NEET: Not in Education, Employment or TrainingIt’s too late to fix this, but…

COMMENTARY

By Crier in the Wilderness

www.virtueonline.org

April 28, 2026

If you’re a Baby Boomer and a socially-conservative Christian, and you don’t understand young men nowadays, I’m writing for you. I also have something to ask of you at the end of this essay.

It recently came to my attention that some of you don’t understand why a large number of young men have become shut-ins, often addicts, without career or romantic prospects. The term used for this now is “NEET.” That is, they are Not in Education, Employment or Training. Men described as NEETS are those who were once simply called slackers, basement-dwellers, and so on.

I’d like to explain how this happened.

First, a little about me

I’m a young man, somewhere between a Millennial and a Gen Z. I’m Christian, had good grades in school, worked hard, and finished college. I was raised well, too. I don’t want everything handed to me, and I don’t like those who do. You’d think that would help me in life.

It doesn’t.

I can’t use my degree in a helping profession, which supposedly needed more men, because it went woke. Now, I’m on my fourth career. I have been passed over for multiple positions because I was a man instead of a woman. The people who passed me over admitted to it. I finally gave up and started a business, but artificial intelligence and inflation undercut me. Some of those who helped me to establish my business even told me they were hoping to mentor a woman instead. In addition, even some of my customers wanted to work with a female-owned business.  

As a result, I can’t use the money I would otherwise have made to fund the Christian ministry I really had my heart set on.

I’m now a skilled tradesman. I live on my own, with no debt and money in the bank… but I have a non-zero chance of dying at work, and overwhelming overtime, which I can’t get out of. For the privilege, I had to be turned away at the door by multiple other trades, because they refused to work with some college boy.

By the way, women consider blue collar jobs trashy, no matter how well they pay, so there’s a distinct possibility that I continue to work massive overtime for nothing. They turn me down when I ask them out on dates, and then say there are no good men nowadays.

To put this another way, I gave up my twenties to extreme working hours that didn’t help. I’m now doing the same thing to my thirties. It will be decades before all the progressive hiring managers (usually women) retire or die, so there’s no way out.

My peers have watched me give up everything I enjoy, dramatically lose weight from skipping meals, get sick from overwork, and fall asleep in church, just to escape the NEET lifestyle. I’m not a role model. I’m a dire warning not to try. I almost had to give up writing this essay because I have no time off.

The average young man

A young man today has come of age in a world that does not care about him. In the wake of the Sexual Revolution and especially affirmative action, men get isolation and discrimination, which is called “rugged individualism,” while women get extra help, which is called “progress.” Men all know the score. Even the TV shows portray all the men as stupid slackers, and we grew up with them!

If you are blue collar, you grew up without any male role models, including a father, and went to work at menial or retail jobs straight out of high school. You either become a NEET, or get a construction job that physically destroys you. Everyone has multiple addictions just to cope with work, and you bond over your favorite strains of marijuana with your friends from your crew. You work so much overtime that you have no spouse, no friends and no remaining ties with your family. “Getting clean” is an insult to you.

You also have to get high, or you can’t physically bear the mandatory overtime. A bunch of your co-workers overdose or commit suicide. At least one has done so right on your job site. Women who got out of your neighborhood, using affirmative action scholarships, think they are too good for you. You never confide in your elders because the last time you did it, they said you should just work harder. If you can’t deal with this lifestyle, or don’t get lucky, you end up as a NEET. But it’s still your fault that you’re a loser.

If you are white collar, you grew up without any male role models, except maybe a father, and have student debt. It may have collected interest because of job supply issues in your industry, or because you graduated into the Pandemic layoffs. In addition, companies now announce “ghost jobs,” or fake job listings, in order to keep up appearances. In secret, they are conducting AI-based layoffs and cancelling new positions. You end up underemployed in retail, because a trade might reject you as a job-stealer.

Because of the ghost-jobs, your parents think there’s still work out there, but there isn’t, and may never be. You developed one or two addictions, but asking for help is embarrassing. If you ever made a single mistake with a substance, it could get much, much worse. You have considered suicide, but didn’t go through with it. Women who competed with you for work (and won, with fewer qualifications) think you aren’t good enough for them. You never confide in your elders because the last time you did it, they said you should just work harder. If you can’t deal with this lifestyle, or don’t get lucky, you end up as a NEET. But it’s still your fault that you’re a loser.

If you’re wondering whom your daughters and granddaughters will marry, many won’t. The young men they could have matched with were discriminated against for so long, we can’t all catch up in time. Most young men will think, but never say, that you should worry about us for our own sake… not just because young women are missing out for once.   

It’s too late to fix this.

The result

White collar or blue, it all ends like this: A young man, whether he is a NEET or not, always ends up at an event with some older people. After everyone has had a few, some middle-aged woman decides instead to complain about kids nowadays.

She declares loudly in front of him that young men nowadays are pathetic and disgusting. She lists her single daughter’s many accomplishments in university and then white-collar work. She never mentions how her daughter got women’s scholarships. She forgets that her daughter was raised conservative, and was taught that affirmative action was wrong, then accepted it in five-figure sums.

The young men aren’t good enough for her daughter, she continues, because they can’t get a real job. Of course, her daughter got this young man’s job through affirmative action. The female hiring manager may have rejected that young man’s application to the same position (this happened to me with a girl I just met).

Sometimes, these unhappy mothers put down their cocktail, look you in the eye, and say, in mixed company, “You aren’t good enough for my daughter.”

This has happened to me twice. Do you understand now?

If you still object to cutting these young men some slack, you are fiddling while Rome burns.

What to do

Society didn’t just passively abandon young men. It actively went out of its way to destroy them, and succeeded. If, after all of this, you told these young men just to work harder, they swallowed their rage and quietly gave up on you. There was nobody left who could clue you in about a growing youth underworld of nihilism, and justified economic despair.

Speak with your sons and grandsons about this. Show them this article. They will know what I’m doing. Listen without judgment. If you can help them, do it now.

If you can’t wave a magic wand over their problems, can you let them move back in and charge reasonable rent? Maybe they can take care of you if you are losing your mobility. Can you give them a cash gift, to prevent their debt from accruing interest during their job search? They shouldn’t be debt slaves when they finally get something. There are as many solutions as there are of you.

If you don’t, your family, your faith and your traditions will die with your sons and grandsons. You allowed it. It’s too late to fix this, but if we band together to help one another now, we can slow our cultural decline down, and build a world that serves us again.

If you like, comment and share, I might be able to write about this for a living and help you. If you don’t, I may never be able to help you again. I’ve got work.

END