The New Work Ethic

Is it something new? Is there ever anything new under the sun? Let’s call it the new work, or better the new attitude toward work made manifest by young workers. These young people do not want to work as hard. They want work/life balance. They lack ambition, do not volunteer for extra assignments and do not much care about being promoted. 

So, have they simply redefined work for our modern times? Or, are they just suffering from what used to be called… sloth. Perhaps they are just lazy. Or perhaps they have fallen into terminal decadence. 

Will America be able to compete in the world markets if large numbers of workers have abandoned the old Protestant work ethic in favor of leisure and sloth? Or, have these young workers adopted values that seem more congenial to women, to mothers, to wives who value the extra time they need to care for homes and families? 

Now, companies are adjusting to the new attitude. The Wall Street Journal reports:

At law firm Nixon Peabody LLP, associates have started saying no to working weekends, prompting partners to ask more people to help complete time-sensitive work. TGS Insurance in Texas has struggled to fill promotions, and bosses often have to coax staffers to apply. And Maine-based marketing company Pulp+Wire plans to shut down for two weeks next year now that staffers are taking more vacation than they used to.

“The passion that we used to see in work is lower now, and you find it in fewer people—at least in the last two years,” says Sumithra Jagannath, president of ZED Digital, which makes digital ticket scanners. The company, based in Columbus, Ohio, recently moved about 20 remote engineering and marketing roles to Canada and India, where she said it’s easier to find talent who will go above and beyond.

One would like to put special emphasis on the last sentence, because it shows that the new working class, the one that prefers decadent leisure to work, is simply opening doors for workers outside of the country. If they do not want to do the jobs, people in other countries are happy to oblige.

How long Americans will maintain their living standards by working less is an open question, one that is closing rapidly.

Of course, it’s about work/life balance, which is presumably more therapeutic:

Many white-collar workers say the events of the past three years have reordered their priorities and showed them what they were missing when they were spending so much time at the office. Now that normalcy is returning, even some of the workers who used to be always on and always striving say they find themselves eyeing the clock as the day winds down, saying no to overtime work or even taking pay cuts for better work-life balance.

Yes, but what happens when the neighbor gets ahead, gets promoted, gets a larger bonus, while you are off luxuriating in your work/life balance? Does this breed resentment?

As for productivity, it will necessarily diminish:

The reduced ambition can leave companies needing more people to do the same amount of work, something that ultimately could be a drag on American economic productivity. And bosses are openly considering the ramifications. Comments by Home Depot Inc. co-founder Bernie Marcus that “nobody works, nobody gives a damn,” with possible implications for the future of capitalism, in the Financial Times spread quickly this week. 

And also,

U.S. labor productivity, as measured by how much the typical worker gets done in an hour, fell at a 5.9% annual rate in the first quarter of 2022—its steepest decline in more than a decade. It fell 4.1% in the second, before rising at a 0.8% pace in the third. Some economists believe worker disengagement is one factor in recent declines. Productivity can also be affected by hiring trends and the state of the economy.  

It’s nice to see this as a matter of personal preference and the search for work/life balance. But here, as elsewhere, the market will ultimately have the final say.