WEBVTT - The Great Transformation 0:00:07.720 --> 0:00:10.959 Welcome to On the Job. This season, we're focusing on 0:00:11.000 --> 0:00:14.440 how people and businesses are getting back to work. Let's 0:00:14.440 --> 0:00:17.200 call it a great transformation, a change in the way 0:00:17.239 --> 0:00:21.239 workers are thinking. Employers need people to work more than ever, 0:00:21.440 --> 0:00:24.680 putting laborers in a sort of position of power. We'll 0:00:24.720 --> 0:00:27.639 be hearing from people navigating this new normal for themselves 0:00:27.720 --> 0:00:31.560 as they find their life's work. It's season six of 0:00:31.640 --> 0:00:34.040 On the Job, and the job market itself is a 0:00:34.040 --> 0:00:36.320 lot different than it was a few years ago. COVID 0:00:36.400 --> 0:00:38.440 has shaken up the world, put a lot of people 0:00:38.440 --> 0:00:41.320 out of work, inspired others to pursue their passions, and 0:00:41.360 --> 0:00:43.320 has become a new normal that everyone is trying to 0:00:43.320 --> 0:00:46.120 get used to. The job market is messy, it's gone 0:00:46.120 --> 0:00:48.720 through a lot of changes, and it is right with potential. 0:00:49.120 --> 0:00:50.960 So before we launch into the rest of the season, 0:00:51.000 --> 0:00:53.720 where we'll talk to people working within that new environment, 0:00:53.800 --> 0:00:59.920 we're going to start off by setting the stage. Hello, sir, 0:01:00.320 --> 0:01:03.840 welcome to On the Job. If you could please introduce 0:01:03.840 --> 0:01:07.319 yourself sure. My name is Mark Blythe. I am the 0:01:07.440 --> 0:01:10.840 head of the Klingon Invasion Force. I know I'm a 0:01:10.880 --> 0:01:16.520 professor of political economy at Brown University and sometime rock 0:01:16.600 --> 0:01:20.200 on tour and musician. So there'll we go. Mark Blythe 0:01:20.280 --> 0:01:22.720 is from Dundee, Scotland. He's been teaching at Brown since 0:01:22.760 --> 0:01:24.720 two thousand and nine. He's written a lot of books 0:01:24.720 --> 0:01:26.560 on the economy. And he's talking to me from a 0:01:26.640 --> 0:01:29.039 room full of bass guitars and drums, which he's been 0:01:29.040 --> 0:01:33.880 playing a lot during the lockdown. Okay, let's do it, babe, Okay, 0:01:33.920 --> 0:01:37.520 Mark Blythe. The job market is a lot different now 0:01:37.720 --> 0:01:40.520 than it was even a few years ago. From an 0:01:40.520 --> 0:01:44.080 economist political scientists point of view, How did we get 0:01:44.120 --> 0:01:47.760 to where we are right now? How far back do 0:01:47.800 --> 0:01:53.320 you want to go? Okay, So, for our purposes, we're 0:01:53.320 --> 0:01:57.680 gonna tell an incredibly abbreviated story of today's economy starting 0:01:57.720 --> 0:02:01.720 around fifty years ago. In nineteen seven, one and five 0:02:01.840 --> 0:02:04.320 jobs was in the auto industry, and one in three 0:02:04.400 --> 0:02:08.600 jobs was in similar industries like steel manufacturing, making electric motors, 0:02:08.760 --> 0:02:11.760 so making things, manufacturing, engineering, and a lot of those 0:02:11.800 --> 0:02:15.799 jobs are unionized. Then we get into the nineteen eighties 0:02:16.800 --> 0:02:20.160 nineteen eighties, those unions that were helping workers maintain fair 0:02:20.160 --> 0:02:23.800 pay and weekends start to diminish. Employers and big companies 0:02:23.800 --> 0:02:27.440 start gaining more power. As the economy globalizes, you start 0:02:27.480 --> 0:02:31.040 to see the growth of finance and real estate and 0:02:31.120 --> 0:02:33.119 all the sort of high end services to come out 0:02:33.120 --> 0:02:35.600 the eighties and of the nineties, the Wall Street moment 0:02:35.600 --> 0:02:37.160 in New York. You begin to see sort of the 0:02:37.240 --> 0:02:39.360 beginnings of the real beginnings of Silicon Valley in the 0:02:39.400 --> 0:02:42.519 tech industry. And then you start to get the growth 0:02:42.520 --> 0:02:45.560 of the coasts and the fantastic wealth it's accumulated there. 0:02:46.080 --> 0:02:48.400 So the bulk of the economy moves away from things 0:02:48.440 --> 0:02:50.880 like coal and factory jobs in the middle of the 0:02:50.919 --> 0:02:54.360 country hence the name russ Bell Unions continue to fall 0:02:54.440 --> 0:02:57.080 apart through the nineties and the two thousands, kind of 0:02:57.120 --> 0:03:01.480 flatlining or decreasing wages across the board for most of America. 0:03:01.800 --> 0:03:06.080 Where was the job market at in twenty nineteen going 0:03:06.120 --> 0:03:09.679 into the pandemic. Largest employer in the United States is Walmart, 0:03:10.080 --> 0:03:16.840 big box, retail, loan services, hospitality, fast food. Basically, you know, 0:03:17.000 --> 0:03:19.440 make jobs in a sense is about one thought of 0:03:19.480 --> 0:03:23.440 the labor market. Mark says, Basically, the US economy was 0:03:23.520 --> 0:03:26.760 fueled by US making stuff, and now it's an economy 0:03:26.800 --> 0:03:30.320 fueled by US buying stuff. Basically, eighty percent of the 0:03:30.320 --> 0:03:33.640 economy is driven by consumption. Okay, so all those strip 0:03:33.680 --> 0:03:36.040 malls that you see if you're drive across America, so 0:03:36.320 --> 0:03:38.840 that's where people are working. That's where people are working. 0:03:39.240 --> 0:03:42.040 And most of these places are run by big corporations 0:03:42.080 --> 0:03:46.600 that can set wages without those pesky unions pushing back. Essentially, 0:03:46.640 --> 0:03:50.320 today more people are working for less people. So what 0:03:50.440 --> 0:03:52.520 we've done is we've created an economy. It's really simple 0:03:52.560 --> 0:03:56.200 to understand. There's the top twenty percent, and that's where 0:03:56.240 --> 0:03:58.480 all the returns have gone. That's where all the money 0:03:58.480 --> 0:04:02.600 has been made. So let's bring this up to the present. 0:04:02.640 --> 0:04:05.160 What does it look like going at the pandemic half 0:04:05.160 --> 0:04:08.280 of the American labor market gets twenty dollars an hour 0:04:08.400 --> 0:04:11.160 or less. Really hard to do the American dream on 0:04:11.200 --> 0:04:19.120 twenty bucks an hour or less. COVID hits. What immediately 0:04:19.160 --> 0:04:24.960 happens in the workforce? Everybody went home. It was very weird. 0:04:26.360 --> 0:04:29.599 March twenty nineteen, people around the world start getting sent 0:04:29.680 --> 0:04:32.120 home from work, which meant less stuff was getting made. 0:04:32.240 --> 0:04:35.320 Less people were working and earning wages, but the demand 0:04:35.360 --> 0:04:38.080 for stuff was still there. And as we are now, 0:04:38.120 --> 0:04:41.960 an economy that runs on consumption buying stuff. The government 0:04:42.000 --> 0:04:44.400 needed to send stimulus checks out to make sure people 0:04:44.440 --> 0:04:47.680 could still purchase things to keep the economy going, and 0:04:48.080 --> 0:04:50.120 it was whether one likes or not the right thing 0:04:50.120 --> 0:04:52.719 to do, because the alternative would have been the largest 0:04:52.720 --> 0:04:56.880 contraction of the economy since records begun, which probably would 0:04:56.920 --> 0:04:59.440 have been worse than nodding ten percent on the national debt. 0:05:00.040 --> 0:05:02.359 People went home for a while, collected checks, and then 0:05:02.440 --> 0:05:04.960 began to come back as we sort of started to 0:05:04.960 --> 0:05:08.159 get a handle on the pandemic. As far as unemployment goes, 0:05:08.440 --> 0:05:12.000 it was more that people got furloughed, So COVID technically 0:05:12.080 --> 0:05:14.679 put less people out of a job than you might think. 0:05:14.880 --> 0:05:17.360 But what it did do was two things. Number One, 0:05:17.720 --> 0:05:19.800 because of COVID, a lot of women who were in 0:05:19.839 --> 0:05:22.440 the workforce, particularly if there were part time workers and 0:05:22.560 --> 0:05:26.520 services suddenly had to do child kill. Schools were shutting 0:05:26.520 --> 0:05:29.120 down off and on all the time, so pretty quickly 0:05:29.400 --> 0:05:31.120 someone had to be home with the kids. Right, So 0:05:31.160 --> 0:05:33.560 if you were running a diner and you had three 0:05:33.800 --> 0:05:36.280 women working for you and they had kids, you're not 0:05:36.360 --> 0:05:39.360 get an mbak, right, that's done. Second big thing, a 0:05:39.360 --> 0:05:42.480 lot of older couples boomer age. You know, right before 0:05:42.560 --> 0:05:44.800 they were about to retire, they got put out of 0:05:44.800 --> 0:05:47.080 work and they were looking at their pretty healthy four 0:05:47.120 --> 0:05:50.400 o one ks and thought, right, gladys were done right. 0:05:50.400 --> 0:05:52.200 You know, there's no point in going back now, it 0:05:52.320 --> 0:05:55.320 is ridiculous. So they began to actually leave it. So 0:05:55.360 --> 0:05:57.960 what you had is a drop in the overall labor 0:05:58.040 --> 0:06:01.200 force participation right right, many people are actually in the 0:06:01.279 --> 0:06:04.760 labor market that began to draw. I know Mark said 0:06:04.800 --> 0:06:07.000 that there were two things, but there's a third thing, 0:06:07.240 --> 0:06:10.920 and it's a big one. People finally had perspective at home, 0:06:11.240 --> 0:06:13.640 looking at the mick jobs that they've been working, and 0:06:13.720 --> 0:06:16.719 started thinking, you know what, I kind of normalized abuse. 0:06:17.920 --> 0:06:20.760 I kind of normalized being shouted out and swore for 0:06:20.839 --> 0:06:22.919 like seven dollars an hour, and I'm just not going 0:06:23.000 --> 0:06:26.760 to do that anymore. And while employers are very reluctant 0:06:26.800 --> 0:06:29.160 to do this, the only way to keep those workers 0:06:29.279 --> 0:06:32.200 or to get them back was to raise wages. So 0:06:32.240 --> 0:06:34.400 if you think, you know, Amazon used to do about 0:06:34.440 --> 0:06:36.919 twelve bucks an hour, I think now sort of there 0:06:36.920 --> 0:06:41.200 are minimums about fifteen sixteen seventeen. There's a gas station 0:06:41.279 --> 0:06:43.120 down the road from me. It's a local company whatever, 0:06:43.160 --> 0:06:45.520 you're pumping up the gas station. It's like we're hiring 0:06:45.600 --> 0:06:48.440 seventeen an hour and benefits. Right. So there's a way 0:06:48.440 --> 0:06:50.800 in which when you get that big supply shock, that 0:06:50.880 --> 0:06:53.960 aren't enough workers and people have said, you know, enough 0:06:54.000 --> 0:06:55.400 of this crap. I don't want to be treated like 0:06:55.440 --> 0:06:57.760 crop anymore. You're going to have to change the game. 0:07:02.200 --> 0:07:05.600 So that's what's happening. The game has changed, is transforming 0:07:05.640 --> 0:07:07.880 in a big way. And I know there's this term 0:07:07.920 --> 0:07:12.000 that's been kicking around, the Great resignation, basically this grand 0:07:12.080 --> 0:07:15.320 exodus of people leaving the workforce during COVID and just 0:07:15.440 --> 0:07:18.480 not coming back. Now here's the funny thing. It turns 0:07:18.560 --> 0:07:23.480 out it really looks like we massively overestimated how many 0:07:23.520 --> 0:07:28.440 people had. I know, we're massively underestimate how many people 0:07:28.440 --> 0:07:32.440 are coming back to work. So it looks like there 0:07:32.440 --> 0:07:37.400 hasn't really beaten this giant quite phone. After all, Mark says, 0:07:37.440 --> 0:07:40.920 economists work with estimates, and overtime they get more accurate. 0:07:41.320 --> 0:07:44.680 So have people just disappeared from the workforce. Probably not. 0:07:45.120 --> 0:07:47.720 So instead of calling it the Great resignation, we're going 0:07:47.800 --> 0:07:50.720 to call it a great transformation, a change in the 0:07:50.760 --> 0:07:54.080 way workers are thinking, because now they are needed in 0:07:54.120 --> 0:07:57.400 a pretty extreme way. Employers need people to work more 0:07:57.440 --> 0:08:00.480 than ever, putting labors in a sort of position of power, 0:08:00.800 --> 0:08:04.440 and everyone's hiring. So employers that weren't valuing their employees 0:08:04.560 --> 0:08:07.320 have had a serious wake up call like, well, what 0:08:07.360 --> 0:08:09.120 do you mean a cont just pay somebody the minimum 0:08:09.160 --> 0:08:12.360 wage anymore and abuse them? Well that it work? Yeah, 0:08:12.480 --> 0:08:14.360 looks like those days are done as well. I'm afraid 0:08:14.440 --> 0:08:17.880 because if you can get seventeen or eighteen an Amazon 0:08:18.440 --> 0:08:21.040 on a kind of flexible basis and then compliment that 0:08:21.160 --> 0:08:24.080 with Uber, then essentially I'm getting up to about twenty 0:08:24.080 --> 0:08:26.320 five twenty six. Why do I need to take you 0:08:26.320 --> 0:08:30.800 a minimum wage boat? Another big transformation which shouldn't come 0:08:30.840 --> 0:08:33.960 as a surprise, more people are getting to work from home. 0:08:34.400 --> 0:08:37.400 A lot of employees and employers have asked themselves, do 0:08:37.480 --> 0:08:39.880 we really need to be in a crowded office to 0:08:39.880 --> 0:08:42.760 do this paying for rent and air conditioning and all that. 0:08:43.080 --> 0:08:45.320 Probably not, But there's real reasons to be in the 0:08:45.400 --> 0:08:48.360 office even in these jobs, because how do you do mentoring, 0:08:48.880 --> 0:08:51.559 how do you do team building? How do you decide 0:08:51.600 --> 0:08:54.440 where the talent should be allocated? If basically everybody's on 0:08:54.440 --> 0:08:57.000 a screen. This is why a lot of jobs are 0:08:57.040 --> 0:08:59.319 now what we call hybrid, meaning you can work from 0:08:59.320 --> 0:09:01.480 home some days but also have a place to go 0:09:01.600 --> 0:09:06.320 into work on others. And while working from home has 0:09:06.360 --> 0:09:08.960 given a lot of people the freedom to be with 0:09:09.000 --> 0:09:12.000 their families or just have a more comfortable work environment, 0:09:12.200 --> 0:09:15.040 it's also made people realize everything else that comes with 0:09:15.160 --> 0:09:18.840 going to a job every day. It's about your social networks. 0:09:18.880 --> 0:09:20.720 It's about going out for a drink on a Friday 0:09:20.760 --> 0:09:22.440 night with your colleague that you happen to like so 0:09:22.480 --> 0:09:24.679 you can about the one you hate, right, I mean, 0:09:24.800 --> 0:09:28.280 that's part of what the whole expedient says. The thing 0:09:28.280 --> 0:09:31.200 about the job, and we forget this. It's about much 0:09:31.240 --> 0:09:37.800 more than wages. We'll be right back after the break. 0:09:40.400 --> 0:09:45.200 A strong work ethic takes pride in a job well done, 0:09:45.240 --> 0:09:49.320 sweats over the details. 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As we 0:10:40.120 --> 0:10:44.040 continue our conversation with economists and political scientists Mark blythe 0:10:44.120 --> 0:10:46.319 we're going to dive a little deeper into this great 0:10:46.360 --> 0:10:49.600 transformation we're seeing in the workforce. Mark is quick to 0:10:49.600 --> 0:10:52.320 say that, yes, the changes we're going through right now 0:10:52.600 --> 0:10:55.880 do seem drastic, but that's kind of how it's always happened. 0:10:56.520 --> 0:10:59.679 The figure is something and this is just an approximation, 0:11:00.080 --> 0:11:01.800 but it's someone like a third of all jobs have 0:11:01.920 --> 0:11:04.520 disappeared every ten years. I mean it's remarkable, like so 0:11:04.600 --> 0:11:06.640 over a thirty year period or something like that, Like 0:11:06.720 --> 0:11:09.280 literally no jobs that were thirty years ago here. Now 0:11:09.360 --> 0:11:11.719 that's obviously an exaggeration, but there's a huge amount of 0:11:11.800 --> 0:11:15.559 charming and reinvention. Think about the entire technology of the Internet. 0:11:17.000 --> 0:11:19.000 I mean, it was only twenty years ago, like nobody 0:11:19.040 --> 0:11:24.720 knew what a website was. This generational shift the new 0:11:24.760 --> 0:11:27.720 face of the job market young people getting into the workforce. 0:11:28.080 --> 0:11:31.360 Mark says they're a lot different than other generations. They're 0:11:31.400 --> 0:11:34.080 no longer coming at a college, even the ones that 0:11:34.160 --> 0:11:36.680 I know and saying I'm going to Wall Street and 0:11:36.720 --> 0:11:39.560 I'm going to smash it. It's just it's just not 0:11:40.080 --> 0:11:42.440 And for a while it was big tech until it 0:11:42.480 --> 0:11:46.640 became big tech evil big tech, and now nah, that's 0:11:46.640 --> 0:11:49.920 a bit of a problem, right. Another motivation, he says, 0:11:50.240 --> 0:11:53.720 this new generation is acutely aware of the climate crisis. 0:11:53.960 --> 0:11:56.280 They're living in a world where they're here, Miami will 0:11:56.320 --> 0:11:59.679 be underwater by twenty fifty, and that we're doing irreparable 0:11:59.720 --> 0:12:02.520 damn to the earth. If you really have that kind 0:12:02.559 --> 0:12:06.520 of like existential fear that everything's totally screwed anyway, then 0:12:06.600 --> 0:12:08.000 you know, why are you going to bust your last 0:12:08.040 --> 0:12:09.960 eighty hours a week for the man? It's just not 0:12:10.000 --> 0:12:12.760 going to happen, right, So I think there's a fair 0:12:12.880 --> 0:12:16.720 degree of trading off what would have been seen as 0:12:16.760 --> 0:12:19.520 the normal path of like struggling and struggling to make 0:12:19.640 --> 0:12:22.679 very very high income, because that's what you do to 0:12:22.960 --> 0:12:26.920 a model of I want to do something that doesn't 0:12:26.960 --> 0:12:30.120 make things worse and actually has a degree of self 0:12:30.120 --> 0:12:35.880 satisfaction for me. Mark says, if you ask executives at 0:12:36.080 --> 0:12:40.640 oil companies, mining companies, engineering companies, as far as carbon 0:12:40.679 --> 0:12:43.800 emissions and damage to the Earth is concerned, they know 0:12:43.880 --> 0:12:46.160 the finger is pointed at them, and it's become a 0:12:46.240 --> 0:12:49.040 lot harder to get people to work for them. It's 0:12:49.080 --> 0:12:51.400 no longer just about the money, because they've got a 0:12:51.400 --> 0:12:54.200 bad reputation and people they've got a bad rep Yeah. 0:12:54.240 --> 0:12:57.040 I spoke to the CEO of a very very big 0:12:57.080 --> 0:13:01.440 carbon intensive firm who's taking the green stuff and all 0:13:01.440 --> 0:13:03.840 the rest of it, very very seriously, and I said, 0:13:03.840 --> 0:13:05.280 you know, why are you doing this? And he says, 0:13:05.320 --> 0:13:10.320 because my own family think I'm a bastard. That's a 0:13:10.360 --> 0:13:15.560 powerful motivator. That's so crazy. I feel like that's such 0:13:15.559 --> 0:13:18.320 a huge shift. Yeah, that is a huge shift. That 0:13:18.600 --> 0:13:22.079 really is a huge shift. Right. He told me another 0:13:22.080 --> 0:13:25.040 story about a guy in Florida, a billionaire in his eighties. 0:13:25.160 --> 0:13:28.079 He makes millions of dollars every day on the stock market. 0:13:28.360 --> 0:13:31.160 He chased the American dream and he got it. Well. 0:13:31.200 --> 0:13:33.680 This guy went and gave a lecture to students at 0:13:33.720 --> 0:13:36.560 a Miami university about how he got to where he is, 0:13:36.880 --> 0:13:41.200 and they're just appalled by this guy. Everything that he 0:13:41.320 --> 0:13:43.720 thought was what you do. They're just like, why would 0:13:43.720 --> 0:13:45.679 you want to do that? That sounds grotesque. Why don't 0:13:45.720 --> 0:13:48.040 he just retire? Why do you spend? Why do you 0:13:48.160 --> 0:13:49.920 give your money away? You're never going to spend it. 0:13:50.840 --> 0:13:54.120 It's really interesting. It's just this very different set of perspectives. 0:13:57.440 --> 0:14:00.839 People obviously still care about money. People need to and 0:14:01.040 --> 0:14:03.640 want to work for a living. But between the climate 0:14:03.720 --> 0:14:07.040 changing and the pretty frequent threat of nuclear wars and 0:14:07.200 --> 0:14:10.720 COVID throwing all of our values into question, there's a 0:14:10.720 --> 0:14:12.520 way in which people are listening. You know, well, what's 0:14:12.520 --> 0:14:16.680 the means and what's the end? Right? The whole point 0:14:16.679 --> 0:14:19.240 of work is to enable you to take time off. 0:14:19.280 --> 0:14:21.120 I mean this is econ one oh one. Right. We 0:14:21.240 --> 0:14:26.520 presume that you trade leisure for labor because labor enables 0:14:26.560 --> 0:14:29.280 you to have more leisure, Right, But we don't. For 0:14:29.400 --> 0:14:31.360 years and years, we did the exact opposite of what 0:14:31.400 --> 0:14:33.960 the textbook tells you. We just worked more and more. 0:14:35.800 --> 0:14:38.560 He says. At some point, time and hours put in 0:14:38.680 --> 0:14:43.120 during the day became directly translated into productivity, and the 0:14:43.160 --> 0:14:45.600 more hours we can slog away at work every day, 0:14:45.760 --> 0:14:48.640 the more productive we are and the more self worth 0:14:48.720 --> 0:14:51.760 we have because of it. And for employers, breaks and 0:14:51.960 --> 0:14:55.120 time off for their workers stop becoming an important part 0:14:55.160 --> 0:14:57.840 of the equation. The assumption was if you give them 0:14:57.880 --> 0:14:59.920 any freedom at all, the slock off, and you end 0:15:00.040 --> 0:15:02.360 up with these horror stories of people that work in 0:15:02.480 --> 0:15:04.920 check in factories being told to buy their own adult 0:15:04.960 --> 0:15:08.720 diapers because they get toilet breaks, which actually happens, right, 0:15:09.840 --> 0:15:12.280 And just basically get into a point we're going, how 0:15:12.280 --> 0:15:15.120 did we get that I was not normalized? When did 0:15:15.200 --> 0:15:18.680 that become okay? Right? Like, we started working for the weekend, 0:15:18.800 --> 0:15:21.440 but then we're working through the weekend. Yes, it's exactly. 0:15:21.480 --> 0:15:23.440 It's a brilliant way to put up Exactly. Yeah, the 0:15:23.520 --> 0:15:26.480 labor movement brought you the weekend, and you gave it away. 0:15:30.560 --> 0:15:32.800 This is the beauty of those hybrid jobs we talked 0:15:32.800 --> 0:15:35.160 about earlier, where you can work from home some days 0:15:35.200 --> 0:15:37.720 but still have an office you can go to. Before 0:15:37.960 --> 0:15:41.000 employers might think there is no way people would get 0:15:41.000 --> 0:15:44.520 their work done with that much freedom, turns out they 0:15:44.560 --> 0:15:46.720 were wrong. One of the things that I discovered you 0:15:46.720 --> 0:15:48.480 can do with hybrid worker is you can walk the 0:15:48.560 --> 0:15:51.680 dog at better times. It's nice walking the dog twice 0:15:51.680 --> 0:15:53.440 a day. It gets you out of the house. It 0:15:53.440 --> 0:15:57.520 actually makes you more productive. Okay, So do you think 0:15:57.600 --> 0:16:01.120 the weekends coming back or or do you think we're 0:16:01.120 --> 0:16:04.640 gonna have a three day weekend? Well, here's the interesting thing, right, 0:16:04.720 --> 0:16:06.680 did you hear about Iceland in the four day week? 0:16:06.960 --> 0:16:09.280 They put the whole Iceland in a four day week 0:16:09.440 --> 0:16:12.240 and everybody took a long you know, essentially a long weekend. 0:16:12.360 --> 0:16:16.040 Product everyone up, across every sector, every single sector was 0:16:16.080 --> 0:16:19.240 more productive. They got the same output plus and everybody 0:16:19.320 --> 0:16:24.200 got an extra day off. Wow. Wow. So so yeah, 0:16:24.400 --> 0:16:27.480 this new mentality in the job market, and not just 0:16:27.520 --> 0:16:32.040 for younger generations. Everyone who's going back to work right now. 0:16:33.280 --> 0:16:37.480 Money is obviously still the point of working, but it's 0:16:37.520 --> 0:16:41.600 maybe less of the point, yeah, which means they're going 0:16:41.640 --> 0:16:43.760 to value different things. They're going to value things like 0:16:43.880 --> 0:16:50.000 time rather than cash. This is the new wave that 0:16:50.120 --> 0:16:53.640 is washing over the workforce. This is at the heart 0:16:53.680 --> 0:16:59.400 of what we're going to call a great transformation. The 0:16:59.440 --> 0:17:02.880 way we were has always changed. The industries people work 0:17:02.920 --> 0:17:05.560 in have also always changed and will continue to do so. 0:17:06.080 --> 0:17:09.200 But what has been consistent, at least in the US 0:17:09.400 --> 0:17:12.760 is the hustle mentality. It's always been there. You know, 0:17:12.840 --> 0:17:15.720 if you're not working, someone else's and they're going to 0:17:15.760 --> 0:17:18.280 get ahead of you, so you better get back to it. 0:17:18.920 --> 0:17:21.560 Well Mark is saying is that people still really want 0:17:21.560 --> 0:17:24.160 to work. We're human, that's what we do. It gives 0:17:24.200 --> 0:17:28.480 us purpose. But today maybe it's less and less the 0:17:28.520 --> 0:17:33.879 dominant purpose. What advice would you give to someone who's 0:17:34.600 --> 0:17:37.800 entering or re entering the workforce in the new world 0:17:37.840 --> 0:17:42.480 that is twenty twenty two. Explore the space and be 0:17:42.560 --> 0:17:44.520 clear about what your goals are. Right, where do you 0:17:44.520 --> 0:17:46.640 want to be in five years? By which I mean 0:17:47.359 --> 0:17:49.480 is money really important to you? Because if it is, 0:17:49.480 --> 0:17:51.640 there are certain sectors where you can make an obsolete 0:17:51.680 --> 0:17:54.880 ton of money, and you know baking isn't one of them. 0:17:55.160 --> 0:17:57.439 But if, on the other hand, like you really like 0:17:57.640 --> 0:18:01.960 brioche and you like working with your then there's a tradeoff, right, 0:18:02.000 --> 0:18:03.920 So be aware of the trade offs and make the 0:18:03.960 --> 0:18:07.720 tradeoff accordingly. Other advice, he says, you don't need to 0:18:07.760 --> 0:18:10.520 go into crazy debt going to school if you aren't 0:18:10.560 --> 0:18:13.280 sure what you want to do after go learn on 0:18:13.359 --> 0:18:16.600 the job or jeezus. If you're interested in something technical, 0:18:16.880 --> 0:18:20.480 go learn off YouTube. Curious about coding, take an online 0:18:20.520 --> 0:18:23.720 class and see if you like it. Explore the space. 0:18:24.280 --> 0:18:27.879 I mean, the crazy amazing thing about capitalism is it 0:18:27.920 --> 0:18:32.239 creates all these different opportunities for doing stuff. Explore it, 0:18:32.720 --> 0:18:37.720 try it. There's so much stuff you can do. So 0:18:37.760 --> 0:18:41.400 this season, that's what we're gonna do. Explore and hear 0:18:41.440 --> 0:18:45.119 from people within the transformation who are changing jobs, changing 0:18:45.160 --> 0:18:47.440 the way that they've always done their job, and thinking 0:18:47.440 --> 0:18:50.800 about the world differently. People who are working in a 0:18:50.880 --> 0:18:54.840 seemingly uncertain world where anything can happen, and exploring the 0:18:54.880 --> 0:19:02.760 space despite it all. So, as a political scientist economists 0:19:02.760 --> 0:19:06.400 are you are you hopeful for the future? Yeah? Absolutely. Um, 0:19:06.840 --> 0:19:08.760 we've been doing this for a couple of hundred years 0:19:08.800 --> 0:19:10.600 and we're stole around and five. There's more of us 0:19:10.600 --> 0:19:13.040 than other so that's usually a site that we're not 0:19:13.080 --> 0:19:22.040 screwing up completely. Thank you for listening for On the Job, 0:19:22.160 --> 0:19:27.600 I'm otis gray Mark has actually written a book called 0:19:27.680 --> 0:19:31.120 Great Transformations, and you can find that and his many 0:19:31.160 --> 0:19:33.960 other books on Amazon dot com. We'll also put a 0:19:33.960 --> 0:19:36.439 link for it in the description of the show on 0:19:36.520 --> 0:19:39.000 The Job is written and produced by me Otis Gray. 0:19:39.440 --> 0:19:42.560 Our executive producer is Sandy Smallens, with mixing by Matt 0:19:42.600 --> 0:19:45.800 Noble at the Loft Recording Studios in Bronxville, New York. 0:19:46.600 --> 0:19:49.000 Music for this episode is by Blue Dot Sessions.