People, I know what I am talking about. I was JW for a long time. Everything that I have written is written from personal, lived experience. Light has inside knowledge as well, having been raised a JW and having family who still are.
People who fall away are said to have dissociated themselves and are not quite the same as apostates or folk who have been disfellowshipped. They are not shunned becuase there is always the hope that they will come back to the truth.
I don't know about nowadays, but twenty, thirty or even forty years ago many, many young folk, especially women didn't work but were pioneers. They worked a minimum of 90hours a month on the doors or in bible studies with recruits. This was most common among single women and young mothers but almost every woman my age that I knew was a pioneer. Those who didn't work claimed benefits and told the DHSS that they were unavailable for work because they were ministers of religion!
Women especially, but every witness really (except the ones with special skills like lawyers/doctors) were encouraged either not to work or just work part time in jobs like window cleaning or in a shop, so that they could spend more time spreading the word because, after the 1975 debacle, the emphasis changed to first of all the late 80s and then to the end of the millenium. The GB convinced everyone that this system would end in the late 80's when world governements were making nuclear treaties etc. When that didn't happen, the focus was on 1999 because there was no way that Jehovah would allow this evil system to continue into a new millenium. I remember people being discouraged from having children, from pursuing careers, from buying houses, from everything that might look like building a life, because what was the point if the system was going to end in the next few years.
I believe that the focus has now changed to sometime in the 2030s as being the end of things. Perhaps that's why the preaching is being ramped up amongst younger folk, now.