Discouraged Worker

To sum up: a Discouraged Worker is someone who is capable of working and would work if forced to, but would do so grudgingly.

A discouraged worker is usually someone who realizes the 9-5 grind is a form of contemporary slavery and they have made the conscious choice not to be a part of an inherently unhealthy capitalist system to the best of their abilities. The authorities don't like to force discouraged workers to go back to work because discouraged workers discourage others from wanting to work too.

What's very very interesting is that the government doesn't include discouraged workers when calculating employment statistics, so they don't count as being unemployed, officially. They're in a sort of grey zone.

Become a discouraged worker! I encourage you!


"In economics, a discouraged worker is a person of legal employment age who is not actively seeking employment or who does not find employment after long-term unemployment. This is usually because an individual has given up looking or has had no success in finding a job, hence the term "discouraged".

...

As a general practice, discouraged workers, who are often classified as “marginally attached to the labor force”, "on the margins" of the labor force, or as part of "hidden unemployment", are not considered to be part of the labor force and are thus not counted in most official unemployment rates, which influences the appearance and interpretation of unemployment statistics. Although some countries offer alternative measures of unemployment rate, the existence of discouraged workers can be inferred from a low employment-to-population ratio."