During this time, we saw an increased number of men living with parents & choosing unemployment over lower paying jobs.
Shocking fact: Millennial men are less likely to work than any other age and gender demographic in America.
Today, there are 500,000 young men missing from the U.S. workforce.
Research suggests video games & improved leisure tech plays a role in the problem. 👇 Thread:
During this time, we saw an increased number of men living with parents & choosing unemployment over lower paying jobs.
1 in 4 living in their parents’ home neither go to school nor work.
What's more surprising? 9 in 10 who lived with their parents a year ago are still living there w/ no plans to leave.
https://t.co/iv3mNx3Wi1
According to economist David Dorn:
“If you get to the point where you’re turning 30, you’ve never held a real job and you don’t have a college education, then it is very hard to recover at that point.”
Forbes interview w/ a high school educated man:
"I’m very quick to get frustrated when people refuse to pay me what I’m worth."
“People feel that they have choice nowadays, and they do.”
https://t.co/CQwgpGrPow
A large % of disability is mental health & substance abuse related.
According to the CDC: men are much more likely to overdose on drugs or die from suicide. https://t.co/7w0Gv85dBI

Unemployed millennial men spend 10+ hours per week on recreational computer activities.
Full report: https://t.co/T5rg7D2dt0
Researchers suggest over time videos games become a crutch & form of escapism for unemployed men.

Unlike low to middle skill jobs, video games provide:
The ability to make choices
Feeling of mastery and achievement
Visible achievement & status
Remember: "People feel that they have choice nowadays, and they do.” 🎮
Imagine: the future of work = more time to play video games 🎮.
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Like company moats, your personal moat should be a competitive advantage that is not only durable—it should also compound over time.
Characteristics of a personal moat below:
I'm increasingly interested in the idea of "personal moats" in the context of careers.
— Erik Torenberg (@eriktorenberg) November 22, 2018
Moats should be:
- Hard to learn and hard to do (but perhaps easier for you)
- Skills that are rare and valuable
- Legible
- Compounding over time
- Unique to your own talents & interests https://t.co/bB3k1YcH5b
2/ Like a company moat, you want to build career capital while you sleep.
As Andrew Chen noted:
People talk about \u201cpassive income\u201d a lot but not about \u201cpassive social capital\u201d or \u201cpassive networking\u201d or \u201cpassive knowledge gaining\u201d but that\u2019s what you can architect if you have a thing and it grows over time without intensive constant effort to sustain it
— Andrew Chen (@andrewchen) November 22, 2018
3/ You don’t want to build a competitive advantage that is fleeting or that will get commoditized
Things that might get commoditized over time (some longer than
Things that look like moats but likely aren\u2019t or may fade:
— Erik Torenberg (@eriktorenberg) November 22, 2018
- Proprietary networks
- Being something other than one of the best at any tournament style-game
- Many "awards"
- Twitter followers or general reach without "respect"
- Anything that depends on information asymmetry https://t.co/abjxesVIh9
4/ Before the arrival of recorded music, what used to be scarce was the actual music itself — required an in-person artist.
After recorded music, the music itself became abundant and what became scarce was curation, distribution, and self space.
5/ Similarly, in careers, what used to be (more) scarce were things like ideas, money, and exclusive relationships.
In the internet economy, what has become scarce are things like specific knowledge, rare & valuable skills, and great reputations.