Of all the economic and social changes we’ve been force-fed in recent years, one of the most puzzling to me is our current American attitude towards work. Job-quitting and job-switching were so common during the pandemic (almost 40% of workers changed jobs in two years), the trend was given a name: the Great Resignation. It was accompanied by the incredible mismatch of about 11.2 million job openings and only about six million people looking for work. Even more curious, in an Alice-in-Wonderland sort of way, is that the percentage of people working or looking for jobs has been declining since 2000.
Those are factual figures, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), that indicate a different attitude towards work, a sea change almost as big as what Shakespeare described when he first used the phrase to describe the ocean’s effects on a long-drowned sailor’s body (bones that are now coral, eyes now pearls). Jobs were the structural bones of our lives, and pearls for many, but are now commonly left behind, or never embraced at all.
Anecdotal evidence is common from people who hire and supervise today’s workers. “No one wants to work today,” they say, at least not like they did years ago. Mid-level workers want and expect benefits like those previously enjoyed at the high end of the pay and power scale: bonuses for working in-person in an office, the flexibility to work from home regularly or on-demand, salaries or hourly rates that match the highest in the field, a voice in every decision, and a variety of other hopes and expectations.
Some of the changes can be chalked up to the cycle that currently gives workers leverage over companies short on workers after the pandemic. But many changes were clear before COVID as well.
In a 2020 book that analyzes today’s American economy, Pulitzer Prize winner Steven Pearlstein describes changes since the 1970s which have pushed the economy and our society into “a corrupt and corrupting” economic system which he believes contributes to the decline in performance and trust for nearly all of our institutions: “business, religion, the press, the courts, police, labor unions, doctors,” and more.
America was economically dominant after WWII, but companies became complacent and were quickly overtaken in the 1970s and 80s by companies in Japan, Europe, and Asia. He identifies three principles that helped American companies become competitive again, but notes that since then they have been taken to destructive extremes that affect many current social problems. The most damaging, according to Pearlstein, is the idea that a corporation’s sole purpose is to maximize shareholder profits in the short term.
This principle was popularized by University of Chicago professors and glorified by believers in the 1987 Wall Street movie’s “Greed is good” speech. It has been used by many of today’s top CEOs to rationalize gutting communities with plant closures, evading reasonable taxes in the U.S. by gaming international tax laws, and loading companies with debt to pay shareholder dividends and buy back shares (limiting the supply and increasing stock values).
He points out the widening gap between large increases in worker productivity and minimal increases in wages or salary: between 1979 and 2019, worker productivity increased by almost 60% while wages and salaries rose just over 15%. The top 10%, 1%, and .1% pocketed the difference, and the gains in productivity have slowed significantly in recent years.
I connect this with the recent phenomenon popularized as “quiet quitting,” the practice of doing just enough to meet the minimum job requirements and remain employed. (It’s an approach perfectly captured and skewered in the “Dilbert” cartoon character Wally.) Pearlstein’s work suggests this question: If workers have realized in recent years that any extra or creative work they might do results in a greater profit for the company, but most of that profit will either go to top executives or investors (in a corporation dedicated to maximizing shareholder profits), why would they become fully engaged in a company and offer their best efforts and ideas?
There are ways around this problem, including worker ownership, profit-sharing, and a variety of other strategies that balance profits with worker and community benefits. But until corporate goals are changed across the economy, American productivity will stay in a rut while business and conservative leaders bemoan younger workers who “don’t want to work” in a system that fills the executives’ and investors’ wallets while leaving their own pockets with holes too big to fill.
Allen Woods is a freelance writer, author of the Revolutionary-era historical fiction novel “The Sword and Scabbard,” and Greenfield resident. His column appears regularly on a Saturday. Comments are welcome here or at awoods2846@gmail.com.