My generation has never known an economic slump lasting a number of years. Some friends are taking the opportunity to slow down
When my friend Lee first lost his job in 2023, he was terrified. From the moment he graduated in 2016, he had been working nonstop. He had changed jobs a couple of times, but always had a choice – he had never been kicked out of the job market like this.
Lee worked in the traditional publishing business, editing children’s books. The industry has been tanking, with the rise of digital books, and the post-pandemic slump doesn’t help. He was laid off with half of his colleagues, with a small severance. Anxious at first, he spent hours browsing recruitment websites and sending out his résumé, but it was no use. “I sent out 100 résumés. When I checked the second day, only eight had been read and none had replied,” he told me.
Eventually, he got a job through a family friend. But it was harrowing – to survive, the publishing house needed editors to also be salespeople, live-streaming themselves playing games like charades, organising events, turning video games into animated books. It made him miserable: why was he producing and selling books to children that wouldn’t help them grow?
