I’ve heard multiple employers of mine say this common phrase when trying to hire and coming up unsuccessful while we’re understaffed at whatever menial labor I’m working at the time. I can’t help but laugh and think, “No truer statement has ever been said.”
“Nobody wants to work” is a phrase used negatively by people who value work and think it’s meaningful. They use this phrase negatively toward people who don’t value work and would prefer to find a loophole in the system that will allow them to not work but still be given money to exist in a world in which they did not choose to exist in the first place.
Yes, nobody wants to work. Why would anybody want to work? Humans work because they’re forced to since they need to survive, and money is required to access the things needed to survive, and the only way to get money is to sacrifice your body and mind for a job that will reward your sacrifice with as little as it can get away with.
Nobody wants to work. Precisely. Work is tolerated as essential to survival in our system, but it is absolutely not wanted.