In his young adult novel Es war einmal Indianerland (2011), Nils Mohl already establishes a duality between employed and unemployed characters. By means of this category of difference, he makes social localizations visible via the constellations the characters form between each other. This article addresses these dichotomies and examines them along various narrative concepts the author’s texts for young adult readers feature. Thereby, a clear distinction between gainful employment and biographical work can be identified, the latter being related especially to creative contexts like writing or a passion for literature and film. Choosing the text collage Teenager-Symphonie (2021) as a starting point, this field of tension is first unraveled and then transferred to Nils Mohl’s three novels of the Stadtrand-trilogy as well as his young adult novel Henny & Ponger. Throughout the analysis, different locations of employment are investigated. The work they spatialize is then connected to strategies of characterization and the according processes of social localization (class) of the characters.