Less Ambitious Workers and the New Work Order
For many workers the days of unpaid overtime and weekend work is gone. Work your wage has replaced quiet quitting as the new meme forcing employers to add more people to finish projects.
The Wall Street Journal reports Your Coworkers Are Less Ambitious; Bosses Adjust to the New Order
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.
In a November survey of more than 3,000 workers and managers by software firm Qualtrics, 36% said their overall career ambitions had waned over the past three years, compared with 22% who said their ambition had increased. Nearly 40% said work had become less important to them in the past three years, while 25% said it had grown more important, according to researchers at Qualtrics, which provides software to businesses to evaluate customer and employee experiences.
In an American Bar Association survey of nearly 2,000 members this year, 44% of young lawyers said they would leave their jobs for a greater ability to work remotely elsewhere.
The Journal comments on Mary Waisanen, a 43-year-old structural engineering technician in Virginia Beach, Va. who after watching a Tik-Toc video wants a pay raise.
“Until then,” she says, “I will make more of an effort to ‘act my wage,’ ” referencing a phrase that’s gone viral on social media and encourages workers to do solely what they are compensated for.
A Prudential survey also shows the same thing.
Prudential Attitudes Towards Work
Inflationary Attitude Shift
Every generation until now was happy or at least OK in doing whatever it takes to get the job done.
Now, the older millennials and especially the zoomers seem to have had a sudden shift in attitudes.
The push for $15 is long gone. Now workers want $22 or more an hour.
If we pay people enough to not work, this is what happens.
Quiet Quitting, Are You Doing Only What’s Necessary at Work and No More?
I discussed quiet quitting on August 18, in Quiet Quitting, Are You Doing Only What’s Necessary at Work and No More?
Wondering why productivity is down? Think about the new phenomenon called quiet quitting.
Great American Dream
People have decided that quality of life is more important than getting ahead.
Alternatively, they view the Great American Dream of home ownership is out of reach.
Blame the Fed and cheap interest rates for the latter.
My Number One Investment Idea for 2023
In retrospect, less works fits in with my Number One Investment Idea For 2023.
Invest in yourself, your family, and your friends. Invest in life. If you need to lose weight, do it.
Spend more quality time with your friends, family, and loved ones.
Attitude changes have implications for productivity and salaries. A mass resignation of aging boomers is accompanied by quiet quitting and threats of “working your wage.”
Looking ahead, these trends are quite inflationary and very poor for productivity and corporate profits.
This post originated on MishTalk.Com.
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Mish
N.J. Mute was looking for a method of bypassing Howard Stern on the air
when he accidentally deadened the sound on his set. When he could do
the same on color TV, he knew he was a success.”
“The push for $15 is long gone. Now workers want $22 or more an hour.”
The push for $15 was a DECADE ago. Since then, there has been this thing called “inflation” that one needs to adjust for. The reason why workers want $22/more an hour is that it costs $22/more to buy what could be bought for $15 a decade ago.
LOL. That was 2 years ago. Are people still being paid not to work? Of course not.
Life comes with expenses. Asking for $15 or $22 to flip burgers is going to increase automation. Rents are much higher for those not satisfied to live in their parents’ basement. If we don’t have someone like JoeB in there who will take from the taxpayers to pay off his union campaign contributors and buy younger votes … the lack of work ethic will come back to burn them. If we keep folks like JoeB in there … it will come back to burn us all.
. It looks like new names for the same ole problem. Just now you cant replace dead weight as easy. Fewer people total and good people.
At the same time whats the use of busting your balls to get ahead when you cant afforded a house or car anyway.
Throw in the mix covid lock down may have given a new outlook on being happy or what is important i their life.
Well, it’s them or the kooks….
Bernanke’s “wealth
effect” doesn’t work. Link: “Changes in Wealth and the Velocity of Money”.
Changes
in Wealth and the Velocity of Money (stlouisfed.org)
Bank-held savings
have a zero payment’s velocity. The FED’s Ph.Ds. don’t know a credit from a
debit.
The basic idea of supply side economics is to create an economic milieu that
will foster increased production of higher quality goods and services which can
be marketed at competitive prices. To achieve these objectives, we need to
reduce monopolistic elements in the price structure (monopolistic prices of
goods or services tends to increase prices and restrict output); increase labor
productivity; reduce unit labor costs; reduce transfer payments to the
non-productive sectors; eliminate excess regulatory burdens, excessive rates of
taxation on producers and savers, etc.
The caveat is that supply side economics requires structural and attitudinal
changes which will be zealously resisted by powerful special interest
groups. Even more intractable are constraints imposed by resource and
technological factors. Gains will be limited and a long time in coming
even with our best efforts. Up until now we have ameliorated these
unnecessary self-imposed economic hardships largely through massive transfer payments
to non-productive recipients. Deficit financing by the Federal Government
provided the principal source of funds. Al we all should know, there is a
finite limit to this “remedy”.
groups” known as the House and the Senate.
How many times have you heard the saying? “We’re mortgaging our kid’s future.”
We’ve saddled youthful generations with a $30 trillion national debt; forced
them to buy healthcare insurance to spread the risk; left them with
sky-rocketing tuition resulting in enormous student debt; left ballooning and
nearly incalculable unfunded pension obligations for Federal, State, local governments
and public safety officials; and they can’t afford a home. Is it any wonder, with all of these
obligations unwillingly foisted upon them that they might feel as though
something in our current government structure is amiss? That the career path of their predecessors may not be available to them. One could argue that their
current situation is a form of socialism forced upon them by their predecessors.
Could you explain how physicians and clergy are corrupt. That is far fetched.
One great thing about America is that it provides us all with an opportunity to get ahead (admittedly not an equal opportunity, but an opportunity nonetheless). It is up to each of us to make the best life possible for ourselves. There will always be some who take advantage of this opportunity and some who will not. I choose to take advantage. Others choose to complain. As we approach a brand new year, I typically resolve to work hard to improve the quality of my life; in health, wealth, family and friends. Just like I did last year. And the year before. And so on.
I cannot change others. I cannot change the world. I can only change my own life. Having said that, I guess it is time to make a few predictions for next year.
Predictions for 2023
Happy New Year to All! Here are some predictions for 2023. In no particular order. Many will be wrong, but it’s fun to try and predict.
Driverless vehicles will continue to make excruciatingly slow progress, and full driverless widespread adoption is still a decade away (at least). Instead, more and more new vehicles will have more and more driver assist and safety technology. So, we will still need lots of truck drivers, pizza delivery drivers, Uber drivers etc.
Worldwide sales of EVs will continue to increase, but so will sales of ICE vehicles. So, demand for gas and diesel will continue to increase. As will demand for copper, and battery materials. It will be interesting to see how many EV transport trucks will be on the road in 2023 (1000, 5000?).
Global travel will grow a lot, particularly air travel. Big increase in jet fuel demand.
Another big increase in the build out of Renewable Energy. But still not enough to match the growth in overall demand for energy. Demand for fossil fuels will continue to increase.
WTI oil prices will range from $70 to $120 and average somewhere between $90 and $105. Oil companies will continue to gush cash flow and reward shareholders. This is why I will continue to hold a lot of oil and gas stocks.
Food prices to increase more slowly, but remain high. More temporary shortages of various food items.
House prices to decrease slightly compared to 2022 nationally, though each local real estate area is unique.
Interest rates to continue to increase for the first half of the year, and then stabilize.
Inflation (US) to drop to the 3-5% range later in the year.
Slow growth, or mild recession at some point in the year.
Stock market volatility to continue, but markets will not end the year very far from where they are now.
Very little progress will be made on the global warming problem. We will keep increasing carbon dioxide and methane levels. Of course, since this is a longer-term problem, we will mostly keep ignoring it, as we focus on short term problems that are more pressing. Mitigation efforts are the best we can do at this point. And the energy transition that the world is currently at the beginning of, will continue at too slow a pace to make much difference till the next decade.
There will be several attempts at some form of climate geo-engineering in 2023, in the hope of trying to come up with a magic bullet to solve global warming, with poor or negative results.
La Nina may reappear for a third year in a row, but will give way eventually to a Neutral year. No El Nino in 2023.
Both 2022 and 2023 will join the list of the 10 hottest years since we began keeping records.
A continuation of a variety of even more extreme weather events (1 in 100 years, 1 in 1000 years). Expect insurance (where it is available) costs to keep increasing.
No political predictions, because I simply don’t care.