontology – instead, I despise being lied to, and being led by persons who think they bear the right to lie or conceal.
  38. All my old friends are local, in the same boat as me, we share the same interests, and we hang out and talk about this predicament. Who needs new friends?
  39. We don’t go to restaurants or bars to hang out, as that costs too much and is not near as much fun.
  40. I am not working, just because I should work… You need to inspire me with a mission where I can contribute value. Amazon and TwitGoogFace dominating the world is not a suitable ‘mission’.
  41. I do not trust our national leadership, nor do I feel I can change what is occurring, nor would they let me. If life does not take me seriously, then I’m not going to take it seriously, in return. It’s just simple action-reaction.
  42. They would gleefully sacrifice my life in a military conflict, but won’t even bother to count me as an unemployment statistic – preferring instead to replace me with imported voters. I am willing to lay down my life for my fellow citizens, but not for an encroaching third-world culture which is teaching hate, demeaning and replacing me – and from whom I get the stark impression that they would never fight alongside me in return.

There is a name for this process. It has been done before. Our Constitution was written so as to preclude it ever happening again. Unfortunately we were way too smart to have a Constitution any longer – thanks in part to our fake skeptics, ‘doubting’ everything except what was important to doubt.

The Ethical Skeptic, “Where Did All the Workers Go?”; The Ethical Skeptic, WordPress, 8 Feb 2022; Web, https://theethicalskeptic.com/?p=61962