Considering again over the half-century or in order that I’ve been being attentive to the US economic system, I can’t offhand keep in mind a time when most individuals believed that the standard of American jobs was excessive and/or rising. Right here’s how Adam Ozimek, John Lettieri, and Benjamin Glasner describe the widespread complaints of their report, “The American Worker: Toward a New Consensus” (Financial Innovation Institute, June 2024).
Contemplate a typical narrative one hears about todayʼs economic system. It goes one thing like this: Employees are experiencing an age of unprecedented disruption. The rise of e-commerce and automation, growing international competitors, and the proliferation of gig platforms have upended the everyday employer-employee relationship and the steadiness that staff used to get pleasure from. In consequence, extra staff are taking over facet gigs or cobbling collectively a number of part-time jobs simply to get by. Not solely that, however even good jobs are extra precarious than in earlier eras. Again when manufacturing dominated the U.S. economic system, staff may anticipate a job for all times. Right this moment, they’re compelled to change jobs extra typically than ever earlier than.
Nevertheless, when Ozimek, Lettieri, and Glasner then contemplate the precise statistical proof behind these fears, typically with comparisons again to 1980 or the Nineteen Nineties, they don’t proof in help. For instance, they write:
Not solely has it lengthy been unusual for staff to carry multiple job without delay, Individuals at the moment are even much less more likely to have a number of jobs than they have been prior to now. A number of jobholders have trended down from 5.9 p.c of staff in 1994 to simply 5.0 p.c at the moment. … If not via a number of jobs, maybe staff are responding to elevated disruption or precarity by working longer hours? Simply the other. Within the early Nineteen Sixties, manufacturing and nonsupervisory workers—staff who don’t handle different staff—averaged near a 40-hour workweek. By 1980, that had fallen to simply over 35 hours per week. Right this moment, itʼs beneath 34 hours per week—near a historic low throughout non-recessionary intervals.
What about part-time work? Are Individuals being compelled to accept part-time jobs after they would somewhat have the safety of full-time employment? Right here once more, the reply is clearly no. In whole, roughly 19.3 p.c of the labor pressure works part-time, decrease than in 1980. Solely 2.6 p.c of the labor pressure does so out of financial necessity—near a historic low. The overwhelming majority of those that work part-time achieve this by selection and the overwhelming majority of those that need full-time work can discover it.
We additionally discover zero proof for the concept staff are switching jobs extra steadily than earlier than. The share of staff altering jobs in a given 12 months has fallen considerably, from 16.9 p.c in 1980 to 11.1 p.c at the moment. Over the identical interval, the median size of time somebody works for a given employer has gone up from 3.2 years to 4.1 years. In reality, there may be good motive to imagine that the low ranges of job turnover are a trigger for concern. Job switching tends to meaningfully increase a workerʼs lifetime earnings, and it additionally helps information and productiveness features to unfold all through the economic system.
Their roll-call of proof about how wages and work circumstances will not be the truth is declining, however are higher than a couple of a long time in the past, goes on and on. Right here, let me point out what folks really say about their jobs in response to surveys. The Normal Social Survey has since 1972 been performed by an opinion analysis middle primarily based on the College of Chicago, with funding from the Nationwide Science Basis. When Individuals are requested about their job satisfaction, right here’s what they are saying:
Sure, there’s some fluctuation, like a drop in job satisfaction through the pandemic. However between 80-90% of Individuals have been both “very” or “moderately” glad with their job going again to 1972.
That’s only one survey, proper? Effectively, the Gallup ballot does a job satisfaction survey, too, asking: “How satisfied or dissatisfied are you with your job? Would you say you are — completely satisfied, somewhat satisfied, somewhat dissatisfied or completely dissatisfied with your job?” In 2023, the reply was 50% utterly glad and 41% considerably glad. The best stage of satisfaction was down a bit from the pre-pandemic solutions of 2020, when 56% reported being utterly glad and 33% have been considerably glad.
That’s simply two surveys, proper? Effectively, the Convention Board additionally does a survey of job satisfaction: “The Conference Boardʼs multi-decade survey of U.S. workers recently found that job satisfaction has improved for thirteen consecutive years, resulting in the highest levels recorded since the surveyʼs inception in 1987.”
Certain, there are many points with the labor market and the economic system as a complete. However as one instance, issues about excessive costs for housing, or medical health insurance, or a school diploma, or inflation on the whole will not be really complaints in regards to the jobs that individuals have. The specified for salaries and wages with greater shopping for energy and jobs with higher profession prospects aren’t fairly the identical as hating your present job, both. There’s a form of pretend profundity that delights in solemnly asserting how the world goes to hell. Nearly two centuries in the past, John Stuart Mill was writing disapprovingly about how “the man who despairs when others hope… is admired as a sage”–as if pessimism was essentially synonymous with hard-earned knowledge, somewhat simply emotional dyspepsia.
