In the hallways of Swiss universities, a meme has become a quiet password for a generation under strain. It shows a young man slumped at the end of a bench. “AI will cost you your job,” runs the caption. His reply: “Which job?” The image, highlighted last week by the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, condenses a startling fact: according to a Jobcloud study, the number of job advertisements for career starters in Switzerland has fallen by 32 per cent since the arrival of generative AI in late 2022. Positions in administration, marketing, finance and IT — once the reliable first rung for graduates — are being erased. At the same time, Swiss invalidity insurance figures reveal that one in ten new disability pensioners is under thirty, an all-time high. For a small, highly educated demographic cohort once assured it would pick and choose its jobs, the script has been flipped with jarring speed.

Far from the Alpine labour market, a different kind of vanishing unfolds. In Bangladesh, 36 per cent of students who registered for higher secondary exams two years ago never filled out the examination forms this year; many more simply did not appear. The daily Prothom Alo reports that the absenteeism rate has climbed sharply from 29 per cent a year earlier. A sample analysis by the Dhaka education board found that 41 per cent of absentees — most of them girls — had been married, while poverty and lack of preparation accounted for the rest. The statistic is a raw measure of an educational system hollowed out by politicisation and commercialisation, but it also speaks to a broader global drift: when a future does not feel legible, the act of putting pen to exam paper can seem absurd.

In Argentina, the sixth-grade Aprender tests delivered a mixed verdict. The 2025 assessment saw record participation and a genuine improvement in language skills, with 76.9 per cent of students reaching satisfactory or advanced levels — the best in a decade. Yet the map of attainment remains a patchwork of deep inequality. Only four of twenty-four provinces exceeded the national average in both language and mathematics, and the improvements were concentrated in jurisdictions that started from the lowest floor, such as La Rioja and Catamarca, while wealthier districts like Buenos Aires City showed only modest gains. An analysis cited by the newspaper Perfil found that even Argentina’s most socioeconomically advantaged students perform worse than their peers in developed countries, suggesting a systemic lid that no amount of remedial acceleration has yet lifted. In mathematics, nearly half of all pupils still fall short, and the gap between the best and worst provinces refuses to narrow meaningfully.

Beneath the numbers lies a quieter, more pervasive cost. According to a Lancet Global Burden of Disease study, one billion people now live with a mental disorder, twice the level of the 1990s, and for the first time adolescents — not the middle-aged — are the most affected group. Psychiatrists in São Paulo note that the peak of mental suffering now sits between 15 and 19 years. In Indonesia, a 2022 national survey found 34.8 per cent of teenagers struggling with mental health problems, while a free screening programme in 2025–2026 identified anxiety or depression in nearly 10 per cent of screened children. The causes identified by specialists are a tangle of climate fear, social inequality, hyperconnected social comparison, and a labour market that no longer offers a clear path to stability.

Amid the unease, a quiet reorientation is under way. In Sweden, the share of students choosing vocational programmes in upper secondary school has reached 39 per cent, the highest since a major reform in 2011. A boy from Härnösand told Swedish Radio why he chose the construction programme: “Everyone is building all the time, you see firms driving around everywhere… there’s a big chance you’ll get a job straight away.” Data from the country’s youth barometer show that the portion of young people who say artificial intelligence has made them rethink their educational choices rose seven percentage points in just two years. The turn is pragmatic, not ideological — a recalibration towards skills that cannot be simulated by a machine. In a world where the bench of the meme feels crowded, the sound of a hammer on a roof may be one of the few certainties left.