Since the pandemic, a whole new vocabulary has grown up around jobs, bosses and money, much of it coined on TikTok and then picked up by newspapers and HR departments. This guide explains the terms you’re most likely to hear at work or in the news, with a full entry for each.

How people are treating their jobs

• Quiet quitting: doing only what your job requires, and nothing extra.
• Acting your wage: matching your effort to your pay.
• Loud quitting: being openly disengaged, even working against your employer.
• Rage applying: firing off job applications after a bad day at work.
• Side hustle: paid work on top of your main job.

How employers are responding

• Quiet firing: making a job worse so someone leaves on their own.
• Quiet hiring: filling skills gaps with existing staff or contractors instead of new hires.

Attitudes to work

• Grindset: a mindset that glorifies nonstop work, now mostly used ironically.
• Antiwork: an online movement criticising modern work culture.

Money and the economy

• Vibecession: when people feel the economy is terrible even though the numbers look decent.
• Loud budgeting: openly saying no to spending because you’re saving.
• Doom spending: spending money to cope with anxiety about the future.
• Quiet luxury: expensive clothes that don’t show off.
• Girl math: joking logic for justifying a purchase.
• De-influencing: creators telling you what not to buy.

Why so many “quiet” words?

“Quiet quitting” went viral in 2022, and the format stuck: quiet firing, quiet hiring, quiet luxury, loud quitting, loud budgeting. Some of these describe real shifts in how people work; others are older behaviours with catchy new names. Each entry tells you which is which, and where the term really came from.

For other everyday terms, see our internet slang dictionary, the Gen Z slang guide or the full A–Z index.