Enrollment in trades and craft programs is at a multi-decade high among college graduates — a rational economic response to structural conditions that are permanent, not temporary.
Cash transactions and unreported income are growing faster than official GDP across OECD countries — a signal about institutional trust, work structure, and the limits of economic measurement with major policy implications.
The documented rise in purposelessness across OECD populations is not primarily a spiritual story — it is an economic story about the dissolution of institutional structures that historically provided meaning as a byproduct.