That's the picture you'd get if there was an unemployment problem, but what we actually have is an aging population and a productivity problem: it's really telling that most people's idea of changing their working life for the better is in effect to move to a lower productivity role in the higher end of their market: Individually making and selling things, or having their own tiny influencer brand, or leaving a company to start a one-man business.

We have a housing deficit, so abandoned houses are unusual, and mostly in places where people are moving away.

However "having transitioned quite well out of the factory economy" is definitely too rosy. We did "what the market wanted" but it turns out the market is not a strategist. And we have too large a population to exist purely as an offshore financing hub.