6 ms·

Americans Are Losing Their Work Ethic

17 points by Bostonian 4y ago

mintaka5 4y ago
margarina72 4y ago
While this is only anecdotal evidence, I have gathered from conversations with people not in the workforce, while being well educated, and the lack of motivation wasn't coming necessarily from a lack of ethics but more from an actual understanding what their work was contributing to, and not desiring being part of an activity they disagree with the finality of it, or at best consider it a waste of time and energy. Again, only personal conversations with some friends and acquaintances, nothing statistically representative, but definitely show there is room for looking deeper at the root this trends before labeling people as lazy.
- UtopiaPunk 4y ago
  That resonates with me. The work I find fulfilling or important doesn't pay well or at all. Other jobs range from pointless to actively harmful. Even then, my hard work is really just to make some CEO out founder rich. So yeah, I try to find work that will pay the bills and that doesn't drain all my energy, so at the end of the day, I can still do something good. We only get roughly 80 years to be alive on this world, so why should I pour my adulthood into feeding social parasites? That's what would be unethical.
  - klyrs 4y ago
    I have fulfilling work and just enough pay to get by. My employer hired a new HR director, who came out and said "working at this company is an intangible benefit" and went on to explain that we underpay people as a matter of policy specifically on account of that benefit. In retrospect, I should have called a vote to unionize at the end of that meeting, because employee dissatisfaction hit an all-time low that day...
- hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
  This is also my own experience. For my recent job I was paid a ridiculously big amount of money for what? For basically working on a website that is not even useful to society in any meaningful sense. Did I bring any value to the society? No. It even feels I diminished it somehow. And the disproportion between my earnings and those of my fellow colleagues in other fields is solely because at this point my skills are valued by the marked more, not that I am "better" than them in any other way. Something is broken and I don't believe it can be fixed easily.
papito 4y ago
Or perhaps they are discovering work/life balance. America runs on the dread of losing your job and health insurance. You have no choice but to overcompensate for it. Respond to Slack after 8PM, respond to an email on a weekend, don't take that two-week vacation, etc. There is no "work ethic" - just the fear of destitution and medical debts.
pixl97 4y ago
Employers are losing their pay ethic.
- jqpabc123 4y ago
  Greed (as opposed to sensible, sustainable profit) is ultimately counter productive over the long term. Being totally oriented toward the short term, many American businesses have yet to fully appreciate all the implications.
  - goodpoint 4y ago
    The problem is that the whole socioeconomical system is built on and fueled by greed instead of sustainability.
    - jqpabc123 4y ago
      Yes. This is a weakness --- which can be exploited. The Japanese auto industry did this very successfully --- on our own turf. Toyota became the world's largest auto manufacturer by building most of their products in the USA --- using American labor. Right now, those trying to follow in the Japanese footsteps are the Chinese.
- antisthenes 4y ago
  This may seem like a low effort response to the topic at hand, but sometimes these are necessary against low-quality articles that like to dance around the issue.
sanp 4y ago
Another rant from a right-wing publication.
mensetmanusman 4y ago
The pandemic let the hamsters off the wheel just long enough to start questioning things…
- nathanaldensr 4y ago
  A very apt metaphor. Many of us figured this out before lockdowns, but since lockdowns it has crystallized and become tangible. I for one am never going back to the grind.
jonesjoneses 4y ago
I am going to work hard to buy a new house for my family! Wait, I can't afford the house. And i don't have a family. Oh well, at least I have my video games.
- tomohawk 4y ago
  Cynicism is not thinking. It's not wisdom either. The job that takes the longest is the one you don't start. Don't want to be successful? You're on the right path. EDIT: Since HN won't let me respond, here's my response: When I first graduated, a house was definitely out of reach. It all seemed so unfair. Instead of dwelling on that, I got to work. I now own (completely) my house and am in a profession that is rewarding. You can either hold yourself back with cynicism and blame others for your problems, or you can get to work and solve them. No one else is going to.
  - tenebrisalietum 4y ago
    [flagged]
  - lumost 4y ago
    A typical student who did the “right things” starts life with 60-120k in debt. To acquire remunerative employment, they must then move to a successful major city likely to consume 30-50% of their income. To afford a house, this individual must then save 2-300k in liquid capital to afford a down payment and prove they have stable employment to purchase a home, which dependent on the whims of the federal reserve may erase what is now 10-15 years of savings. A rational observer would remark on where this 10-15 years of surplus went? A Luddite would argue that one should simply do nothing
    - ninethirty 4y ago
      “Tang ping is the rejection of overworking, where you let things be and do the bare minimum,” said Miao. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/16/china-youth-reject-hustle-culture-face- https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/16/china-youth-reject-hustle-cu... unemployment-economic-uncertainty.html
klyrs 4y ago
They say "Americans“ but then they only talk about and show statistics for men. Wonder why that is.
- aconbere 4y ago
  You’re insinuating a cause here, but I honestly don’t know what you think it is.
  - klyrs 4y ago
    I honestly don't know why they'd equate working men with the entire workforce in this century.
    - politician 4y ago
      The entire workforce is men plus women. So, your expansive way of framing your comments to span a boolean classification makes it seem like you’re just looking for something to be angry about. Any way you slice it, 7 million Americans out of work is a serious issue. Denying the author use of the national identity of the affected population is problematic.
      - klyrs 4y ago
        Who said I'm angry? If the title was "American Men Are Losing Their Work Ethic", then I wouldn't have a problem with their statistical analysis -- except, perhaps, that they've further narrowed it to a certain age group -- perhaps, "Prime-aged American Males Are Lacking Work Ethic." They're drawing overbroad generalizations from a subset, and that's fishy at best. I'm not "denying the author use the national identity." I'm wondering about is why the author would deliberately fail to examine a full half of the population. If you think that's problematic, I guess I'm okay with disagreeing with you. The story further goes on to completely ignore the supply side: what jobs are available, and why don't "prime-aged males" want them? Is that an interesting story? Maybe, maybe not, but I'm sure there's nuance to be found there. But no, "Americans Are Losing Their Work Ethic" is easily supported with some cherry-picked charts and that's way easier to write about. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law
raverbashing 4y ago
"Work ethic" oh, like working unpaid overtime, pushing hard on the weekend so the boss can have that report 8am Monday morning? Working with lack of resources/protection equipment etc? Sounds like a lack of ethic by the employer instead
politician 4y ago
The Eberstadt piece is making the rounds. Participation of prime-age men in the labor force is down to Great Depression Era levels. Unaddressed is whether this is the expected result of increasing workforce participation of women. Yet, there is something to be said about young men with nothing to do. Historically, excess men are sent to war. Now, we placate them with video games and antidepressants and disability checks. Overall, this is an interesting observation and we don’t know where it will lead. The best take that I’ve heard is that this, at scale, is the most likely effect of UBI.
carapace 4y ago
Interesting data, lousy polemic. The second chart seems to show that 25–54-year-old American males have been incresingly "not in labor force" over the decades since the 1950's, and the trend has been fairly stable. Other than that there's not really a lot of information to "hang your hat" from, eh? I think we should try to understand what's happening before we try to change "incentive structures", eh?
toss1 4y ago
A mere quick glance at their chart belies the description — the [Not In Labor Force] line is definitely flattening off in the last decade or so. While the point that immigrants are working hard is very valid, the main body of the article seems like a lot of hand-waving and fluff. It also completely ignores the employer side of the equation, or the fact that labor now gets a lower share of GDP (vs capital) than at any time in the last 8 decades. With employers systematically designing their systems and pay to extract more labor for lower cost than ever before (increasing "productivity" — this quarter), no wonder that anyone who can stay home, is staying home. Yet the article completely ignores that. It also ignores the fact that the US Minimum Wage was initially designed and set, into the early 1970s so that a single minimum wage employee working a full-time job could keep a family of four above the poverty line. Since then, the minimum wage has nearly flatlined. It should be into the $23hour range, or $46K/year to meet that standard (actually implementing regional levels would probably be best, but that's another story). Again, the fact that these basic worker protection failures are completely ignored by the article is damning. It is basically a bogus opinion piece masquerating as fact-based reasoning.
anandnair93 4y ago
It has double sided effects.
peteradio 4y ago
This is an article mostly about importation of workers and how absent that usual stream, native workers have not filled the gap. The thing is, I'm not sure why you'd expect that to occur in 3 short years in the midst of a pandemic. Companies will always complain about not having enough workers so feds will grant more work visas which suppresses wages in companies favors. How do we know the truthfulness of these vacancies?
xnx 4y ago
Work is increasingly asinine.
- nathanaldensr 4y ago
  Its purpose seems to be merely to keep a corrupt system going purely for its own sake. Where is the spiritual meaning in any of this?
smeej 4y ago
What changes are they making, or what changes have been made for them, that allow them to meet their subsistence needs this way? Is it really just the trope that they've moved into mom and dad's basement and aren't doing anything? Are the older generations picking up the slack of providing for the younger ones? I think I just still haven't wrapped my head around how people who used to feel like they "had to work" their dead-end jobs because they needed to pay rent, gas, and food, suddenly realized they could stop working their dead-end jobs and still cover rent, gas, and food. It made sense while there were additional government support programs in place, but I thought most of those had ended. Are there enough still going to explain this? Or is it something else?
Brian_K_White 4y ago
Oh Reason... you call yourself "reason", and you do have your moments, but then you have your other moments. Never change my friend.
- moistly 4y ago
  It’s named ironically. Can’t convince me otherwise.
jabthedang 4y ago

17 points by Bostonian 4y ago

While this is only anecdotal evidence, I have gathered from conversations with people not in the workforce, while being well educated, and the lack of motivation wasn't coming necessarily from a lack of ethics but more from an actual understanding what their work was contributing to, and not desiring being part of an activity they disagree with the finality of it, or at best consider it a waste of time and energy. Again, only personal conversations with some friends and acquaintances, nothing statistically representative, but definitely show there is room for looking deeper at the root this trends before labeling people as lazy.

UtopiaPunk 4y ago
That resonates with me. The work I find fulfilling or important doesn't pay well or at all. Other jobs range from pointless to actively harmful. Even then, my hard work is really just to make some CEO out founder rich. So yeah, I try to find work that will pay the bills and that doesn't drain all my energy, so at the end of the day, I can still do something good. We only get roughly 80 years to be alive on this world, so why should I pour my adulthood into feeding social parasites? That's what would be unethical.
- klyrs 4y ago
  I have fulfilling work and just enough pay to get by. My employer hired a new HR director, who came out and said "working at this company is an intangible benefit" and went on to explain that we underpay people as a matter of policy specifically on account of that benefit. In retrospect, I should have called a vote to unionize at the end of that meeting, because employee dissatisfaction hit an all-time low that day...
hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
This is also my own experience. For my recent job I was paid a ridiculously big amount of money for what? For basically working on a website that is not even useful to society in any meaningful sense. Did I bring any value to the society? No. It even feels I diminished it somehow. And the disproportion between my earnings and those of my fellow colleagues in other fields is solely because at this point my skills are valued by the marked more, not that I am "better" than them in any other way. Something is broken and I don't believe it can be fixed easily.

papito 4y ago

Or perhaps they are discovering work/life balance. America runs on the dread of losing your job and health insurance. You have no choice but to overcompensate for it. Respond to Slack after 8PM, respond to an email on a weekend, don't take that two-week vacation, etc. There is no "work ethic" - just the fear of destitution and medical debts.

pixl97 4y ago

Employers are losing their pay ethic.

jqpabc123 4y ago
Greed (as opposed to sensible, sustainable profit) is ultimately counter productive over the long term. Being totally oriented toward the short term, many American businesses have yet to fully appreciate all the implications.
- goodpoint 4y ago
  The problem is that the whole socioeconomical system is built on and fueled by greed instead of sustainability.
  - jqpabc123 4y ago
    Yes. This is a weakness --- which can be exploited. The Japanese auto industry did this very successfully --- on our own turf. Toyota became the world's largest auto manufacturer by building most of their products in the USA --- using American labor. Right now, those trying to follow in the Japanese footsteps are the Chinese.
antisthenes 4y ago
This may seem like a low effort response to the topic at hand, but sometimes these are necessary against low-quality articles that like to dance around the issue.

sanp 4y ago

Another rant from a right-wing publication.

mensetmanusman 4y ago

The pandemic let the hamsters off the wheel just long enough to start questioning things…

nathanaldensr 4y ago
A very apt metaphor. Many of us figured this out before lockdowns, but since lockdowns it has crystallized and become tangible. I for one am never going back to the grind.

jonesjoneses 4y ago

I am going to work hard to buy a new house for my family! Wait, I can't afford the house. And i don't have a family. Oh well, at least I have my video games.

tomohawk 4y ago
Cynicism is not thinking. It's not wisdom either. The job that takes the longest is the one you don't start. Don't want to be successful? You're on the right path. EDIT: Since HN won't let me respond, here's my response: When I first graduated, a house was definitely out of reach. It all seemed so unfair. Instead of dwelling on that, I got to work. I now own (completely) my house and am in a profession that is rewarding. You can either hold yourself back with cynicism and blame others for your problems, or you can get to work and solve them. No one else is going to.
- tenebrisalietum 4y ago
  [flagged]
- lumost 4y ago
  A typical student who did the “right things” starts life with 60-120k in debt. To acquire remunerative employment, they must then move to a successful major city likely to consume 30-50% of their income. To afford a house, this individual must then save 2-300k in liquid capital to afford a down payment and prove they have stable employment to purchase a home, which dependent on the whims of the federal reserve may erase what is now 10-15 years of savings. A rational observer would remark on where this 10-15 years of surplus went? A Luddite would argue that one should simply do nothing
  - ninethirty 4y ago
    “Tang ping is the rejection of overworking, where you let things be and do the bare minimum,” said Miao. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/16/china-youth-reject-hustle-culture-face- https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/16/china-youth-reject-hustle-cu... unemployment-economic-uncertainty.html

klyrs 4y ago

They say "Americans“ but then they only talk about and show statistics for men. Wonder why that is.

aconbere 4y ago
You’re insinuating a cause here, but I honestly don’t know what you think it is.
- klyrs 4y ago
  I honestly don't know why they'd equate working men with the entire workforce in this century.
  - politician 4y ago
    The entire workforce is men plus women. So, your expansive way of framing your comments to span a boolean classification makes it seem like you’re just looking for something to be angry about. Any way you slice it, 7 million Americans out of work is a serious issue. Denying the author use of the national identity of the affected population is problematic.
    - klyrs 4y ago
      Who said I'm angry? If the title was "American Men Are Losing Their Work Ethic", then I wouldn't have a problem with their statistical analysis -- except, perhaps, that they've further narrowed it to a certain age group -- perhaps, "Prime-aged American Males Are Lacking Work Ethic." They're drawing overbroad generalizations from a subset, and that's fishy at best. I'm not "denying the author use the national identity." I'm wondering about is why the author would deliberately fail to examine a full half of the population. If you think that's problematic, I guess I'm okay with disagreeing with you. The story further goes on to completely ignore the supply side: what jobs are available, and why don't "prime-aged males" want them? Is that an interesting story? Maybe, maybe not, but I'm sure there's nuance to be found there. But no, "Americans Are Losing Their Work Ethic" is easily supported with some cherry-picked charts and that's way easier to write about. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law

raverbashing 4y ago

"Work ethic" oh, like working unpaid overtime, pushing hard on the weekend so the boss can have that report 8am Monday morning? Working with lack of resources/protection equipment etc? Sounds like a lack of ethic by the employer instead

politician 4y ago

The Eberstadt piece is making the rounds. Participation of prime-age men in the labor force is down to Great Depression Era levels. Unaddressed is whether this is the expected result of increasing workforce participation of women. Yet, there is something to be said about young men with nothing to do. Historically, excess men are sent to war. Now, we placate them with video games and antidepressants and disability checks. Overall, this is an interesting observation and we don’t know where it will lead. The best take that I’ve heard is that this, at scale, is the most likely effect of UBI.

carapace 4y ago

Interesting data, lousy polemic. The second chart seems to show that 25–54-year-old American males have been incresingly "not in labor force" over the decades since the 1950's, and the trend has been fairly stable. Other than that there's not really a lot of information to "hang your hat" from, eh? I think we should try to understand what's happening before we try to change "incentive structures", eh?

toss1 4y ago

A mere quick glance at their chart belies the description — the [Not In Labor Force] line is definitely flattening off in the last decade or so. While the point that immigrants are working hard is very valid, the main body of the article seems like a lot of hand-waving and fluff. It also completely ignores the employer side of the equation, or the fact that labor now gets a lower share of GDP (vs capital) than at any time in the last 8 decades. With employers systematically designing their systems and pay to extract more labor for lower cost than ever before (increasing "productivity" — this quarter), no wonder that anyone who can stay home, is staying home. Yet the article completely ignores that. It also ignores the fact that the US Minimum Wage was initially designed and set, into the early 1970s so that a single minimum wage employee working a full-time job could keep a family of four above the poverty line. Since then, the minimum wage has nearly flatlined. It should be into the $23hour range, or $46K/year to meet that standard (actually implementing regional levels would probably be best, but that's another story). Again, the fact that these basic worker protection failures are completely ignored by the article is damning. It is basically a bogus opinion piece masquerating as fact-based reasoning.

anandnair93 4y ago

It has double sided effects.

peteradio 4y ago

This is an article mostly about importation of workers and how absent that usual stream, native workers have not filled the gap. The thing is, I'm not sure why you'd expect that to occur in 3 short years in the midst of a pandemic. Companies will always complain about not having enough workers so feds will grant more work visas which suppresses wages in companies favors. How do we know the truthfulness of these vacancies?

xnx 4y ago

Work is increasingly asinine.

nathanaldensr 4y ago
Its purpose seems to be merely to keep a corrupt system going purely for its own sake. Where is the spiritual meaning in any of this?

smeej 4y ago

What changes are they making, or what changes have been made for them, that allow them to meet their subsistence needs this way? Is it really just the trope that they've moved into mom and dad's basement and aren't doing anything? Are the older generations picking up the slack of providing for the younger ones? I think I just still haven't wrapped my head around how people who used to feel like they "had to work" their dead-end jobs because they needed to pay rent, gas, and food, suddenly realized they could stop working their dead-end jobs and still cover rent, gas, and food. It made sense while there were additional government support programs in place, but I thought most of those had ended. Are there enough still going to explain this? Or is it something else?

Brian_K_White 4y ago

Oh Reason... you call yourself "reason", and you do have your moments, but then you have your other moments. Never change my friend.

moistly 4y ago
It’s named ironically. Can’t convince me otherwise.

jabthedang 4y ago