Second Foresight - Employment
What will the future of work be with so much in the recent past unaddressed?
While navigating the recent ups and downs of the unemployment system here in Maryland, and scrolling through posts on social media from people who feel frustrated and abandoned by their government leaders, something central to the inequity struck me. We have a group of people who haven’t lost their jobs in any way — in fact, their jobs have probably been imbued with a greater sense of purpose and vitality during this crisis — telling a group of people who have completely lost theirs through no fault or decision of their own to just go out and get a job in the service industry now because there are so many available. If there are other jobs these governors and other local leaders are encouraging people to get, I haven’t heard any of them speaking on it. Every time they talk about it, every example propped up that’s intended to be some sort of shining beacon of opportunity and hope for our future, is at a restaurant, bar, hotel, or retail establishment. Very occasionally a news outlet will report on factory or industrial jobs seeing an uptick in availability as well, but I have yet to hear the governor of my state say anything about that.
Now, I don’t want to devalue any of those jobs in any way. I’ve had food service and retail jobs for the majority of my working life. My first job was at a franchised sandwich shop, I worked in coffeehouses on two different continents, I spent close to a decade working for a small grocery chain, and I’ve bopped around to Mom & Pop and other small franchise gigs in between all of those. I’ve never worked in a factory, but my last job was in a warehouse and I got a feel for what it’s like to be on concrete floors all day that aren’t covered in linoleum or tile, lug around heavy objects and sometimes have them fall on you, and wake up more sore and covered in cuts and bruises than any drunken binge can bring. I know the value of those jobs. It’s looking more and more likely every day that I will have to take one of these so-called leader’s advice and avail myself of that value once again. That is if anyone will have me at age 43 with a mangled foot and bouts of intense social anxiety.
What I don’t value is the assumption that all of us are able to work those jobs. Apart from the insulting insinuation that “anyone” can do them because they’re “unskilled”, which is patently untrue anyway, those jobs all require being on your feet and being physically active in ways that a lot of other occupations, many of which don’t exist right now or potentially ever again because of the pandemic, simply do not. While tough times require sacrifice, how is someone who has spent their entire professional life pushing paper, as it were, supposed to pivot to interacting with hungry customers? Or how is someone who has graduated from school in the middle of this with no real job prospects in their chosen field of study supposed to let those student debts continue to mount while they take a job moving boxes in a warehouse? Granted that’s not a new problem for those with higher education, but it’s certainly not helped by all of this.
On top of whatever physical limitations that may be present, there’s also the fact that many of us have spent the past year-plus in some form of deep personal introspection, maybe even growth. Maybe we’ve found a new standard of living during our enforced solitude and that makes the prospect of being out in the world again in that sort of professional aspect daunting. Maybe someone just had their heart set on being able to find a remote position and feels like a failure for not being able to and now doesn’t even have the confidence to apply for in-person jobs. Maybe a new passion for something has been found, something that a 9 to 5 job would strip all the personal resources required away and that person would be left with nothing but a job that doesn’t pay enough to cover all their expenses and their newfound ability to be creative, or garden, or cook, or whathaveyou stifled. Maybe that’s what they had to contend with before and they don’t want to go back to it; maybe they even fear it happening again. Maybe someone has been searching for a job every day that they can since it became clear their old one wasn’t going to come back anytime soon, been faced with nothing but rejection, and they deeply resent the implication that they’ve been sitting at home collecting unemployment checks and laughing all the way to the bank (digitally, of course, since those were closed too).
All this doesn’t ever seem to be considered when public comments are made by those in positions of power. Maybe they think about it as they sit in their office, or have dinner with their families, or lie in bed and night and stare at the ceiling. But it never comes across that way to those of us listening. So I’m left to wonder what the landscape is going to look like for those of us who defeatedly return to work after so many months of downtime where we might have found new depths to plumb. Returning to work shouldn’t feel like a defeat, or a compromise, especially after so long thinking about and striving for it. On the side of the motivators, that’s turned into that we should be grateful for the work, whatever we get. But that’s how it’s always been, and a lot of us don’t want to be grateful for whatever we can get. We want to get whatever we want instead. Or even something we want. Anything. Not just anything, though. That’s an important distinction.
Naturally, there’s a privilege to this. In large part right now, that privilege is being afforded to a far greater number of people whom the government has deigned to help because, again, we didn’t choose this. But there is an unmistakable tone to the conversation now, and certainly in the decisions of so many state leaders to end that help earlier than promised, that now it’s our fault. We’ve somehow created this lack of employment, or are prolonging it unduly because the money is just too good not to. And that issue — that it potentially pays more to be unemployed than employed right now — is never discussed, never addressed, now is it? Not in any quantitative way, oh no. Not in any way that would force the people who hold so much of this country’s wealth personally hostage to have to give up just a small fraction of it so thousands of their fellow citizens could live just a bit better. No, just get back out there and work in a field you have no experience in or thought you were done with or were finally ready to move past for pay that probably isn’t going to be able to sustain you or any family that might rely on you. Your country needs you, you layabout. Be grateful you have the opportunities you do.
No potential for hostile work environments there, that’s for sure.