5 Things about "Nobody Wants to Work Anymore"
"Nobody wants to work anymore." That's become a common refrain in the US, especially from people on the political right. It's a catch-all complaint to denote any of an umbrella of socio-political grievances from one's dislike of minimum wage laws, to snide beliefs about public assistance benefits and who uses them, disregard for satisfactory working conditions, frustration with the competitive hiring market, to the presumed notion that younger adults today have no work ethic. But is it a real thing, or just a political canard?
The underlying reality is definitely real: businesses in many sectors are having trouble hiring. I see that in the software/IT industry where I work, where hiring qualified new staff in some disciplines can take months. I also see it in service industry jobs, where workplaces like restaurants are reducing their hours of operation or level of service because they don't have enough staff. For example, I visited a fast food restaurant at lunch today where the cash registers were closed and all customers were directed to order their food from a digital kiosk instead. But is the reason for this labor shortage that "nobody wants to work anymore"... or is it something else?
Five Things:
The underlying reality is definitely real: businesses in many sectors are having trouble hiring. I see that in the software/IT industry where I work, where hiring qualified new staff in some disciplines can take months. I also see it in service industry jobs, where workplaces like restaurants are reducing their hours of operation or level of service because they don't have enough staff. For example, I visited a fast food restaurant at lunch today where the cash registers were closed and all customers were directed to order their food from a digital kiosk instead. But is the reason for this labor shortage that "nobody wants to work anymore"... or is it something else?
Five Things:
- Working is fundamentally an economic transaction: employees provide their labor in exchange for pay. If the pay's not good enough, employees won't work there. It's not that they're unwilling to work. They're unwilling to work for poor pay. They'll work somewhere else.
- Especially in a market where wages are going up- and they've been rising noticeably for, like, 2 years now; just look at the news- employers need to adjust their expectations of what they need to pay to attract workers. Plus, with inflation rising over the past 14+ months (again, just look at the news) the approximately 40% of workers who live paycheck-to-paycheck have stronger incentive to quit underpaying jobs and work for better wages elsewhere.
- The coronavirus pandemic of the last few years created a new form of hazardous working condition: the general public. Workers realized jobs that require working closely, face-to-face with the general public, especially unmasked, are riskier. Pay for such jobs needs to be increased to compensate for the higher risk.
- In a competitive labor market workers consider more than just a job's compensation in determining where to work. The work environment becomes an important consideration more take into account. Managers/owners who are always carping, "Nobody wants to work anymore," are not pleasant to work for. Nobody wants to work for a jackass boss.
- Some workers have withdrawn from the labor force because it doesn't pay to work. What do I mean? Childcare sucks in the US. It's unaffordable to many. If you have kids and don't earn enough at a job to pay for their care and have enough left over to pay rent, utilities, groceries, etc., you've got to consider staying home to care for them instead. Update: this challenge got way worse with the pandemic because kids were home way more often due to schools switching to remote instruction and having way less tolerance for kids coming in sick for in-person instruction. Nobody wants to work if it's a money-losing arrangement.