New study puts the blame on video games for increasing unemployment

Just when we thought we shook the claims about video games making people violent off our shoulders, another seemingly negative study comes out. This time, it’s about losing jobs.

New report by The Economist links the act of unemployment to video gaming. Now, before drawing any conclusions here we advise you to read through the details of this study, as some of it makes kind of sense.

Reported by Mark Aguiar, Mark Bulks, Kerwin Charles and Erik Hurst, Games were identified as “leisure luxuries” in the study that “are contributing to a decline in work among young people, and especially young men.” Documented from 2000 and 2015, the employment rate for men in their 20s and without a college education dropped from 82% to 72%. The article cites that people in this group “often live at their parents’ homes and tend not to marry at the same rate as their peers.”

How does that connect to video games? Report suggests that “For each hour less the group spent in work, time spent at leisure activities rose about an hour, and 75% of the increased leisure time was accounted for by gaming.” The Economist states that a greater sense of reward from progress in video games may be holding people back from developing or even pursuing a career.

Better graphics, engaging storylines and games being more affordable—especially compared to other luxury items—are suggested as possible contributors to the trend. Caveats to the study include several labour market factors, such as stagnating wages for young college graduates since the 1990s. The article also points to the financial crisis and subsequent recession having a bigger impact on young people than the population as a whole.

Have a read on the full study at The Economist’s website. Do you agree that gaming is indeed linked to one’s ability of finding a job? let us know.