The Career Goal of the Moment Is a ‘Lazy-Girl Job’

Some people would call Victoria Bilodeau’s decision to work as a freelance digital marketer a move to gain work-life balance. She calls it a “lazy-girl job.”

Bilodeau, 23 years old, says she used to work 10-hour days as an environmental technician, helping clean up low-level radioactive dirt for $26 an hour. Now, she logs about three hours a day promoting makeup and skin-care products online. She earns less than she used to, but in her newly abundant free time, she exercises, meditates and plays with her cats, Jinx and Fang. Living with her boyfriend in Belleville, Ontario, helps defray expenses.

“I really do have such a chill life in comparison to what it was,” she says.

Bilodeau and scores of other women online are bragging about their work setup using the hashtag #lazygirljob. To fans, the ideal lazy-girl job is one that can be done from home, comes with a chill boss, ends at 5 p.m. sharp and earns between $60,000 and $80,000 a year—enough to afford the basic comforts of young-adult life, yet not enough to feel compelled to work overtime. Veterans of such jobs say roles such as “digital marketing associate,” “customer-success manager” and “office administrator” are good bets for achieving the lazy-girl lifestyle.

The phenomenon, essentially the opposite of “leaning in,” has detractors, who say that aspiring to a lazy-girl job is the wrong attitude for building a meaningful career. Yet, many young women who have branded themselves “lazy girls” online insist they are anything but. After growing up hearing about the horrors of overwork, they say they’re happy in their jobs and celebrate striking work-life balance gold.

The term has generated close to 18 million views on TikTok, where videos often show women typing on their keyboards, with overlaid text about the perks they enjoy, like a manager who doesn’t micromanage and a no-pressure schedule that permits midday dog walks. 

Like quiet quitting before it, the lazy-girl job is the latest iteration of 20- and 30-somethings of both genders redrawing the blurry line between life and work postpandemic. (The term follows in a long line of girl-themed trends, like “girlboss” and “girl dinner”—basically a plate of snacks—intended to be both self-deprecating and aspirational.)

Not just for girls

Six in 10 workers say they’re putting in less than maximum effort, according to Gallup’s Global Workplace report this year. In the Gallup survey of more than 120,000 working adults, the biggest complaint from those workers was their workplace’s culture.

Plenty of men have posted to more anonymous platforms, such as the “antiwork” community on Reddit, to lament the downsides of their jobs, too. They gripe about critical bosses, low pay and feeling afraid to take time off.

Michael Durwin, a senior social-media strategist, says he isn’t antiwork, but does believe American hustle culture is toxic at times. He doesn’t understand why a woman would brand herself a “lazy girl,” though he gets the ethos behind the movement.

“I think younger women are using it almost in a way that they don’t understand the damage it can do,” the 54-year-old said.

Durwin’s own quest for work-life balance during the pandemic led him to the kind of remote social-media job that many avowed lazy girls might aspire to. It’s flexible enough that he can put his daughter’s hair into pigtails before taking the kids to school and pick them up afterward to shuttle them to doctors’ appointments or playdates with friends.

“My children don’t remember a time when Daddy wasn’t home when they got home,” he says.

The original lazy girl

Gabrielle Judge, a 26-year-old career influencer, says she coined the term “lazy-girl job” in May.

Judge, whose TikTok, Instagram and LinkedIn accounts focus on work-life balance, says she knew “lazy” would have a negative connotation, but could start a conversation. Lazy-girl jobs aren’t roles where you can slack off, she says, but career paths where “your work-life balance should feel so awesome that you almost feel like you’re being lazy.”

Before becoming a TikTok career influencer, Judge says she worked her own lazy-girl job in Denver, as an account manager for a tech company. The work-from-home role paid well and came with benefits such as financial credits for fitness classes and spa services, she says. Not only was there no overtime, there was no traditional 9 to 5, so she could log off once her tasks for the day were done.

She quit after a year, when layoffs at her company had remaining employees taking on more work for no pay raise. Suddenly, the gig wasn’t a lazy-girl job anymore. Around the same time, her social-media content began to gain traction.

Ember Rose Gilliam, 21, says she hates the term lazy-girl job, “but the energy behind it, I very much agree with.”

She works at a real-estate company where she’s been promoted twice, most recently to an associate project manager making $63,000 a year. She describes her role liaising between project managers and accountants to ensure financial and regulatory compliance as a dream job.

Charging through her “head-down” tasks takes two to three hours a day, Gilliam says. The rest of her 40-hour week is spent on call, leaving her with free time and flexibility to work from Miami, Chicago and Las Vegas, and take courses on LinkedIn Learning. She recently finished classes on working smarter, not harder, and boosting productivity using AI tools.

Gilliam’s boss, Ciara Glasgow, says the job will ramp up to a busier 40-hour week with more training. Nonetheless, Glasgow wants her team to feel professionally challenged without burning out and doesn’t worry about how people order their days so long as work gets done.

Gilliam appreciates the autonomy: “I have never answered a ping or a call outside of my office hours.”

Write to Katie Mogg at [email protected]