Consumer Spending, and the Rest of the Economy: What Seems to be Happening, What People Think is Happening, and What’s Really Happening

It’s strange, or maybe it isn’t, that on a topic with so many high-quality facts regularly issued, viewpoints and conclusions should differ so much.  Maybe that’s a result of many members of one party, and the great majority of the other, chucking well-documented ideas they think are bogus or otherwise conflict with their worldviews.

With that, what has been written this quarter about the title matters?

In MarketWatch on October 11^th, Barbara Kollmeyer made the mildest claim here: “’Not missing it’:  Some consumers will never go back to their pre-pandemic spending habits, research predicts.”  She cited a European Central Bank working paper, with data collected in middle and late summer, that “many households that cut spending on products and services because of lockdown experiences had “permanently altered their preferences,”” mostly people finding that lower consumption rates seemed fine to them.  The areas of continued reduction Kollmeyer named were travel, public transportation, restaurants and bars, and brick-and-mortar stores in general. 

On the other hand, on this side of the Atlantic only one week later, Emma Cosgrove wrote in Business Insider that “America isn’t running out of everything just because of a supply-chain crisis.  America is running out of everything because Americans are buying so much stuff.”  One cause of our elevated inflation rate has been the basic economic situation of demand outstripping supply, with both reasons in this article’s title pertinent.  Cosgrove cited the National Retail Federation as claiming that our citizens “are buying everything they can get their hands on,” and that the inventory to sales ratio is the lowest since 2011, “which indicates that we’re low on stuff,” in turn “because sales have gone completely nuts.”  Over the past two years, retail volume has risen 8% and 14.5%.  At press time, “supply-chain professionals” were “chipping away at the backlog container by container,” which has improved since, but, per Cosgrove, as a clogged bathtub won’t drain quickly if water pours in, the backup won’t ease all that quickly.

On November 6^th, Neil Irwin announced in The New York Times that “Americans Are Flush With Cash and Jobs.  They Also Think the Economy is Awful.”  Although “Americans are sitting on piles of cash; they have $2.3 trillion more in savings in the last 19 months than would have been expected in the prepandemic path,” and jobs of some sort are plentiful, they are worrying more about inflation.  An October Gallup poll showed 68% considering the economy to be worsening.  Surprisingly, it is no more a partisan issue than it was about ten years ago. 

Americans may be spending a lot in general, but “Many consumers are holding off on making big purchases.  That’s a good sign” (Peter Coy, The New York Times, November 12^th).  A graph here showed the share of survey respondents “saying now is a good time to buy” diving for “large household goods,” houses, and cars right when inflation jumped in late spring, and largely continuing to drop ever since.  This effect will hurt employment in related areas, and may not level off when the inflation rate does.

Next, Paul Krugman’s “How Is the U.S. Economy Doing?,” on December 9^th in the same newspaper, was a response to negative views of the last Employment Situation Summary, in which net new nonfarm payroll positions came in at less than half of projections but other items, from the household survey component, were favorable.  I published here an almost identical view on the report’s December 3^rd release date, and Krugman added that “the employment rate among prime-age adults, a key measure of labor market health, is beginning to approach prepandemic levels” and “in many ways this looks like the best economic recovery in many decades.”  He concluded that “this is actually a very good economy, albeit with some problems.” 

As before, though, not everyone agrees, as pointed up by Jim Tankersley in the December 10^th “How’s the Economy?  Biden Sees a Boom.  Many Americans Don’t,” also in the New York Times.  White House communications director Kate Bedingfield took it further with “every economic indicator shows an economy which is growing,” but acknowledged that “when people experience a higher price at the grocery store or at the gas pump that has an impact on their budget.”  Inflation in particular, “underestimated” by the administration, has dominated numerous views, and Biden’s opinion that “I think it’s the peak of the crisis” is not everyone’s.  It seems clear that, per a University of Massachusetts at Amherst economist, “the lowest-paid 70 percent of American workers have seen wage increases over the last two years even after accounting for inflation,” but that probably does not apply to as many in higher brackets.

 So how is the American economy really doing?  Krugman has it.  Although plenty are not as prosperous as six months ago, we are overall in good shape and continuing to improve.  Inflation should top off soon, and the number of jobs, with generally high consumer demand and supply-chain improvement, should continue to comfortably outstrip the monthly 60,000 or so we need for population growth.  The true nature of the Omicron Covid-19 variant is still unknown, but data creeping in suggests higher contagion with lower infection severity.  Vaccination rates keep increasing, headed by, per the New York Times, 88% of those 65 and older now fully dosed, and with the total number of American cases now over 50 million we can forecast lower numbers there.  There is a real chance of a relapse before the 2022 midterm elections, and we can and will argue more then, but, for the moment, we should give our financial system a bipartisan thumbs up.

The So-Called Labor Shortage – Some Views, and the Best Courses of Action

The issue of businesses not being able to fill positions has been getting press since at least May.  How accurate and complete, though, is what has been published about it?

Before the big bill, we saw “Skilled Workers Are Scarce, Posing a Challenge for Biden’s Infrastructure Plan,” by Madeleine Ngo in the September 9^th New York Times.  It started with concerns from a construction firm expecting, or hoping for, a large contract “repairing aging bridges and roadways in the nation’s capital,” but wondering if they could find enough suitable employees.  The piece quoted a masonry-company owner saying that “the biggest struggle is finding guys that want to work,” but others cited here focused on the lack of experienced, skilled employees ready to join them.

In the same newspaper’s edition 18 days later, the author above combined with Jeanna Smialek on “Top Fed officials say the labor market needs more time to heal.”  The Federal Reserve then said that Covid effects were still too strong to justify raising interest rates.  The president of the New York branch also reminded us, also accurately, that “job postings are not jobs,” and likewise that “it may take quite a bit longer” than October “for the labor supply to come fully back.” 

Moving along to the Guardian on October 10^th, Gene Marks told us that “US wages are going up, and those who don’t adapt to the new reality will fail.”  This story, or at least its headline, should have been posted on human resources bulletin boards across the country.  The rocket science of economics need not be invoked to understand that when “job openings are at a historic high and small businesses across the country are begging for workers,” it means “the demand for a critical commodity is high and the supply of that commodity is in short supply,” making “prices go up.”  Some things are simple. 

So how about existing employees, who have often watched new hires get more than they do?  Per Charisse Jones in the December 10^th USA Today, “Workers can expect a nice raise next year as companies struggle to fill jobs, report says.”  We saw that “budgets for wage hikes are projected to jump 3.9% next year,” progressive but doesn’t approach the 6.8% latest inflation figure, and must include some anticipating offering less or nothing.

Finally, Rick Newman’s December 14^th Yahoo Finance “Maybe bad bosses are causing the worker shortage“ was misheadlined – it was also about several other factors.  According to Prudential research, a stunning 46% of employees “said they’re looking for a new job, or considering looking,” and, after those wanting to be paid more (45%), “lack of growth opportunities” was, at 26%, the second most common reason.  While raising compensation is “probably the easiest” solution, despite a dearth of workers for “a year or more,” “there was no notable pickup in average pay until recently.”  Ideas for getting and keeping people in positions Newman mentioned, along with the usual vague self-fulfillment things which are often more basic issues in disguise, included ending “rigid eligibility requirements” such as college degrees. 

Per the American Job Shortage Number or AJSN, 16.7 million of our citizens – over half again the recently reported 11 million job openings, would take employment if the terms were right.  So what should companies do?  First, they need to raise pay – not just a few percent, but 10%, 20%, or more – and for in-place workers as well as new hires, announce that future average levels will at least equal the inflation rate.  Second, rediscover corporate training, or, if it seems better, pay community college tuition, books, and fees.  Third, be aware of true market rates for well-defined jobs, such as machinists and warehouse workers, and at least match them for skilled and experienced employees and candidates.  Fourth, search for and destroy barriers, such as the education ones above along with many certifications, which were often put into place when the massive baby boom generation produced too many applicants.  Fifth, when appropriate, allow people to work remotely, but do not pawn off costs on them by being stingy about allowed equipment such as ergonometric chairs.  Sixth, don’t forget promotions.  Seventh, when all else fails, pay even more – and repeat that as often as necessary.  Companies that follow these recommendations will have the employees they need.

Around the Horn with Robots

This is a highly jobs-related area which has had less press than I might have thought, probably due to emphasis on the pay demands, quitting, workspace-setting, and vaccination tendencies of human workers.  Here’s about all I have encountered in the past nine months.

“Do Not Be Alarmed by Wild Predictions of Robots Taking Everyone’s Jobs” – Kevin Carey, Slate, March 31^st.  But be aware they will take a LOT of them, later if not sooner.  True, the 2013 Oxford study projecting that 47% of American positions were “”at risk” of computerization” did not mean anything imminent, but the possibility remains, which could massively materialize if our national will to achieve true innovations returns.  That we’re now in a forest of Help Wanted signs does not mean we won’t see skyrocketing automation by 2050, 2040, or even 2030.

“The Robot Surgeon Will See You Now” – Cade Metz, The New York Times, April 30^th.  Well, not quite yet, but they have been assisting doctors there for years.  Implementation of autonomous robots in this field is unusually unpromising, since consumer resistance, especially when even small numbers of things go wrong, will be massive.  If many consider one fatal autonomous-vehicle accident worse than 30,000 annual driver-error deaths, they won’t tolerate risking delicate, high-skill processes on automata.

“Instacart enlisting robots to cut labor costs” – Jeanette Settembre, Fox Business, June 1^st).  Picking grocery orders is much less emotional than cutting into heart muscles, and is effective, especially when the company’s warehouses can be designed for them.  A natural way of using technology when it not only keeps improving but, as labor costs climb, is even more valuable.  Many positions are strictly humans’ work, but this one is robots’ work.

“Elon Musk introduces humanoid robot prototype at Tesla AI Day” – Ken Martin, Fox Business, August 19^th.  Unclear how these devices, except for looking more like humans (“standing” 5’8” “tall”), would be anything meaningfully new.  Robots already “eliminate dangerous, repetitive, boring tasks” and “carry out the work people don’t like to do” (or, more properly, carry out the work people’s companies don’t want them to do).  Sorry, Elon, but this one, unless Martin missed something huge, was a yawner.

“Workplace automation bots gain clout amid COVID-19 pandemic” – Angus Loten, Fox Business, September 24^th.  The pandemic should have started many efforts to provide them, which may take a while to produce market-ready product.  This piece is about “robotic process automation,” covering the likes of “processing payroll data or expense reports and fielding call-center queries.”  Interesting to see how the latter would go over, even at the lowest, Tier 1, level of complexity. 

“Alec Ross:  COVID unleashes robots – and the hit on America’s workforce will be enormous” – Alec Ross, Fox News, October 10^th.  The author looked in on a pharmaceutical-packaging plant “without human beings on the factory floor,” although workers did control the robots remotely.  More and more of this is on the way, as before pushed by higher pay levels.

“Desperate for Workers, Restaurants Turn to Robots” – Janet Morrissey, The New York Times, October 19^th.  And in the next two years, it will mushroom.  Ones perhaps already at eateries near you include the Servi, which “uses cameras and laser sensors to carry plates of food from the kitchen to tables in the dining room” but not directly to customers; the Flippy, which as you might think can “fry fast food, like French fries and chicken wings“; Peanut, which covers every restaurant employee’s favorite detail by cleaning bathrooms; Whiz, “which vacuums floors,”; and silicon bartenders.  These mechanical employees have had their share of spectacular mishaps, leading some to be “fired” – just like their predecessors.

“Robots navigate the streets to deliver food” – Fox Business, November 2^nd.  More on automated edibles distribution, by “hundreds of little robots – knee-high and able to hold around four large pizzas” are at work around American and British colleges and elsewhere.  One company, Starship Technologies, has reached two million deliveries, despite the devices being “slow,” “inflexible,” and needing to “recharge regularly.”  They’re not for every area, as some cities “aren’t welcoming them,” but are piling up a history now.

“Can We Make Our Robots Less Biased Than We Are?” – David Berreby, The New York Times, November 22^nd.  That gets us to the, to say the least, uncomfortable issue of what we should do when artificial intelligence and related systems conclude that people of all groups are not identically likely to have certain proclivities or characteristics.  Sometimes such machine knowledge comes from poor programming, but we are rapidly reaching a time, if we aren’t there already, when systems we know are logically flawless have discovered, without any input from humans biased or otherwise, differences that offend people with certain political sensitivities.  Soon, surely by the end of this decade, we will need to at least debate whether to accept such algorithm components or to somehow remove them from artificially intelligent entities.  Not deciding on a course of action will cost us increasingly dearly.  I suspect that this matter will give us some seriously unpleasant times. 

Overall, where are we with robots?  We will find out within a few more years, when their quality, scope, and number available have all multiplied.  That is what they will do – and they will be even harder for companies to resist.  Then we will not be alarmed, but rather quickly accepting, of robots taking over many more jobs.  We cannot avoid that forever.

November Jobs Report: Another Fine Month, But Without the New Positions This Time

That outcome may not seem possible, but it’s what happened with this morning’s Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Situation Summary. 

The number of net new nonfarm positions grew a meager but still valuable 210,000, far below the three projections, all between 500,000 and 600,000, I saw.  That was the extent of the bad news.  Seasonally adjusted and unadjusted joblessness each shed 0.4%, to reach 4.2% and 3.9%.  There were half a million fewer unemployed people than the month before, reaching 6.9 million.  The count of those on temporary layoff fell 300,000 to 800,000, and those out 27 weeks or longer lost 100,000 and is now 2.2 million.  Those working part-time for economic reasons, or keeping such positions while looking thus far unsuccessfully for full-time ones, numbered 4.3 million or 100,000 less.  The two measures best showing how common it is for Americans to be working or officially jobless, the labor force participation rate and the employment/population ratio, improved substantially and are now at 61.8% and 59.2%, up 0.2% and 0.4% respectively.  The weakest measure here may have been average private nonfarm payroll wages, increasing 7 cents an hour, below inflation, to reach $31.03.

The American Job Shortage Number, the statistic showing how many new positions could be filled quickly if all knew they would be easy and routine to get, had another fine month, dropping 568,000 to get to the following:

Eight of eleven components contributed less this time, with about 90% of the drop from lower formal unemployment.  The rest was broad-based.  This time, only 34% of the AJSN came from that same piece, meaning that nearly two-thirds of people without employment who would take easily available new jobs would have other statuses.  Compared with a year before, the AJSN has shed almost 4.3 million, with all but 700,000 from reduced official joblessness. 

On the Covid-19 front, per the New York Times, the seven-day weighted average of new cases rose 2% from October 16^th to November 16^th, to reach 85,154.  Deaths measured the same way, though, lost 30% to 1,063, and hospitalizations dropped 23% to 47,852.  The number of vaccinations, including booster shots, jumped 70% to get to 1,368,939.  With the trends so generally positive, there is no reason to think that more people are excessively endangering themselves by working in pandemic-unsafe conditions. 

So how could this report be so good with the count of new jobs, treated by many as the most important number it contains, disappointing?  The marginal attachment statuses above are improving little, and the count of those claiming no interest in working, which soon may contribute more to the AJSN than the unemployed, has been irregularly but clearly increasing.  Otherwise, there are gaps between the number of jobs and the number of people with them, specifically that a rising share of the employed have more than one position, and the non-civilian et al. category above, including people off the grid or not wanting to be found, has settled at about a million and half higher than it was pre-pandemic.  Still, the report was strong indeed, and the unemployment rates are running, not walking, toward pre-coronavirus levels.  In light of that, the turtle took another big step in the right direction.

Remote Work Since My Eleven Brutal Truths: Part III and Conclusions

To start with the same publication and date we finished with last week, in the September 28^th Harvard Business Review Tsedal Neeley offered “12 Questions About Hybrid Work, Answered.”  If there was any doubt, “extensive data across surveys indicate that most people want hybrid work arrangements – that is, a mix of in-person and remote work,” and “leaders need to design plans that combine the preferences of their workforce and the core work that their organization need to do well – and they need to be prepared to adjust as they go.”  Neeley, who wrote a book on this subject, urged starting with standard procedures, as “each organization should identify the approach that best serves its stakeholders,” and that was only a small part of his response to the first question.  Other key issues, for Neeley, included letting as many employees as possible participate, facilitating transitions to it, how to bring in new workers, ways to neutralize the aforementioned “proximity bias,” facilitating more trust, removing “tech exhaustion,” indicated changes to office spaces, and data security.  All well worthy of consideration, and clearer and more in-depth than any of the other articles in this series.

The growing tendency of workers to quit their jobs has not avoided those based at home, and, for that and other reasons, it is no surprise that “U.S. employees look to prioritize well-being of remote workers – survey” (Manojna Maddipatla, Yahoo News, October 6^th).  I am not sure what “subsidized furniture” means – if providing such employees with the same expensive ergonomic equipment as is in good offices, that’s a good idea – but “home delivery of meals… to meet the rigors of working from home” (!) is something else.  Providing food in offices is a blatant, if welcome, way of increasing workers’ time there, so why do that elsewhere?  The same goes for “at-home alternatives for offerings such as subsidized healthy food choices in cafeterias or onsite gyms.”  Perhaps all of this is designed to convince employees that management’s motives are pure, but I don’t expect any of it to catch on.  In contrast, we had Terry Collins reporting in the November 11^th USA Today “Work remote after COVID?  Nearly 50% of US workers would take a pay cut for it, survey says.”  He also found “74% say working from home would make them happier post-pandemic as a quarter of those surveyed said they will quit their jobs if they can’t work remotely.”  So, for most (but hardly all), we can hold off on those home-delivered yoga mats. 

More on management’s views came in with “What Bosses Really Think About the Future of Work” (David Gelles, The New York Times, November 14^th).  Chief executives, “struggling to balance rapidly shifting expectations with their own impulse” and “eager to appear responsive to employees who are relishing their newfound autonomy” are making a variety of choices, as shown by great intercompany remote-work differences.  Otherwise, except for IBM’s CEO Arvind Krishna saying “he no longer cared whether office workers showed up at 5 a.m. or 11 a.m., or whether their workday ended at 3 p.m. or 9 p.m., so long as they were productive” – which even if he were sincere about, people between him and those choosing 4-hour shifts would be unlikely to agree – there was little new here.

The last piece presented a possibility that has doubtless caused nightmares, “The Worst of Both Worlds:  Zooming From the Office,” by Emma Goldberg in the November 16^th New York Times.  There were several good insights in this foray into the “mushy middle ground” of modern work.  We have not recently seen, as some expected, “the Great Office Reopening,” but, for one example, “as employees at the financial technology start-up CommonBond got Covid vaccines, and grew stir-crazy in their apartments, they started trickling back into the office.”  While clear-cut for most one way or the other, workers have not all been able to choose between “teammates” and “pajamas,” and their management often hasn’t either.  Although those at home “might be undercut” by being “muted in a heated discussion” and “shut out of lunchtime bonding,” “at many workplaces the in-person employees felt just as neglected.”  One way Zillow has mitigated some of that is to require that if at least one participant must attend remotely, everyone else must also, hence the title.  How we work this out, with the likes of Zoom hardly well liked, will not be easy.

What conclusions can we draw from the past three weeks’ worth of articles?  I offer four.  First, there are good and bad sides of telecommuting, and managers and line workers need to consider both.  Second, the ground rules for remote and hybrid work, such as office equipment and the number of hours people must put in, whether or not aligned with my Brutal Truths, are totally unset between companies, let alone between industries.  Third, we know nothing about what those wanting to integrate childcare with home work should be entitled to expect, and if that should vary from the needs and desires of others.  Fourth, between the pendulum which has swung between office-is-best and remote-is-best for 30 years, the discoveries we have made since March 2020, and management’s choppy and shifting policies, how we will handle remote work going forward is still totally unsettled.  Place your bets, take your chances, and make decisions, but don’t expect they will be correct.  Only the future will tell. 

Remote Work Since My Eleven Brutal Truths: Part II

We start this week’s installment with one piece having a headline with an unexpected meaning.  John Zavitsanos’s July 26^th New York Times “We’re Kidding Ourselves That Workers Perform Well from Home” did not address telecommuting employees failing to buckle down, rather that, in his law firm, it could “drain morale and diminish collegiality,” and that “some people were distracted and anxious to leave meetings, but in person, they were engaged and animated – there was just no comparison.”  Perhaps as a result of the company reopening its offices after only five 2020 weeks of closure, its revenue rose without furloughing or laying off anyone.  Zavitsanos did mention productivity being higher in person, and those who wanted remote work were allowed that, but concluded that “ambitious lawyers at firms like ours simply couldn’t thrive in a virtual setting.”

Although incomplete statistics detracted from “These careers added the most remote jobs in 2021:  report,” by Audrey Conklin on August 4^th in Fox Business, it still provided new information, including that “remote work” increased tenfold earlier this year, with surprising growth in some categories, such as from-home health care positions almost tripling and “sales and business development” more than that.  Although the status of and prospects for telecommuting are uncertain, opportunities involving it have, indeed, skyrocketed.

On the same day, The Atlantic Daily provided a quick view on “The Remote-Work Experiment.”  A “remote company” CEO, Ed Zitron, maintained that “for the tens of millions of us who spend most of our days sitting at a computer, the pandemic proved that remote work is just work” (italics his), and that managers leery of it now have “the tangible proof of their still-standing business.”  I don’t find that a compelling argument, and the unbilled article author didn’t seem to either, as his “few things to consider,” from Zitron and two other sources, included “the work-from-home revolution will have winners and losers,” even if the latter are landlords, and “younger and less-established workers could have a tougher time.”  Sobriety, which as we will see was not an attribute of every contribution here.    

A choice employee have been making, and how much they should pay for it in other ways, was the subject of Sarah Kessler’s “Will Remote Workers Get Left Behind in the Hybrid Office,” in the August 5^th New York Times.  She had only a general assertion that people not in offices could be underrated and not a part of certain interactions, and showed better that remote work is often an option taken mostly by women.  Not everyone takes the maximal career path – for example, when I was in AT&T management I understood that my best opportunities would call for me to move from Central Florida to New Jersey, which many did, but I declined that – and it is wrong to claim unjust discrimination when career path outcomes turn out, on average, to vary.  There is nothing pejorative about saying that women – as a group, not individually – tend to choose greater work-life balance.  More of the same came from Martha White, in Yahoo News on August 18^th, in “Remote workers could face cuts to pay, visibility.”  White cited a study showing that “72 percent of supervisors… said they prefer to have their underlings in the office,” meaning they may not assess them objectively.  Lower recognition could turn out to be an accepted optional-telecommuting disadvantage.                    

So who are “The Winners of Remote Work” (Dror Poleg, August 31^st, The New York Times)?  Not as many as we might think.  While it gives something desirable to many existing employees, it massively expands their competition for jobs, high performance reviews, and promotions, as it makes the pool of available candidates national or even worldwide.  Some annual salaries Poleg cited included the most skilled online elementary school teachers over $100,000 and fitness instructors earning five times as much.  The number of clients each can have is of course vastly larger than if they were working in person, leading to a concentration in which others cannot find opportunities at all.  The same thing, per the author, has been happening with “lawyers, doctors, consultants, bankers and managers.”  This situation is similar to people taking on more than one full-time position, differing only in the number of separate employers, and may indicate a de facto decrease in the numbers of some jobs.        

Evolving and oscillating philosophies on where workers should be have caused some to call allowed telecommuting an employee benefit.  Not so fast, said Gretchen Gavett in the Harvard Business Review on September 28^th.  Her piece, titled “”Remote Work Isn’t a Perk to Toss into the Mix,”” was an interview of authors of a “forthcoming book, Out of Office:  The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working from Home,” which seemed to unambiguously advocate telecommuting.  The best the book’s authors could do toward being even-handed was to acknowledge that management, not the workers, should be “vigilant about” how technology could “create more work, more stress, more wasted time.”  That wasn’t enough to be fair on this cyclical, divisive, and thoroughly unsettled issue.

The last part, along with conclusions, will appear next week.

Remote Work Since My Eleven Brutal Truths: Part I

One of the steadiest press topics this year has been what used to be called telecommuting, or employees doing their duties from where they live.  That was an old interest of mine, from times at AT&T around thirty years ago, and through my education, for which I wrote about it. 

In March I posted something called “Eleven Brutal Truths on Office Design and Working from Home,” giving my views on this new-old-new-old-new-old phenomenon, about which companies seemed to learn little from what previous generations had discovered.  I was generally skeptical about telecommuting’s advantages, saying that in practice it served more to facilitate workers’ slacking off, to accentuate wealth and home-situation differences, to wreck most of the social side of office jobs, and to illegitimately transfer costs to employees.  In a June update I still stood on these principles, and found occasional agreement in recent articles.  Now, in a three-part series, I will assess how much, if at all, companies and other observers are coming around to my beliefs. 

I start with three pieces from before my last pertinent writing.  The first, “The Pandemic of Work-From-Home Injuries,” by Jeff Wilser in the September 4^th, 2020 (updated September 11^th) New York Times, is old but addressed an issue still undercovered.  The piece started with the following anecdotal, which perfectly described the problem.  “Elizabeth Cuthrell, a Manhattan-based film producer, used to work in an ergonomic office space:  comfortable desk chair, monitor at eye level, external keyboard.  Then came Covid-19.  During stay-at-home she worked on a laptop from a wicker chair, or sometimes on a couch with “cushions like marshmallows.”  A month later she felt pain in her neck, write and shoulders that sent her to a chiropractor.”  In my MBA program in the late 1990s, ergonomics was important enough for an entire course – now, with companies as always notoriously unwilling to pay for premium home equipment, such as chairs that can easily cost $1,000, we are in danger of throwing away all of the progress there we have made.

Next, a reminder that not everyone is clamoring to stay at home: “The flip side of ‘flexibility’:  Working moms make the powerful case for going back to the office” (Erin Schulte, Fast Company, March 11^th).  It’s not so they can get more work done, but rather to avoid “constant juggling,” “crazy hours,” and such from children as “no matter what, someone will come flying in with no pants on and ask me for Cinnamon Toast Crunch.”  Employers, per Schulte, “assume a lot about their employees,” described in a colorful paragraph including that they have a fully-professionally-outfitted office “that would score 8 or above on Room Rater,” and that “you don’t mind your boss knowing what your bedroom or your spouse looks like, or what your kids sound like when they’re squabbling in the room next door.”  

We got a look from the other side in “What Bosses Really Think of Remote Workers” (Olga Khazan, The Atlantic, May).  When the pendulum I mentioned swung in the direction of favoring people being in offices, we had, per Khazan, “a pushback against remote work” with those of you making that choice remarkably likely to “irritate your boss and hurt your career,” and tending to get smaller raises.  That may be a holdover from the pre-pandemic days where only some people worked from home, but for now the evidence in this piece is insufficient to say that any kind of discrimination continues today.

Starting the newer articles, we can’t really disagree that “Remote work is here to stay, survey of Canadian businesses shows” (Alicja Siekierska, Yahoo Finance, June 15^th), but we still know nothing about the extent, or when if ever the pendulum will stop swinging.  Here we learned that “most Canadian business owners say they will continue to allow employees to work from home after the pandemic,” but that means some say they will not, and it’s hardly a lock that they will keep those views, especially after the main reason for workers doing that has faded back.  And as above, not everyone would choose it.

At least Austan Goolsbee, in the July 20^th New York Times, had the foresight to see the issue in less rosy and dogmatic terms, in “The Battles to Come Over the Benefits of Working From Home.”  Although the author confused “gasoline” for much-higher car expenses, he named lack of commuting as “the biggest prize of all” for those working remotely, and reminded us that management could ask for compensation for that, by formally “asking employees to work longer from home” and noted the real problem of “blurring the lines between work and the rest of life,” which “does not have to benefit workers in the end.”  As I documented, the pendulum was swinging in the other direction before the pandemic, as employers were providing onsite gyms and free snacks to encourage workers not only to appear in the office but to stay there longer, and in some well-publicized cases barred them from remote work altogether.  So there we will see.

I end this week’s installment with another from the Times, “We Are Not Going Back to Business as Usual,” by Taylor Trudon on July 25^th.  This piece delved into the murky area of doing personal errands and tasks on company time, hardly rare and often not considered wrong by many managers, during days either in or out of the office.  Trudon also seemed to imply, through examples, that the “hustle culture,” with such things as work-harder messages on watermelon slices, may have been peaking.  We have certainly seen some of that in the three-plus months since, as candidates have been more likely to hold out for positions with the remote-work rules they like, which still vary greatly by company.  And as before, we don’t know how it will be in 2022, let alone 2023. 

Next week:  more on this topic.