Larry graduated from university with a vision: Together with his wife, they would live the American Dream. They would buy a house in the suburbs and go on vacation every two years.
But his dream of a perfect life finally came true. His then wife realized that the job was an illusion, as Larry says, and decided to give up to take care of their children and her elderly father. With some delay, Larry followed the same path.
“Job is ‘something that someone else has planted in our minds,'” the 52-year-old told Business Insider.
Today, Larry is not working. He simply lives in a caravan in his mother’s yard. “I really do not have expenses. I do not need money. “I can survive without money.”
And he is not alone. Larry is part of a movement that some call “anti-labor” and which is gaining more and more followers.
This is a trend that is gaining ground among new employees, as Generation Z (ie those born between 1997 and 2012) leaves its mark on the labor market. And it’s not just a US trend. In China, an entire generation refuses to follow the demands of the time for increasing productivity and competitiveness at work and instead finds happiness in simple life and relaxation. It is the movement of “lying flat”, as it has been called.
“I really do not want to work anymore. I do not want to have meetings, deadlines, goals, quarters, seminars. “I do not want any of this anymore,” says Larry.
The big resignation
Right now, there are millions of “Larry” around the world. In the United States, workers have been quitting their jobs en masse for at least six months, with 4.4 million people resigning in September alone – more than any other month in history. Many never return to the job market.
For some of them, the job is no longer worth it. Wages have been falling for decades in the US, while student loans have been rising.
And then came the pandemic: Billionaires added 2.1 trillion. millions of Americans were left unemployed (after the United States did not implement the employment protection measures that became the norm in Europe). Inequalities widened.
This is how we got to the current state of dramatic labor shortages. Quite simply, workers “strike” and refuse to return to work unless conditions improve.
The movement
The numbers are now large and predictable. A group on Reddit, “r / antiwork”, has attracted one million followers since 2013, when it started. Half of the new followers joined the group in October. Practically, tens of thousands of people visit this page every day.
What do they stand for? The antiwork movement talks about a jobless lifestyle and aims to build a community of people who join forces against the exploitation of workers.
“A lot of people confuse being antiwork with being lazy,” one Reddit group member told Business Insider. But he explains that the movement’s goal is to change the structure of the way things are done, so that capital flows are fairer.
Another member of the group, Kade, who belongs to Gen Z, says that he resigned from his job when the boss forbade the employees to use their mobile phones during the shift and threatened with seizures. The posts he read in “r / antiwork” contributed to his decision to resign, as they made him reconsider the job.
“I think I felt I could be part of a movement. “I no longer want to tolerate these things.”
Η Generation Z
The entry of Generation Z into the labor market plays a central role in the demand of employees for better working conditions. “They just don’t tolerate the nonsense of employers anymore,” says Cade.
What is certain is that employers are now forced to listen to employees. In the US, the phenomenon of restaurants ending up shutting down because they can not find staff is now a daily occurrence.
Companies are resorting to hiring bonuses to fill vacancies, but now accept few CVs for the ads they publish. And in the phenomenon of “ghosting”, the roles have been reversed: While in the past the prospective employees complained that the companies were disappearing (ghosting) after the job interviews, now the interviewees are the ones who do not answer and disappear when the companies want to hire them .
Money Review
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