Taiwan is becoming a super-aged society and rightly obsesses over how many babies are born. Yet it also seems to be squandering the ones it already has. Leaders panic over fertility and semiconductor “moats,” but miss the underlying emergency, the collapse of the on-ramp to adulthood. Taiwan has built an education machine that too often functions as a high-cost waiting room for a world that no longer exists, while the first rung of work has become narrower and less forgiving. We cannot then act surprised when the people inside it stop believing in their prospects and end up “lying flat”.

It affects young women as well as young men but in different ways. I focus on men at points because male withdrawal can be a particularly visible downstream symptom in a super-aged society while the repair must benefit everyone.

The social contract used to be simple. Study hard, get credentialed, enter the workforce, build a family, carry your share in your society. That bargain is strained now, but it is yet not gone.  

The degree inversion

Start with the clearest signal a society can send to its youth: education is no longer a reliable bridge. Recent Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) manpower reporting has shown that unemployment among university-educated workers (approximately 4.55%) sits above that of high school graduates (3.01%).

The youth unemployment rate for the 20 to 24 age bracket, the prime graduation demographic, continues to face a jobless rate of approximately 11.4%. The message to a 22-year-old is:
“The degree you were told to buy does not guarantee a productive place in society.”

Now add the second failure, the one that is rarely said out loud. Taiwan’s system delays entry into adult life and then offers too few paid, mentored training pathways at scale when young people arrive. The incentive structure is thin. Universities are not the root cause by themselves, but they have become the most expensive place to park young adults while the transition into productive work gets harder.

Mapping the bottlenecks

Taiwan keeps young people in classrooms until their mid-20s, many taught to regurgitate information that is easily available online or submit handwritten assignments. This might have worked 100 years ago but it does not develop minds for the future we are already in. If universities fail to make students into abstract thinkers, simply plying them with information to memorize, what are the prospects of such a graduate? 

AI accelerates all of this but it is not the only force. Many firms already preferred hiring “ready-made” talent, minimizing training costs and rehiring risks. AI simply offers a simpler preference that feels safer. AI consolidates routine junior tasks into fewer human jobs and will continue to expand up the talent chain. The result is that the first rung becomes narrower, and the price of a mistake becomes higher.

Stanford Digital Economy Lab, in collaboration with ADP Research Institute, documented that global hiring for the youngest software developers has already plummeted 20% from its 2022 peak. Developers aged 26 and older showed a further decline of 6% to 9%. That is when you get a Survival Gap: the nation’s demand for high-stakes leadership rises, while the actual capacity of our youth to build that future weakens.

The hollowing out of the middle

Look at the vocational middle, the important layer that keeps a modern economy functioning. Currently it is not as susceptible to AI replacement but at the same time the DGBAS survey shows that participation within the junior college category, with higher male than female matriculation, has materially declined. Dropping from 76.87% in 2010 to 71.93% in late 2025. This drop is consistent with a hollowing of the middle class. When a society signals that you must credential longer to earn less, and that training is a cost nobody wants to pay, disengagement becomes rational risk management for many people on the individual level but it is devastating on the national level.

Then the cleanest indicator appears, the one you cannot spin with slogans: NEET (Not in Education, Employment, or Training, typically ages 15 to 24). Taiwan’s NEET rate sits at nearly 10% per ILOSTAT and Ministry of Labor (MOL) datasets for 2024 and 2025. NEET is not a moral diagnosis. It is a system warning. It tells us that a meaningful share of young people are neither working nor building human capital. They are not joining the national project. They are just being carried by their parents and society, until they are not.

The cost of drift, and why it matters

This gives rise to the irrelevant young adult, with no responsibility, task, or purpose, who drifts into extended adolescence. The desolate man who is educated, delayed, underutilized, and increasingly disconnected from family formation and civic leadership. In a shrinking society, that is a double loss: a missing worker and a missing future parent. This is why “labor shortage” is the wrong phrase. Taiwan does not merely lack bodies. It is at risk of losing belief. Immigration does not fix this, it merely plasters over it.

A society can survive low birth rates for a while. It cannot thrive if the entry point to adulthood feels illegitimate. When young men and women conclude the system does not reward effort with dignity, they do not always revolt. They withdraw and they lie flat. They avoid marriage. They avoid relationships and they avoid responsibility. Not because they hate their country, but because the math no longer works.

Here is the part that should make Taiwan optimistic, not cynical: math can be changed. Incentives can be changed. The first rung can be rebuilt.

This is not just a social issue. It is a survival issue. Semiconductor dominance does not substitute for social cohesion. National resilience is not found in silicon alone. It is found in people who believe their national project is worth joining, and who can see a path to joining it.

Three levers to fix the on-ramp

Rebuild paid junior pathways: Taiwan needs an aggressive national push for apprenticeships, paid traineeships, and “junior-to-mid” ladders that employers are rewarded for running, not punished for.

Stop treating universities as warehouses: Universities must be measured by outcomes tied to actual ladders and by partnerships that place students into paid, mentored work earlier, not later. The race for useless KPIs must stop. Outdated schools, methods, and dogmas must be laid to rest.

Restore dignity to early adulthood: If the first five working years of a young adult cannot support independence, dating, and family formation, disengagement will keep growing. Housing, wages, and the prestige economy all matter here, and businesses have more influence and responsibility to society than they admit.

What is happening is a predictable product of disjointed objectives and short term goals. That also means it is fixable. Taiwan can keep managing decline with slogans until reality cannot hide empty slogans or irrelevant KPIs, or it can rebuild the on-ramp and turn a demographic constraint into a competitiveness advantage. In a super-aged society, the cost of doing nothing is not abstract. It is national, and once a certain threshold is reached, it becomes hard to reverse.

For the Chinese version: 【評論】停止「糟蹋」年輕人！學用落差、生活迷惘，為何在台灣「踏入成年」愈來愈難？

(This piece reflects the author's opinion, and does not represent the opinion of CommonWealth Magazine.)

CommonWealth Magazine welcomes op-ed submissions. Please send your article proposals to [email protected]

About the author:

Jonathan Gropper is a U.S. Department of State-appointed Fulbright Specialist and Taiwan Gold Card holder. A graduate of Rutgers University, where he earned his Juris Doctorate, he has founded multiple companies across technology, real estate, and entertainment. An innovator, patent holder, and writer, Jonathan brings a multidisciplinary perspective shaped by his global experience. Welcome to connect Jon with his [LinkedIn] [Instagram]

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