Stop Saying “No One Wants To Work”

Not wanting to work a shit job isn’t the same thing

It’s a bit of conventional wisdom these days — and not just on the Right — that unemployment benefits paid out during the pandemic discouraged people from coming back to work. And now, even though the pandemic is fizzling out, people still aren’t willing to work for less than something ridiculous.

“Seventeen bucks an hour to serve coffee at Starbucks!?”

In other words, inflation is the fault of entitled millennials and Gen Z kids who have no work ethic. The sky is falling and America as we know it is doomed.

There’s just one problem: the whole premise of this narrative is false. And yeah, America may be doomed, but not because we’ve lost our work ethic.

I need to get a little wonky for a couple paragraphs, so bear with me.

Let’s just dispel the myth that generous unemployment benefits cause joblessness. Last year, twenty-six states opted out of receiving extended Federal unemployment benefits. The rest opted in. So we had a natural experiment. Did the states that cut off unemployment checks see huge job growth relative to the ones that didn’t?

Actually, no. The effect was small. Most unemployed people (seven out of eight) in the states that cut off benefits still couldn’t find a job. And the loss of those benefits meant less consumer spending, which hurt job growth.

So it’s not like the younger generation is just flippantly turning down opportunities to work. But even if they are, that wouldn’t necessarily mean they have no work ethic.

“Work ethic” doesn’t just exist in a vacuum. It’s part of the overall social contract. And if the people in power, whether that’s the government or big business, aren’t seen as holding up their end of the bargain, then having to work shit jobs for little pay and no benefits isn’t a sign of a strong work ethic. It’s proof of exploitation.

My grandparents’ generation could afford a home on one blue-collar income. My parents’ generation could afford to pay for college by working summer jobs.

My generation took our parents’ advice. We went to college (taking out loans to pay for it). But then we found out that to get a really good-paying job, you needed a graduate degree. We could settle for a bachelor’s degree, but those loans aren’t going to pay for themselves, and oh by the way, the cost of a house and health insurance had skyrocketed too.

Refusing to settle for a shit job isn’t a sign of laziness. It’s self-preservation. But even if you are lucky enough to avoid having to work a shit job, you still might get stuck with a bullshit job.

Bullshit jobs are different from shit jobs. Shit jobs pay next to nothing, have few to no benefits, and offer almost nothing in the way of career advancement.

Bullshit jobs, on the other hand, do tend to pay well, but that’s because your employer isn’t just paying for your time. They’re paying for your soul as well.

The anthropologist David Graeber defined a bullshit job as “a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence even though, as part of the conditions of employment, the employee feels obliged to pretend that this is not the case.”

Examples of bullshit jobs include telemarketers, corporate attorneys, administrative assistants, door greeters, lobbyists, P.R. specialists, and middle managers.

And again, there’s no evidence that millennials or Gen Zers are refusing to take these kinds of jobs. But even if they were, I couldn’t say I’d blame them. They were raised on “follow your passion.” They were taught that “if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life.” And once again, they were told that education was the key.

But it didn’t work out that way. It couldn’t have. The world just doesn’t need that many marine biologists.

And in a society where you’re a failure if you don’t make a lot of money loving what you do, taking a bullshit job is an admission of defeat. Taking a shit job is doubly so.

So it’s no wonder that young people are rejecting the whole paradigm that places work at the center of one’s identity. The surprise isn’t that this is happening, but that it’s taken so long.

In 1957, the theologian Paul Tillich had already noticed that professional “success,” variously defined in terms of pay, status, or a source of psychological satisfaction, had acquired an almost religious significance.

It is the god of many people in the highly competitive Western culture and it does what every ultimate concern must do: it demands unconditional surrender to its laws even if the price is the sacrifice of genuine human relations, personal conviction, and creative eros.

Rejecting this bargain doesn’t mean you’re rejecting work. It means you’re rejecting the idea that work is the only dimension of your life that matters.

Telling people that they can find the meaning of life in their work is like telling them that they can all become millionaires if they work hard. That’s true for some people, but it could never be true for all, or even for most.

It’s a fiction that serves only the rich and powerful. Of course they can look at their own lives and find the proof that “success” is worthy of their worship. But their power and wealth depend on millions of people working shit jobs and bullshit jobs. To those people, “success” is just a false idol. If they refuse to bow to it anymore, that can only be a good thing.