Do slackers keep the job market warm?

OK, this is clearly a headline designed to grab attention. But I am referring to some recent search by the Brookings Institution, which found that many American workers, especially educated men, are working fewer hours than before the pandemic. While lower-wage workers have increased hours, they most likely will keep up with the cost-of-living crisisthe best educated, particularly men in the top 10 percent of incomes, work less than before.

Some of this is likely due to working from home. New York City’s subway use is at 70 percent of 2019 levels and San Francisco is just 47 percent, according to Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo Global Management. If you delete travel time, you automatically delete some working hours. Part of it has to do with people still suffering from long-term Covid, according to the Brookings authors.

But part of this is clearly about people reevaluating their personal priorities. Having had a taste of life at home, and in better balance, I have to wonder if educated men aren’t navigating some of the decision trees that educated women have navigated for years. One of the many reasons I decided to pursue a self-managed portfolio career rather than a senior management position is that it gave me more flexibility for family.

Columnists or consultants or anyone who works for themselves – often balancing more than one job or client – ​​can work as long as they want, when they want, while managerial positions are client dependent; you have to attend meetings and are tied to each other’s schedules. I’ve never had a job where I couldn’t have breakfast or dinner on a regular basis with my kids. But I’ve never had a job where I didn’t work early mornings, evenings, and weekends regularly. It’s not about productivity, it’s about flexibility.

The challenge for managers is that a new generation of workers, including more men, don’t want to be tied to other people’s schedules, whether they have children or not. I recently attended a Fortune 500 C-suiters dinner and one of the key challenges discussed was that top talent wants companies to fit their schedule, rather than the other way around. One leader noted that this wasn’t just a millennial trend, it was becoming the norm. JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon may be able to get people to work the way they did before the pandemic, but from my report, I’d say very few others can.

The conventional wisdom is that this attitude will change with the economy. But that’s not what I hear from the CEOs and consultants I’ve spoken to recently, who are worried about ending up with a massive labor shortage the way we were 18 months ago, and are reluctant to fire people when the economy is like this. uncertain . Some are thinking of out-of-the-box ways to fit extremely flexible schedules, like creating platforms where you can work on tasks any time of day or night. Others talk (quietly) about investing more in generative AI to replace those pesky humans.

Ed, I’m curious if you, as a highly educated male, have made any new math on post-pandemic work? And what do you think we’re missing in our conversation about the future of work?

Recommended reading

• Martin Wolf’s piece on because Fox traded democracy for profit and what it means for the future of America and the world, is required reading. AS I wrote in 2018I think the country that leads the 21st century will be the country that finds a way to control its elites.

• Please also take a look at my column today about what Chinese mercantilism, too-big-to-fail banks, Big Tech and European price-rigging companies have in common.

• Fintan O’Toole’s fantastic New York Review of Books wise on the significance of Donald Trump, Stormy Daniels, and our entertainment society is a wonderful dot-to-dot connection as to where we have come politically and where we could go.

• And even though I’m super late to this party, I wanted to mention Spike Lee’s award-winning multipart documentary on the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina, called When the levees broke. My son and I saw this while visiting Tulane University in New Orleans this past weekend, which is one of the colleges he’s looking at. The city still hasn’t recovered and may never from what I could see.

Edoardo Luce replies

Rana, that’s a sobering question (and thanks for calling me “highly educated” – most people would disagree!). My pandemic started in 2012 when I became a columnist. I stopped working as a journalist, which I had done for the previous two decades, and became a Lone Ranger, like you. It’s a huge privilege to do our job and choose when to see our children and other flexibilities. So Covid hasn’t been such a shock to me.

My concern about WFH’s apparent lasting effects is twofold: First, people in white-collar jobs who are physically present at work are more likely to get promotions because nothing replaces face time (as opposed to FaceTime). When you meet others in person you discover all kinds of serendipity: which team your colleague really sides with, who you despise each other, or fantasy, what little weaknesses they have etc. So WFH is bad for your career and your sense of what benefits work can really bring. Here’s the secret of the job: it’s not just about the job; it is also your primary vehicle for getting to know other human beings. Plus, if polls are to be believed, the job offers the best chance at romance. . .

My second objection is the elitism of the subject. This conversation is exclusive to white collar jobs. This makes us privileged. Since what matters most in life is contact with other people, perhaps jobs that require contact with other people are now robbing us of a gear? Blue-collar jobs are underpaid and undervalued. But they are more human, and therefore more directly in touch with our species, as the divergence grows. The more we recognize that — and I know you do — the better.

My final thought, I promise. Journalism is about human contact. The internet is an illusion. Online reporting is very limiting. Always interact directly with people. We should never forget that.

Your comments

And now a word from our swamp dwellers. . .

In response to “India will never be America’s ally”:
“In recent years, India and China are more similar than they would like to admit:

• Whipping up nostalgia politics amid a multitude of woes at home (economy slowdown, rising inequality to name a few)

• Overthrowing the political norms and customs that serve as informal institutions (next to the real harm of formal ones)

• Project an image of strength to reinforce the strongman rule á la Modi and Xi, among others

There is a Chinese saying apt to describe India’s strategic positioning: (loosely translated) when snipe and clams fight, it is the fishermen who benefit. India probably hopes to benefit from a vacuum that arises from a weakened or distracted US and China. . . Delhi will be forced to side when push comes to shove, and will probably side with the US, I think. But you are surely correct in pointing out that he will never be a natural fit as an ally of America. — Nicholas Chia