Young people are ‘quiet quitting’ the UK – but where are they going and is it really any better?

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gen-z-emigration-young-people-move-abroad-b2877134.html

Posted by raydebapratim1

36 comments

  1. They arent going anywhere they are just checking out, not sure i blame them but they have to be the change they want to see

  2. I don’t think you could get much worse than the UK right now tbqh. Everything is almost unaffordably expensive, the weather sucks, the government sucks, the public services and infrastructure sucks, happiness levels are incredibly low etc. If I’m going to be poor and depressed, at least I could do it in a country that’s got lots of sun and nice beaches 🥲

  3. Where’s the incentive to work hard to get ahead in the UK anymore?

    My entire life it’s been doom and gloom, nothing has improved, almost everything is worse.

    Every single successive government has promised change, fairness, reform, investment, opportunity… yet we’re staring at an economy that feels like it’s running on dodgy barbers shops and delivery drivers.

    Taxes increase while services decline.

    They parade policies for “hard-working families”yet everything about the system actively punishes hard-working people.

  4. In my forties, have worked since I was 14. I honestly have never seen a bleaker outlook for young people. We have children that will be living with us in their 30’s as home affordability is insane, bills are endlessly going higher, public council services are half what they were 5 years ago. I love the uk, but recently everything feels like a grind and no end in sight. The current government are not giving any vibes about rosy futures it’s all doom and gloom.

    If I was 18 I’d consider abroad for sure.

  6. Is it really that shite in the UK? Maybe it depends on where abouts you live?
    In my early 40’s with 2 kids and a wife. Standard minimum paid wages for both of us, we budget and have no debts to speak of, we happily live off about 200 a week for food, car fuel etc. we live quite happily tbh. I know all people’s situations are different, but it is possible to make a decent life here.

  7. I’ve got some friends who’s eldest son has moved to Australia because he struggled to find permanent full time jobs and was stuck in a shared house rent trap in the UK.

    Now he’s in Australia he’s struggling to find permanent full time jobs and is stuck in a shared house rent trap.

    At least the weather is nicer I suppose. But then they have big spiders so…

  9. Nah the UK’s alright! I have a house in the country, a kid and a wife. A decent job I’ve spent the last 15 / 20 years progressing too.
    My missus also spent the past 18 years working up to her current role and we both earn okay 50 / 55k .
    I don’t come from a privileged background at all (grew up in Aldershot 😂😂😂)

    The UK has one of the best living standards in the world, saying different is dumb. Yes there are issues but do yall really think everyday life is better in France, Morocco. Portugal etc…. Well apart from the weather which I totally agree on 🤣

  10. Up until Trump 2.0 the destination end goal would’ve been America. Else Australia.

  11. Sick of subsidising pensions they will never receive themselves.

  12. Quiet quitting isn’t quitting. Its just doing your job. I’ll never understand where this quiet quitting nonsense came from. Ive had jobs I’ve hated in the last and you know what works if you want to get out of a job like that?

    You hand in your notice.

    I feel like quiet quitting has become more corporate speak for employees not bending over backwards to the extent of personal neglect for their employer than anything else.

  13. I don’t blame them. We’re doing the exact same thing once my wife is qualified.

    This country is nothing more than a glorified old people’s home. Every government has pandered to the boomers for decades and soon the chickens will be home to roost when they realise the productive economy has been bled dry and fled for other pastures.

  14. Scrap triple lock and do a freeze on pensions until they’re back in line with 2010 levels compared to average pay. If pensioners need £ they can downsize.

    Scrap any benefits/motability for anxiety/depression. It’s too open to abuse and people who can work, should work.

    Use this extra money to reduce income taxes, especially addressing the 100k cliff edge. We need the most productive highest earners to want to achieve and excel, once you get above 50k you have to seriously start considering whether the hassle of a promotion and more stress is worth the meagre after tax cash. This makes hard work pay.

    Set council tax in line with 2025 prices, not 1991. Scrap stamp duty for your first residential property, massively raise rates on buying multiple properties.

    Reinvest all this extra money into massive infrastructure. High speed rail connections through every city. Massively increase rail capacity and bring the rolling stock into national ownership.

    Make work pay, make housing accessible, make transport effective and modern. Then you’ll get people going out and working hard.

  15. I’m late 40s and would tell my kids to go work abroad. I did for 20 years of my life and then came back. I think it gives you a wider perspective and a lot of experiences.

    Separately UK tax and the entitlement of people who don’t work drives me mad. I lived in places where people were expected to get on with things not get signed off work for stress the moment they didn’t like something. The crabs in a bucket mentality of dragging anyone successful down as well is an unpleasant aspect of the UK. Watching as people actively and widely desire more and more tax on people better off as long as not on them basically out of envy annoys me. Look at the absolute glee that taxing school fees was met with. You can agree with the policy without the delight at disrupting kids educations. We hate people being successful in this country and treat it as something to be taxed heavily and somehow always undeserved. Same with calls for windfall taxes if an industry is successful – why would they invest here? The Americans celebrate success and look at how much wealthier they are.

    The UK has benefits as well but as a place to work and do well? Not so much. Even at my age with kids in school I have considered going abroad again.

  16. Good luck to them. I know several people that have quit the UK and now reside in Canada, Australia and NZ, and yes, it is better if you are skilled, educated and hard working.

  17. Couldn’t read the article because it’s paywalled, but I do wonder where these people are going when so many countries are clamping down on immigration.

  18. I mean, minimum wage work nets you 75% of a graduate wage. A bog standard 3 bed semi costs 8x the average wage, so people with a nice house probably got it through inheritance or buying in 1998 rather than making good money. There’s no meritocracy any more, so there’s no real benefit to working hard.

  20. Im in Scotland and get a real term tax of 50% at 43k, what incentive do I have to put in any effort to get a bonus or do overtime, add in that anywhere thats actually nice to live I’ll never be able to afford and that its getting pricey for a house even in a crap area with nothing to do. Its made me think about looking elsewhere its hard to imagine higher taxes at that wage and lifestyle may be better.

  21. As a young person, the problem I have with this is when you go abroad, you’re not necessarily improving things organically.

    Things might be cheaper, but that’s only because the locals earn low wages.

    Politics might seem less anxiety-inducing, but that’s because you don’t speak the local language, have no baggage, and mostly aren’t a stakeholder in local politics.

    It’s like living in an artificial bubble where you put your fingers in your ears and say “La La La!”

    A lot of countries are also dealing with inflation right now due to Ukraine and other factors.

    And while I resent that the UK seems to be run for the sake of the older generation, I’m hopeful that this Government can turn things around a bit and that I can help make a difference. Emigrating isn’t making a difference, it’s just contributing to this country’s problems.

  22. I emigrated from the U.K. at 39. Old enough to have experience, young enough to start again.

    10 years on, zero regrets.

  24. More accurate headline- Young People are being DRIVEN out of the UK

  25. How do you ‘quiet quit’ the UK? They’re just leaving the UK. Nothing quiet about moving half way around the world, everyone gets told.

  27. I think people are underestimating the increased workload and expectations employment has in any industry now compared to the past (especially in competitive entry level fields). It’s been a decline in company benefits, bonuses and perks for decades now whilst the workload has piled up, progression stagnating and the support merely a checked box on a HR spreadsheet. I don’t blame young people for not wanting to engage in a system and lifestyle that is at best disrespectful and at its worst antagonistic to being human. Hard work no longer equals fair pay.

  28. We had training. Couldn’t do the training, the list was empty. Asked my manager for help. Her response was basically “just do it”. Useless cow. Told by upper management that if training wasn’t done, not to come into work and to expect an “investigation meeting”. So I told my manager I still hadn’t done it because the training wasn’t showing up on the website the email sent me to. It was with a training service called flexebee. She told me it wasn’t with flexebee. The email was literally sending me to Flexebee. Again; she was useless. So I didn’t go to work. Then, without ever calling me, they claimed that I failed to attend my shifts without contacting management, which I did, and was doing what upper management told me to do; to not bother turning up. On the 28th October, I got an email inviting me for an investigation meeting on the 7th of November. On the 6th of November, they removed me from the group chat. I asked my manager why, and if I’d been dismissed. She didn’t answer yes or no but told me I should have received a letter in the post. So, weeks later, I never received that letter. I told my manager after waiting for it. On the 21st November, they sent me the letter as an email; which they could have just done the entire time. This letter told me, that I failed to attend a meeting on the 4th of November, and that because I had not contacted management, they *assumed* without ever asking me that I must have chosen to discontinue my employment with them.

    No warning, no contact, blaming me for everything including getting their dates wrong (which two members of management failed to notice), only recently got my P45 in December, and STILL have not received that letter in the post that I was told to expect, and have lost an entire month of pay because they kept me hanging and have made no effort to contact me so I couldn’t look for another job in the meantime. All just in time for Christmas. They turned my life upside down in a month without even so much as a “hello”.

    Gee, I wonder why people choose to quiet quit?

  29. I was pushed out of UK by spouse visa changes. My wife is Japanese and they changed the income threshold while I was studying. As a result I live in Japan reluctantly.

    Yes, it is better than Wales , my home, in almost every way except in my opinion in the most important way. Rent is affordable, energy is not a rip off, transport works, hospitals and dentists exist. But the people in Wales are in my experience lovely, and were welcoming to my wife despite her being foreign, they are friendly, good humoured, relaxed. I miss home terribly but my wife misses Wales more than I do, and I think having lived in Wales in the past it is hard for her to move back to Japan.

    I see news every day saying essentially “fuck immigrants” but people in the UK in my experience were nothing but friendly to my wife. I hope it is the type of media coming my way that is distorting things, and the views of the country haven’t changed so much in such a short time.

  30. “quiet quitting” is such a moronic corpo phrase. How dare people do what is expected of them and not more?!

  31. I spent 18 years burning myself out in my workplace trying to climb the ladder, been passed over due to nepotism and favouritism many a time, ended up having a mental breakdown and realised whilst off sick nothing is worth that effort, now I go in and do exactly what is required of me, take all my leave and don’t do any favours or ‘development opportunities’ and outright refuse to cover extra shifts and leave it to the managers to bicker over. As soon as my work dropped to the bare minimum I was pulled in and asked why I wasn’t doing my old workload, to which I replied ‘am I not performing to the set standards?’ Now I’m seen as a troublemaker and general pain in the ass because I fight people’s corners and I love it. Quiet quitting is great because you don’t quit, you just do the bare minimum to get a wage and make the managers scramble because at the end of the day they actually have no power over you, especially if you are in a union, the sooner people realise if as a group / team / department you all say no they can’t do shit.

  33. They are temporarily quitting until they realise everywhere else has the same problems but without the governmental support you get in the UK. If you don’t have money or skills you will have the same problems everywhere just the weather is different.

  34. During my thirties I worked hard to get ahead and got made redundant six times over the period between 35 and 39 honestly it was completely demoralising so now at 47 I say fuck it you pay me for 39 hours I will not do over time I will not attend away days on my own time.

  36. All these countries like Ireland, Canada and the uk have sold the younger generation short. Big companies both outsourcing jobs and giving visas to people from developing countries at the expense of the hopes and dreams of young people. Throw AI into the mix too. Prospects are looking bleak.  

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