That's true. It's pretty rare to see people mention cost of working, but it is a very real cost. For many on HN working from home in a job without a dress code, clothes/commute/lunch aren't more than being unemployed, but there are other significant costs around flexibility. Not working gives you flexibility and time, which can save huge amounts of money. Travel, flights and hotels can get easily 3x cheaper in the off season. By going midday, midweek when everyone else is working, you can go to tons of things half price, from ski lifts to movie theaters. Americans spend $680B/yr on travel, so between the 122M households that's an average of $5600/year spent on travel - by having flexibility you can easily save quite a bit right there. Then keep in mind that a penny saved isn't just a penny earned - for most people it's around 1.6-2 pennies earned after taxes and benefits: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25382210

That said, there are also costs to being unemployed. The big one of course is what to do with your time - whatever you do with those extra 40 hours a week will probably not be 100% free. Then there are potential risks: if you're unemployed and not on unemployment, and a pandemic strikes, then you might be stuck without any income for far longer than you expected, all while everyone else that got laid off gets unemployment. There are also career costs: a years-long gap may seriously hurt your career prospects when you return to the workforce and dent your lifetime earnings. Then there are the commonly forgotten benefits to working, such as building up Social Security (both for retirement, and disability.) The max SSDI, which you will get if you're making around $100k for some years, is around $3000/month. If you become disabled and haven't been working, you get far less. Obviously being unemployed makes lending money far harder (credit cards, personal loans, car loans) so you better have some cash set aside. Naturally you won't be able to buy a house, and renting a new place will be very difficult with no job. But there are other options: maybe you already own a place, maybe you can live with your parents, maybe you do van life.

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If you add everything up, you may be surprised to see unemployment win out. This is, of course, the exact discussion taking place for millions of Americans in poorly paid service jobs, and the reason for the current labor shortage. It's not that young people are being lazy: they're being smart. If you're working a poorly paid job, the cost of working is disproportionately high to your income. $7.25/hr x 40hr/wk is $1160/mo, minus taxes somewhere around $1000/mo, and then you have to pay for a car to drive to work, gas, etc etc. On an income like that, you're basically just surviving, barely keeping your head above water if that. Sure, if you quit your McDonalds job you can't afford rent, but rent's so high you probably had a pretty crappy place anyway, so why not move back in with your parents, like 52% of Americans aged 18-30 do? [0] On top of that, many of those costs to being unemployed don't really factor in if you're in one of these poorly paid jobs. Gap on a resume doesn't matter for fast food. Social security - how many young people believe it'll be around in 40 years? It's pretty much a no-brainer, if I was working a poorly paid job I'd also quit and opt out of "the system" like millions of my fellow Americans.

[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/09/04/a-majority-...