"Evolved?" WTF 2x. "Keeping up with the Joneses" is not a natural law. This entire thread is a shitshow of preconceived notions and willful ignorance, and your last sentence has five layers of weasel words.

I have never heard of peer pressure being a contributing factor in unemployment, does it work for employment, too? Cuz maybe that would make it a confounding variable.

There are innumerable studies indicating people's social group has significant emotional and normative influence. I'm not aware of any study looking at employment specifically, but it's not an unreasonable leap, IMO. Here are some examples:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23773049 http://web.media.mit.edu/~tod/media/pdfs/EmotionalContagion....

I think the idea that unemployment may be socially transmissible to a degree is pretty reasonable. Part of the fear of unemployment is fear of social rejection, due to negative views about unemployment. If others in your peer group are unemployed, that component of the motivation is ameliorated. There are other, stronger, motivations to be employed of course. But it's an effect I would expect to see at the margin.

And yes, I would absolutely expect it to work for employment. I see nothing confounding about that.