Today, Explained - The Future of Work: “I quit!”

Episode Date: October 29, 2021

There are millions of job openings in America, and millions of Americans are still not able to find work that suits. In the first part of our series, The Future of Work, Recode’s Rani Molla explains “the great reassessment.” Today’s show was produced by Miles Bryan, edited by Jillian Weinberger, engineered by Efim Shapiro, fact-checked by Laura Bullard and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Let me work it. It's too early for this. Don't want to work. I just want to bang on the drummer all day. Give it to me, Todd. Hmm. Mm-hmm. I hate the people people say it's a S-O-B Tell them to S-H-O-V-E the J-O-B

Turn it up, man Now I'm free Free falling It's the future of Free falling. It's the future of. It's the future of. It's the future of. It's the future of work, work, work, work, work on Today Explained.

I'm Sean Ramos from over the next four Fridays, the team and I are going to ask big questions about how this pandemic has changed the way we work in the United States. We are in the middle of this unprecedented moment in labor history. Records be breaking. You've heard about the great resignation. Today, we're going to talk about the great reassessment. There are millions of open jobs in the country right now and millions of people looking for work, but maybe not for the jobs that are available. We're going to figure out where that leaves us. But we wanted to set the table with some stories from people peppered all throughout the labor force in this country. People whose perspective on work and working conditions changed over the course of this pandemic. It's wild. It went from, oh my gosh, all I know how to do is work,

into, wow, I can work and also live, and that is completely okay. It was a huge mindset change for me. Like, everything changed. Hi, my name is Lisa Rae Bowman. I am currently in Charleston, South Carolina. I do marketing events at an independent bookstore called Buxton Books, and I am 23 years old. Before the pandemic, I went to school for film and television, and during school I was working in post-production, so I was an assistant editor. After I graduated, I went straight into on-set work. I was a production assistant. I worked on some major television shows. I don't know if I feel comfortable naming them. I would always get to set about an hour early compared to everyone else,

so if a call time was 7 a.m., I was there at 6 a.m. And I would be on set from 6 a.m. until at least an hour and a half after wrap. So if we shot for 14 hours, I would be on set for anywhere from 16 to 18 hours. No days off. I've missed Christmas. I've missed Thanksgiving. Before the pandemic hit, if you had free time, that meant that you needed to be working or you didn't have enough work. Then there was no work to do.

And that was really terrifying, honestly, because I did not know how to fill my day. And then there was nothing to focus on except for myself, which was a really initially awful, but soon became a really lovely thing because I really realized how much workplace abuse I was going through, how much I had missed of my family and my friends and my loved ones, just how much of my life I'd put on hold just to be able to work and say that I was working. And then it was like, oh my goodness, I don't need to work all the time to survive. I started painting again and writing again and reading again for the first time in a really long time. You can't read when you're working on set. And I started eating through books back to back. And I will never

sacrifice my happiness or seeing my family and friends ever again because it's not worth it. My name is Naasha Johnson. I am 41 years old. I work at Lincoln Hall Hospital doing environmental service slash housekeeping. I used to work at Philadelphia International Airport until I was laid off due to the pandemic. 32BJ was the union that was at the airport. So once they realized the employees couldn't get back into the airport, they put a lot of people in hospitals. I started working at Lincoln Hall Hospital in November. Coming into the hospital, it was scary at first because we had like at least two floors with just COVID patients. Now they have everyone trying to get vaccinated.

And if you do not get vaccinated, they will terminate you. So that's an inconvenience for everyone who is vaccinated because now we have double work. So what that means is normally you have to clean about 30 rooms, but now you're going to have to have your 30 rooms to clean and plus somebody else's 30 rooms. You should go from having one floor to having two floors. I'm making about $20 an hour. And I don't think that that's fair considering as much work as we're doing. I actually want multiple streams of income for security reasons because having a nine-to-five is no security. I'm Daniel Quick. I live in Columbia, Missouri, where I worked at an after-school program for at-risk populations until November of 2020. We had to be pretty flexible when the pandemic started.

We wanted to make sure that our kids were cared for. We were trying to do the pod-based learning with remote support for our kids. As time went on, more and more corners were being cut in COVID care, not cleaning the way we should, not enforcing mask mandates the way we should. Finally, shortly before the Thanksgiving break, a unrelated event was being hosted in the building that required us to shut down some of our classrooms at the end of about a 10-hour day that we're bringing kids and adults into the building who are not normally a part of our program at a time when COVID rates were spiking all across the country, including in Missouri. And for me, that was the last straw. I was very lucky that I was supporting my wife to get through her grad school program, and she had graduated in June of 2020. So she was fully employed at a local clinic with benefits and more money than either of us had ever made together.

So I was able to just kind of pivot over, and I've just sort of been running support work for her, my family, and my sick grandmother since then. The thing I most want to do in the world is be a writer. Everything tends to have a pretty fantastical bent in my work. Science fiction, fantasy, magical realism. I'm fond of saying I have to live in reality, so I prefer not to work or play there if I can avoid it. So that's sort of what I've been doing with every bit of spare time I have. I've been very lucky in that I was in a position to sort of switch my focus to something I wanted to do for a long time anyway, and really put in some work trying to get those books finished and seen. I'm Beth Kelly. I'm 35. I live in Pickerington, Ohio. It's a suburb outside of Columbus. And I just started a new job with a huge laboratory corporation.

My name is Krista Johnston. I'm 35 and I'm in Galveston, Texas. I have applied to a job every single day, at least in 2021. And that includes weekends. And I have at least two info zooms a week. I had a friend who works for this laboratory company and she said, you know, maybe test the waters. And it was pretty substantial, the benefits that they were offering me. It was a means for my husband to quit his job. So we are now a one breadwinner family. I'm technically homeless. And so I had to move in with family because leaving DC, going back to grad school with my student loans and for paying everything by myself, it took absolutely everything out of my savings. Honestly, I can't really explain why I was able to nearly double a salary. It's a shopper's market right now. So if you are the type of person who is

going to go into a salary negotiation, knowing that you're worth more than what you're being paid, then it's a really advantageous time to step up and to try something new. I would say that the last two years of the pandemic have made me really apathetic to my ideal future of work. I just think I'm here to survive and just get a job versus a career? Okay, my name is Dwayne Jamison. I'm 59 years old. I work at Lumen Field up here in Seattle. On game day, we do, you know, the number one selling will keep the stadium open is beer. We make sure the beer is running, change kegs or whatever, all through the stadium. So before the pandemic, I was making 16, I believe 16.69 an hour.

And it's hard to live in Seattle all 16.69. And a lot of times, 40 hours is not guaranteed to you there. Then after the pandemic, you know, we didn't know what to expect. A lot of people were thinking, well, wow, they're going to come up with excuses. We had a union contract up at the time. Union came in with the negotiation, and I got a raise October 1st. It went up to $24.30, and that's pretty good. There's been times where I say to myself, I'm one paycheck from being homeless. I never thought we'd get a $6 raise

just like that. You know, that's a game changer for a stadium worker. Right now, I think us workers got the upper hand. After COVID and a lot of things what's been going on in the world, a lot of people are starting to let these companies know my worth is more than what you guys been giving me. I feel there's a lot more power now. And I'm happy. Quick break, then we're going to crunch some job numbers with Ronnie Mola from Recode. Thank you. Support for Today Explained comes from Ramp. Ramp is the corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your pocket. Ramp says they give finance teams unprecedented control and insight into company spend. With Ramp, you're able to issue cards to every employee with

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to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Ronnie Mola, Recode, you write about the future of work. We just heard from a bunch of people who are rethinking how they work. How do their experiences line up with what's happening across the country right now? I think they lined up exactly. And that's partly because there's such a gamut of things that are going on.

You know, on one end, you have this great resignation, the idea that people are sort of rethinking their lives and rethinking the importance of work in their lives. A record-breaking 4.3 million Americans quit their jobs in August alone, a 242,000 jump from July and a 1.3 million jump from a year ago. You also have the dangers inherent in the pandemic. You know, is it worth it to go to work and put myself on the front lines for this job or for this much money per hour? You have other things like a whole generation

of baby boomers ready to retire. So when the pandemic rolled around, a lot of people were like, maybe I'll go retire early. And one of the big things I think that really gets glossed over is childcare. You have a lot of people who've left work in childcare. It's really, really hard to get into things like daycare. I personally have been on a wait list for months to try to get my son into daycare. And I have only gotten him in two days a week. We have our in-laws staying with us because someone has to watch our kid. And where does all of that leave the American economy? Well, you have an economy that's come back. You have people spending a lot, but all of these employers can't find workers.

Hiring in 2021, be like. Stephanie, this is Wendy with the hiring department. We've received your application for the position and we'd like to offer it to you. No, no, no, no, no, no, no need to come in for an interview. What if I came and picked you up? We could send an Uber. Could you start tomorrow? There's something like 10.4 million open jobs right now, and there's fewer than 8 million unemployed people. So there's a gap. We love tattoos. We love tattoos, as long as it's not a face tattoo with an F word or something.

It is a face tattoo of the F word. Okay, I don't think our clients are going to care, honestly. No, I don't think so. Normally, when there's economic hardship, you have people really going out of their way to get jobs. And right now, it's sort of the opposite. I don't really go places as much as I used to, but when I do get out, I see lots of hiring signs at restaurants and even signs that say, you know, please be kind and patient. We're short-staffed right now. It feels like the service industry is particularly hard hit right now. You're exactly right. Like one of the biggest shortfalls of workers is in the so-called leisure

and hospitality industry that covers all sorts of food service, hotels, you know, all of these things that you would go out and get food and drinks, stuff like that. Part of the reason for that is these are jobs where you have to be there in person. These are also jobs that traditionally pay very little. The data shows that leisure and hospitality wages have gone up an unprecedented jump, something like 13% last month over a year earlier. But, you know, that's still only $16 an hour. That's still less than even retail. So these are traditionally very low-paid industries. So when people are rethinking their lives

and whether it's worth it to put their lives at risk, they're like, is it worth it for not very much per hour? Is it working? Is offering, you know, a 10% plus increase in wages bringing people back? It's working to some extent, but not really. You know, even though these are huge jumps in wages, it's still paying very little. And there's other things about these jobs that really suck. Not only do they pay very little and have no benefits, but, you know, the scheduling is bad.

You can't really have a life because you're working on nights and weekends. You're treated poorly. You know, now you're fighting people to put on their masks and not yell at you. You know, it's a historically bad industry to be in. And, you know, it's an industry that's been treated like dirt. The last time we really talked about this on the show, we went to Philadelphia. Our producer, Miles Bryan, hit up a guy named Restaurant Rob, and we heard how hard a time he was having trying to find people to work. It took me three months of running ads just to get some interviews for a new chef

because my chef, who I went into the pandemic with with decided he didn't really want to do it anymore. And this was kind of back when the Republicans were really like doubling down on this argument that, well, it's these federal benefits that we got to blame these benefits that are making it more profitable for people to stay at home and do nothing than go back to the workforce. Was that true? Was that a legit argument? I mean, the benefits certainly made people's lives a little more comfortable, but I think it's been debunked that, you know, that was actually keeping people out of the workforce. You had states that got rid of their benefits early and there wasn't like a notable uptick in people all of a sudden going back to the labor force.

Data from two HR software companies, followed closely by Wall Street, by the way, shows that ending the $300 extended unemployment benefit has had no measurable effect on job growth. In fact, the states that kept the benefit showed better job growth. So now we have data from September, the month that they got rid of these federal unemployment benefits. And you didn't see a huge jump in people taking jobs or going back to work. So while these unemployment benefits certainly helped people, it didn't keep them from joining the workforce. Is this just in the service industry or is this sort of worker shortage

transcended to other industries? It's in all sorts of industries, high and low paying. You have it in the tech industry, jobs that are traditionally very well paid. You just have a lot of people being like, is this where I want to be? Is Facebook the kind of company I want to work for? This isn't just in leisure and hospitality. It's just particularly acute in leisure and hospitality. Are shortages in one industry serving another? Is the exodus from the service industry benefiting like, you know, the marketing company that offers a more traditional nine to five? I mean, I don't know how much it's making up for the shortfall,

but you absolutely have people switching industries and you have jobs that are much more attractive than other jobs, particularly jobs that are remote where, you know, you don't actually have to go in, jobs that are better paying. There are industries that are facing less pain when it comes to hiring than others. And those are jobs that are more attractive to begin with. In the top half of the show, we heard from these two women back to back who had been looking for new jobs during the pandemic. One of them, Beth, recently landed a new gig that was remote and came with a big raise. But the other, Krista, has been applying to like a job a day this entire year with no luck. How do we explain people really still struggling to find the right gig when, you know, there are literally 10 million open jobs?

Right. There's this big mismatch going on. I wrote this article that's like everyone's hiring hiring, but it's impossible to get hired. Part of it's because a lot of the jobs out there aren't jobs that people actually want. You also have a lot of people trying to switch industries. You know, they had this great rethink during the pandemic where they're like, well, maybe I don't want to be in marketing. Maybe I want to go into journalism or something like that. But if you haven't worked in an industry, it's harder to get a job in that industry. You've had no experience in it. So that's another issue. And then there's also this mismatch with the software. Now, when you want a job, you go and apply online to 50 million things and it makes it really easy

to apply to a bunch of jobs. But then hiring managers get inundated by all these applications, and so they use software to try to figure out who's the right candidate. The software is filtering out too many people sometimes. Either it filters you out because there's some sort of parameter like, okay, we don't want someone who has a felony, or we don't want someone who didn't work for the past two months, say during a global pandemic. And so you're weeding out a lot of people who might be good for a job, but who based on what you're telling the software are getting screened out. And jobs in general just sort of require a lot of different skills. Like people keep adding and

adding to job descriptions. There's this example in this Wall Street Journal story that's like, you know, they're trying to hire these nurses, but they're also looking for people who do computer programming at the same time. And really, you just need a nurse who could put stuff in an Excel spreadsheet. So for a variety of reasons, people aren't being matched up. And it's all the more difficult

because you have a ton of people applying for a relatively small pool of good jobs. Do we have any idea how much more attention a job that's a, you know, might be remote gets versus a job that's in person? Yeah, we do. So LinkedIn told me that about 15% of their jobs right now are remote or remote friendly. And that's up from like the single digits pre-pandemic. And those jobs get 2.5 times the from the single digits pre-pandemic. And those jobs get 2.5 times the number of applicants as non-remote jobs.

So they're much more appealing. Wow. Do we think that's people being afraid still of returning to in-person work? Or do we think that's now just a way of working that's much more appealing to people? I think the fear is part of it. But I think what people really like about remote work

is the flexibility. You could drop out in the middle of the day and maybe get your kid or pick up some food or go for a run. Or clip your toenails while you're at home working. You know what I mean? Or do that horrible, horrible thing. I hope you're not doing that right now in your closet, Sean.

You can see me. Come on, I'm not doing that. I can't see your feet. That's true. But you can see my hands. That's true. I don't that. I can't see your feet. That's true. But you can see my hands. That's true. I don't know. I can't clip my left foot

with my right foot. Someone could be clipping. I think a lot of people got used to the, like, flexibility of this during the pandemic. A lot of people who never got to work from home

before all of a sudden could. And, you know, a lot of people liked it. You know, the office was the norm, but, you know, that didn't always work for a lot of people. Hmm. Do know, the office was the norm, but you know, that didn't always work for a lot of people. Do we know what all the people who are struggling to find a job right

now or the folks who are holding out for a better job are doing for money? You know, obviously the federal assistance did help. A few hundred dollars a week is absolutely meaningful, especially for lower wage workers. But what we do know is that people have quite a bit of savings. People were able to save money during the pandemic because they weren't going to bars and restaurants and on vacation. So there's a little bit of cushion there. You also have people getting by on less. Maybe your kids move back into your house, so they're not paying for rent. People are spending less or they're just deciding, you know, we're going to try to get by on one income. But we have to assume that these savings're going to try to get by on one income.

But we have to assume that these savings are going to run out, yeah? Yeah, the savings are going to run out. There's this great quote from the New York Times reporter Ben Castleman. He's like, So there's a standoff. Workers are holding out until their savings disappear. Businesses are holding out until their customers disappear. Maybe one or the other will give, or maybe there'll be a meeting in the middle,

or realistically, some of all three. Wow. Thanks, Ben. Ronnie, who do you think will blink first, business or labor? I think in some ways you will have a change in the nature of work. For some of these less attractive jobs, the ones in, you know, hospitality and food services, the wages are going up, but also the quality of the jobs might go up.

You have to treat people better. You have to give them more benefits. You have to give them better scheduling and more control over their scheduling. You might give them a way to advance in their jobs so that they're not always being the cashier, but that they could move up to general manager or like learn some important skill. So I do think that the pressure right now will cause some of the least attractive jobs to be more attractive. There are a lot of worker power memes going around, right, too? Yeah, there's all these worker power memes going on. Everyone's saying workers have the power. Welcome to Today Was My on break, but I'm not coming back. Here's my thing. I really do love my job, but sometimes we decide to take a tone of voice that isn't very labor shortage of us. But I was talking to the head of the

hospitality union, Unite Here, and he was like, you know, if workers really had the power, they'd be making $30 an hour. And they're not. So in the coming months, their savings are going to deplete and many of them are going to have to go back to work. But for the moment, at least, I think they have the opportunity to make things at least a little bit better. And the fact that they've held out from going back to work this long, I really think is a testament to how serious the problems in these industries are to begin with. Ronnie Mola. She's a senior reporter at Recode.

Miles Bryan produced our episode. It was edited by Jillian Weinberger. This is our first in a series of shows on the future of work. We've got three more coming over the next three Fridays. For now, happy Halloween. Be safe. Be spooky. Take care. Thank you.