This article explores the experiences and discourses of precarious work and welfare from the perspectives of young people who are unemployed or in precarious employment, and frontline staff broadly involved in welfare practices. The narratives of unemployed young people and frontline workers, within an area of Wales, offer a snapshot of work and welfare from 2015; with young people a ‘litmus paper’ of the landscape and frontline workers as street-level bureaucrats (Lipsky, 2010). The main findings discussed here are that any work and work schemes are regarded as an appropriate solution for the ‘problem’ of unemployment by both young people and frontline workers, who valorise work and denigrate welfare. Young people compete for, and frontline workers encourage, unpaid and paid labour market participation, whether stable employment is forthcoming or not, and focus on individualising effort and hard work. This is not new, discipline by welfare stigma and the elevation of work has guided workers both now and historically, and a deliberate commodification of labour with work schemes and ‘work first’ approaches, alongside welfare sanctions ensure individuals labour for profit (Daguerre and Etherington, 2014; Grover, 2012). Drawing on the concepts of ‘governmentality’ (Foucault, 1994a) this article argues that the problematizing of the unemployed, and centrality of work and the work ethic, has contributed to young people, particularly those without financial resources, to become a resilient self-governing and effortful reserve army of labour, shaped through discursive practices.