Overworked, Under-appreciated, and Unemployed in America - The Argument for Inefficiency

In the United States, we don’t have an unemployment problem. We have an underemployment problem and an overworking problem. The problem with our economy is it is built to run cleanly, solidly, and with as little overhead as possible.  We have an efficient capitalist society (don’t worry, this won’t be a full on socialist rant) that trims off the excess, and pulls us down to the lowest common denominator.  This is seen as a good thing.  It keeps businesses offering goods and services for the lowest prices around – they make money, we save money.  In theory, it works to perfection.  In actuality, when we talk about trimming off the excess, we aren’t talking about buying too many parts to make our widgets.  What we are talking about is trimming off the excess jobs.  What we are talking about is trimming off excess workers.  We are talking about trimming excess people.  This is what efficiency does to our society, and this lack of specificity sterilizes our society from what is happening to the “last in/first out” of us.  We need less efficiency, because it benefits all of us – the workers, corporations, and government included.

What I’m talking about is not employment for employment’s sake.  I’m not talking about just putting more bureaucrats in the way, each with some “role” or “responsibility” bloating our system until it is inoperable.  This isn’t a big government/small government rant.  This is a plea for private enterprises to ask less of their current workforce, hire more capable people, and let us all stress less about our jobs.  I’m not drawing this from anecdotal evidence, either.  Americans left vacation days on the table each of the past few years citing lack of funds and heavy workloads. That is a staggering admission; Americans felt like they could not take time away from work because they felt like they had too much work to take time away from work.  I intentionally wrote that sentence in an ouroborean structure to highlight the ridiculousness of its rationale. We are an overworked society.  There is plenty of work to go around, but we are not spreading it out appropriately.

All that work, with no vacation, no chance to unwind, no chance to recharge your batteries is unhealthy, and workers in the United States are reporting record breaking levels of workplace stress, including feeling dissatisfied with part or all of their job, feeling underappreciated, and being paid a low wage.  This specific type of high effort, low reward type of stress contributes directly to cardiovascular problems, and we all know that Americans seem to have heart attacks at alarming rates. Our current workforce is overworked.  Even if they weren’t giving up vacation days, we are trailing in terms of paid vacation benefits when compared to other first-world, industrialized, “rich” nations.

Anecdotally, (I gave you a bunch of studies and actual facts, now I get to do the anecdotal thing!) my wife has 10 paid vacation days per year.  That’s less than one a month.  A buddy of mine gets 6 a year.  That’s a half-day a month.  My wife gets two sick days a year.  This is not enough.  A full time employee works five days a week.  It usually hashes out to be around 21 days a month when weekends are factored in.  That means over the course of 12 months, workers are putting in 252 days of work a year.  In order to never be docked pay, a worker needs to be working 240, 245 days a year?  That’s just not healthy!  And, it’s not like these workers are sitting around doing nothing.

I know the old joke when the supervisor passes by a group of people, most watching a demonstration by one person: “Must be a state job.  Five guys working, one guy watching.”  Pithy.  We know that states, bureaucracies, and Union jobs get the bad rap for being overstaffed, and bloated from the personnel aspect.  But what about all of these jobs, from retail on up to white-collar jobs, where workers feel like they can’t take days off?  We can’t possibly have a workforce that is just filled with incompetent nincompoops who spend their days bumbling around a haze of stationary and office supplies, confused by the general day-to-day operations of the job for which both they and the company who hired them agree they were qualified, right?

This is my point.  We have work.  We don’t have jobs.  If we reduce the stress on the worker, and give more people jobs, yes, the cost of our products may go up to increase for the overhead.  We all end up paying a little bit more, but as we have seen in the past, the heart of the US Worker is good: workers, when presented the option of having a coworker be laid off or taking a pay cut/forfeit a bonus or raise, they opt to take the pay cut/forfeit their bonus or raise.  Not only does it make for a great human-interest story, it IS great human interest.  This doesn’t just happen with small town government jobs, either.  Again, anecdotally, a friend of mine, who works full time at a small business that also employs part-time and seasonal employees said to me after a dismal year in which everyone knew the ax was coming for some of the seasonal employees, “I’d gladly not get a bonus this year if it meant that [other workers] could keep their jobs.  What’s a few thousand added on to my check when I can keep on earning throughout the year?  I’ve saved enough.”  That seems to be the sentiment; instead of muttering “better you than me” as a colleague boxes up their desk, people tend to want to share the burden of a bad economy or rocky shoals in a company.

To me, this is the small-town values mentality bandied about by so many politicians in the run up to Election Day.  I should know; I am from a small town myself.  I love my small town, and I believe the people from that small town are inherently good.  I believe that they would make these same sacrifices.  In fact, my friend who was so willing to give up his thousands come holiday time so that others could continue to earn lives in a town of 3,000.  I believe that this small town values mentality is present at many companies, and departments in larger companies.  This is the goodness of people, making burdens shared and asking for a small hardship so another family doesn’t have to endure a larger one.

As I’ve said, this isn’t a socialist rant, and this isn’t a rant against the one percent to stop hording the money at the top (but seriously though, stop.) It is a plea to let some inefficiency back in to the American work force.  Allow others to start earning a living wage along side the rest of us, who have jobs.  What we have in our society is consumer-based capitalism.  Without money for the majority of our society, which is not some left-wing scare tactic, it’s a real thing that’s happening now, almost half the population just doesn’t have the money to spend on anything other than the absolute basics.  As we slide further past that middle point in our society, we aren’t talking “can’t go to Applebees” or “can’t afford more than Natty Light.”  We are talking “needs to buy the Malt-O-Meal bagged cereal and powdered milk” kind of poor.  With more people with any amount of disposable income, they can dispose of that income to companies.  With more time off, and less stress, we’re a healthier society (so long as we don’t take our vacation days at Applebees.  I kid Applebees! Their 2100 calorie rib platter is to die for.  Because if you eat it, you’re going to.)  We need to stop looking at the lowest common denominator, profit margins, and consider the human element to efficiency.

I realize that this isn’t easy.  I realize that the reason for this efficiency is because the market demands it.  I’m not blind to the realities of capitalism, but I am optimistic that the realities of humanity, and our natural predilection toward being decent, helping one another, and sharing the burdens of this nasty, brutish, short existence are a powerful force, as well.