Very few work-balance jobs that require less than 35 hours of work/week for twentysomethings pay enough to live and save unless you are not paying rent and have no loans. Those who can are the exceptions.
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My niece works on production sets for tv and movies. She’ll work crazy hours while on an assignment, but can then take off a week , a month or 4 months to travel. She picks and chooses her jobs. She also uses the Rover app to dog walk and sit whenever she wants.
She shares a house with two roommates and does have college loans.
She’s been doing this for about 8 years and is very happy. Her philosophy is to live life to the fullest now instead of working in a job she hates to maybe live life to the fullest when she’s 60 or older.
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my D16 is starting her first job in a few weeks for an international architecture firm. i can not believe the number of hours she’s put in to get her M.Arch degree. She has worked incredibly hard. Her work basically says overtime is expected. I’m so proud of her, but in some ways, i wish she could try out a lazy-girl job; she’s tired from the last 7 years.
me: going to be an empty nester in 3 weeks!!! with no kids around, and a .75 fte job, i think i’ll be like a lazy-girl. and i will enjoy this!!
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Good for your niece. I hope she can afford to have kids and provide for them well if she chooses to have kids.
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What are the “consequences “???
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Not being able to save for retirement?
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Generally those that work less make a tradeoff in terms of salary, and often career progress. That may be fine, but it is good to realistically assess one’s financial needs/goals-whether that is a house, trips to Europe, student loan repayment; whatever one prioritizes.
It is also easier, IMHO, to shift down from a more elite heavy hours workplace to a more moderate workplace, than to shift up in the other direction. It becomes harder both with age and family responsibilities. Lots of people( often women) have made the decision to pursue more balanced occupations for years, usually seen as more family-friendly
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Work hard, don’t work hard, work long hours, don’t work long hours - there have always been people doing each of these. Just stop with the stupid names “Lazy-Girl Job”, “Quiet Quitting”, etc. You do what works for you and your family with your life and stop having people put a label on it!
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I can see some of this. I also see consequences for jumping on a fast, intense track because you think you should or because it’s traditional instead of because you are passionate about living to work in stress if (perhaps) working to live.
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If this person is happy working from home 3 hours a day and then spending the rest of her day exercising and playing with her cats, that’s her business. As long as she is supporting herself, she’s free to do it.
My kids and their friends do not have this type of job. My kids value a W/L balance but that is way too extreme for them and my guess is they would get bored pretty quickly.
I hate to admit this, but if my kids worked from home for 3 hours a day and then spent the rest of the day playing with their cats etc, I would be upset. Of course that is totally my issue and not theirs- as long as they were happy and self supportive.
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I guess the difference between “family friendly” and “lazy girl” is that this choice is being made not because of responsibilities to others, but to create time for oneself.
Perhaps the name is derogatory, but so was hippy, which is probably the closest equivalent from a different era.
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I don’t care what people do, but I wish they’d stop claiming that it’s a breeze to make $50-60,000/year with minimal, extremely flexible work. Maybe a few folks can do that on social media, but it’s absolutely not the norm. They’re making me feel “less-then.” 
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Worked in an college support program, later taught college full time, and never got near those salaries!
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Perhaps things have changed, but it used to be that exiting the fast track was kind of a one-way ticket; one could not easily ramp back up if too much time passed Maybe things are different
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It feels extraordinarily privileged to be able to have a job that supports you and allows you to put in the bare minimum.
I suspect that these well paying jobs are few and far between.
Saying that, I think that most of the young college educated people I know are likely to put family and balance in a top requirement for their jobs.
I know that my son was saying that he is not interested in traveling for traveling sake at his job. If the client needs him to be on site, then yes.
Jobs are easy to find right now. If your employer requires too much, then it’s not that hard to find another position. I do think companies need to pivot from pre pandemic expectations.
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My guess is that it is a small portion of primarily UMC white non-Hispanic girls in this club, and it doesnt spread outside that slice.
FWIW I see this in one of my kid’s elite internships. Plenty of female interns survived the hiring process, but almost all are East Asian, South Asian, or Hispanic ethnicity.
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I think the UMC piece is key (not sure about the ethnicity though).
This alleged “trend” sounds great and exciting if you know you will not be responsible for elderly parents (either time or financial support). This “trend” seems like a great way to live if you’ve never known anyone who was a paycheck away from being homeless. This “trend” is cool if you don’t have family members who have declared personal bankruptcy after a very curable but chronic medical diagnosis.
If you have known people like this-- or know that all that will stand between your elderly parents and living under a bridge is YOU and your financial assistance-- it sounds extremely short-sighted to prioritize “me time” over gaining experience, advancement, expertise, and the increased pay and benefits that go with it.
So sure, employers are insane expecting you to care about their customers, clients, distributors, shareholders, or whomever the “stop bugging me” du jour might be. But the likelihood that someone working a 3 hour day is going to have an employer say “You take all the time you need to move mom into assisted living- someone else will cover for you” is- insane. You work these “Lazy-Girl Jobs” or whatever a more PC name for them is, and you’re the first person to get cut in a downsizing, the first person to raise eyebrows when you need to take a few extra weeks off to deal with a family member’s medical emergency, and the LAST person who can ask for special consideration during a family crisis.
But hey, if you can pull it off…
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A friend described it as a form of white privilege, hence I included the ethnicity. It could be others are more aware of family obligations, risks, etc. Suffice to say, there are many job competitors, particularly internationally, who won’t be seeking " lazy girl ( or boy) jobs".
I think you’d have to grow up very insulated from economic, medical, social realities to think that “phoning it in” career-wise is going to keep you fed for the rest of your life! Let alone every other obligation!
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Agree completely but I do sadly know some people like that. I wonder if they ever think of the consequences.