Jobs Quantitative and Qualitative – Numbers and Generations

Yes, there is more on this topic, some basic until you look underneath it.

When we read that “U.S. employers posted 10.7 million job openings in June, reflecting continued strength in the labor market with some signs of cooling” (The Washington Post, August 2^nd), we might think that this decrease of a few hundred thousand means fewer good opportunities.  If anything, it means the opposite, that this mass of help-wanted listings is shrinking as deservedly-frustrated companies are filling them by paying current market rates.  As I wrote ten years ago in Work’s New Age, job ads no longer mean job hiring – with AJSN-documented latent demand hanging at around 17 million, that problem is even worse now.  As I have maintained since 2012, these so-called offerings, at least the sincere ones, will disappear with wage increases and removal of former wish-list attributes which have morphed this century into requirements. 

It makes some but not complete sense to be glad that “With Surge in July, U.S. Recovers the Jobs Lost in the Pandemic” (Lydia DePillis, The New York Times, August 5^th).  True, there are as many American positions as there were in February 2020, but we haven’t yet got back to where we were going, forecasted to be a substantial net increase in the past 29 months.  Indeed, per “Can a hot but smaller labor market keep making gains in participation?,” by Lauren Bauer et al. in Brookings on August 4th, “pre-pandemic projections” had us adding, by now, “roughly three to three-and-a-half million workers.”   Efficiency marches on, and Covid-19 showed plenty of employers how to manage with fewer workers.  As well, it is worth noting from the DePillis piece that adjusted unemployment now matches that month’s 3.5%, and it and the total number of positions may well have more improvement ahead.

We know people born in the 1980s and 1990s had fewer economic opportunities in their youth, and, according to Derek Thompson on June 13^th in The Atlantic, we are now seeing “The End of the Millennial Lifestyle Subsidy.”  The author’s idea was that this generation had the heaviest use of “Uber, the Uber-for-X clones, and that whole mosaic of urban amenities in travel, delivery, food, and retail that vaguely pretended to be tech companies,” as “almost each time you or I ordered a pizza or hailed a taxi, the company behind that app lost money,” meaning these firms “were paying us, the consumers, to buy their products.”  Thompson ran off eight concerns someone might use in one day, with total losses of “about $15 billion in one year.”  With less venture capital, higher interest rates making other loans more expensive, and supply chain problems causing “higher prices, higher margins, fewer discounts, and longer wait times for a microgeneration of yuppies used to low prices and instant deliveries,” the author opined, the change may be permanent, especially since, as I see it, these types of businesses have never been profitable.  So, what can millennials and other customers say, other than “it was fun while it lasted”?  At least they are in a fine job market.

Many of the following cohort and those close to it are old enough to start turning up in good-job workforces, and in this time of low unemployment are making themselves heard, as “Gen Z Knows What It Wants From Employers.  And Employers Want Them” (Alyson Krueger, The New York Times, July 31^st).  People interviewed here valued L.G.B.T.Q. identity incorporation, employer acceptance of “piercings, tattoos, and colored hair,” opportunity to have remote shifts and a “four-day workweek,” mental health benefits, access to private clubs and company-owned social houses, and, showing that not all of their desires are peculiar to their generation, “career growth opportunities.”  There is no guarantee they will have the same wishes in 2032, but for now, organizations looking for more young-adult workers should consider fulfilling them.

After-school paid work for high-school students was big in the 1970s and before, but has since ebbed and flowed, hurt by economic downturns and college-admission apathy.  This July 31^st New York Times piece, “The Best Extracurricular Is a Job” by Pamela Paul, named real reasons why it would be good for it to come roaring back.  She didn’t mention that some universities are now giving credit for applicants’ paid positions, but named “8 valuable things” she, a recent high-school graduate, got from them.  They were discovering that “being good at school doesn’t mean being good at work,”  “being fired isn’t the end of your career – and neither is quitting,” “you learn what it’s like to make minimum wage,” “you’re being paid for your time,” “promotions aren’t automatic,” “bosses can behave badly,” “being in a workplace means working with people who aren’t like you,” and “not everyone is as lucky as you are.”  Not only a first-rate antidote to younger people’s entitlement and insularity, but gets them money too.  I heartily endorse it.