This Guardian comment piece argues that generation Z, facing unaffordable housing, insecure jobs and delayed family formation, has grown indifferent to traditional career paths and, increasingly, to how money is earned at all. The author terms this "production nihilism": a shift away from stable, prestige-driven employment towards fragmented "polyworking" that includes freelance platforms, content creation, OnlyFans and even training AI language models, as long-term economic hope has broken down.

The piece cites figures showing only 6% of young people see a leadership role as their primary career goal, while 57% of generation Z report having a side hustle, more than double the rate among baby boomers. It links this to broader "financial nihilism" trends such as meme stocks and cryptocurrency, framing both as responses to a foreclosed sense of future prosperity, with young people increasingly extracting value from the present rather than deferring gratification for a promised, but unattainable, stable future.