Book or short story about a future where humans go to a supposed virtual world [duplicate]

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• VR arcade game teaches teenagers to live on another planet 1 answer

I remember reading this when I was in middle school so late 1990's. Dystopian society. Jobs have been given to robots. Young adults can no longer get jobs so they have this trial program going on. Groups are teleported to what they believe is a virtual world and have to learn to survive there, they go three times; each time the ability and severity of an accident can become greater before being brought back.

I dont remember the author, name, any any character names either. I believe the groups were groups of five, and it seems they were actually teleported to another world, not virtually.

Answer 1

Invitation to the Game by Monica Hughes

A chilling account of life in 2154, when most jobs are done by machines. Lisse and her friends are unemployable after graduation, but the government gives them an abandoned warehouse in a bleak neighborhood to live in. Anxious to escape their dreary lives, the friends embrace The Game, which takes them to paradise. But is this world real or only a computer simulation?

The Goodreads reviews expound more on the group sizes, six in Lisse's group, with a variety of skills, and that they think they've "leveled up" when things get more dangerous, only to realize that it's all real now (it's a bit more ambiguous whether the first visits were just VR simulations of the world).

Search terms: book youths told they are entering virtual reality actually sent to other planets