Are slackers keeping the labour market hot?

OK, that’s clearly a headline designed to grab attention. But I’m referring to some recent research from the Brookings Institution, which found that many American workers, educated men in particular, are working fewer hours than before the pandemic. While lower-wage workers increased hours, most likely to keep up with the cost of living crisis, the more educated — particularly men in the top 10 per cent of earners — are working less than before.

Some of this is probably down to working from home. New York City subway use is at 70 per cent of 2019 levels, and San Francisco is a mere 47 per cent, according to Torsten Slok, the chief economist at Apollo Global Management. If you knock out commute time, you automatically knock out some working hours. Some of it has to do with people still suffering from long Covid, according to the Brookings authors.

But some of this is clearly about people re-evaluating their personal priorities. Having had a taste of life at home, and in better balance, I have to wonder if educated men aren’t going through some of the decision trees that educated women have navigated for years. One of the many reasons that I decided on a self-directed portfolio career rather than a high-level managerial 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 hard as they want, when they want, while managerial positions are client dependent; you have to be in meetings, and you are beholden to other people’s schedules. I’ve never had a job where I couldn’t eat breakfast or dinner with my children regularly. But I’ve also 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, doesn’t want to be beholden to other people’s schedules, regardless of whether they have children or not. I recently attended a dinner of Fortune 500 C-suiters and one of the top challenges discussed was the fact that top-tier talent want companies to suit their schedule, rather than the other way around. One leader noted that this wasn’t only a millennial trend, but was becoming the norm. Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan Chase may be able to get people working like they did pre-pandemic, but from my reporting, I’d say very few others can.

The conventional wisdom is that this attitude will shift as the economy does. But that isn’t what I’m hearing from CEOs and consultants I’ve spoken to recently, who are worried about ending up with massive labour shortages à la 18 months ago, and are reluctant to lay people off when the economy is so uncertain. Some are thinking about out-of-the-box ways to accommodate uber-flexible schedules — such as creating platforms where tasks can be worked on at any time of day or night. Others are talking (quietly) about investing more in generative AI to replace those pesky humans.

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

Recommended reading

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

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

• Fintan O’Toole’s terrific New York Review of Books essay on the meaning of Donald Trump, Stormy Daniels and our society of spectacle is a wonderful dot connection about where we’ve come politically, and where we may be going.

• Interesting reactions from various policy folks to the speech that Jake Sullivan gave about connecting the dots between domestic and foreign policy at the Brookings Institution a week ago.

• And although I’m super late to this party, I wanted to call out Spike Lee’s award-winning multi-part documentary about the government reaction to Hurricane Katrina, called When the Levees Broke. My son and I watched this while visiting Tulane University in New Orleans last weekend, which is one of the colleges he’s looking at. The city still hasn’t recovered, and may never do so from what I could see.

Edward Luce responds

Rana, that’s a thought-provoking-question (and thank you for calling me “highly educated”: many people would disagree!). My pandemic began in 2012 when I became a columnist. I stopped working among reporters, which I had done for the previous two decades, and became a Lone Ranger, like you. It’s a tremendous privilege to do our jobs and to choose when to see our kids, and other flexibilities. So Covid wasn’t such a shock for me.

My concern about the apparent lasting effects of WFH are twofold: first, people in white-collar jobs who are physically present at work are likelier to get promotions because nothing substitutes for 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 mutually despise, or fancy, what little foibles they have etc. So WFH is bad for your career and your sense of what benefits work can truly bring. Here’s the secret of work: it’s not just about work; it’s also your chief vehicle for learning about other human beings. In addition, if surveys are to be believed, work offers your best chance of romance . . . 

My second objection is the elitism of the topic. This conversation is exclusive to white-collar jobs. That makes us privileged. Since what matters most in life is contact with other people, maybe jobs that necessitate contact with other people are now stealing a march on us? 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 acknowledge 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 feedback

And now a word from our Swampians . . .

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

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

• Upending political norms and customs that serve as informal institutions (alongside the real damage to formal ones) 

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

There is a Chinese saying that is apt in describing India’s strategic positioning — (loosely translated) when the snipe and clams fight, it is the fishermen that benefit. India probably hopes to benefit from a vacuum that arises from a weakened or distracted US and China . . . Delhi will be forced to pick a side when push comes to shove, and it will probably throw in its lot with the US, I feel. But you’re most certainly right in pointing out that it will never be a natural fit as America’s ally.” — Nicholas Chia