WEBVTT - The Great Transformation 0:00:07.760 --> 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 --> 0:00:27.680 be hearing from people navigating this new normal for themselves 0:00:27.720 --> 0:00:31.600 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 0:00:38.479 --> 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. 0:00:49.159 --> 0:00:51.000 So before we launch into the rest of the season, 0:00:51.000 --> 0:00:53.680 where we'll talk to people working within that new environment, 0:00:53.840 --> 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 0:01:03.880 --> 0:01:07.319 yourself sure. My name is Mark Blythe I am the 0:01:07.440 --> 0:01:11.240 head of the Klingon Invasion Force. No. I'm a professor 0:01:11.280 --> 0:01:16.520 of political economy at Brown University and UH sometime rock 0:01:16.600 --> 0:01:20.240 on tour and musician. So there'll we go. Mark Blythe 0:01:20.280 --> 0:01:22.760 is from Dundee, Scotland. He's been teaching at Brown since 0:01:22.760 --> 0:01:24.760 two thousand nine. He's written a lot of books on 0:01:24.800 --> 0:01:26.840 the economy. And he's talking to me from a room 0:01:26.880 --> 0:01:29.360 full of bass guitars and drums, which he's been playing 0:01:29.360 --> 0:01:33.880 a lot during the lockdown. Okay, let's do it baby, Okay, 0:01:33.920 --> 0:01:37.479 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 --> 0:01:44.119 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 --> 0:02:01.760 around fifty years ago, in in one, 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 --> 0:02:08.720 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 0:02:11.840 --> 0:02:17.519 jobs are unionized. Then we get into the nineteen eightiesies, 0:02:17.720 --> 0:02:20.680 those unions that were helping workers maintain fair pay and 0:02:20.720 --> 0:02:24.400 weekends start to diminish. Employers and big companies start gaining 0:02:24.400 --> 0:02:28.040 more power as the economy globalizes. You start to see 0:02:28.200 --> 0:02:31.240 the growth of um finance and real estate and all 0:02:31.280 --> 0:02:33.079 the sort of high end services to come out of 0:02:33.120 --> 0:02:35.680 the eighties and the nineties, the Wall Street moment in 0:02:35.720 --> 0:02:37.600 New York. You begin to see sort of the beginnings 0:02:37.600 --> 0:02:40.399 of the real beginnings of Silicon Valley in the tech industry. 0:02:40.480 --> 0:02:42.680 And then you start to get the growth of the 0:02:42.760 --> 0:02:46.520 coasts and the fantastic wealth it's accumulated there. So the 0:02:46.520 --> 0:02:49.000 bulk of the economy moves away from things like coal 0:02:49.120 --> 0:02:51.800 and factory jobs in the middle of the country hence 0:02:51.840 --> 0:02:54.960 the name russ Bell. Unions continue to fall apart through 0:02:55.000 --> 0:02:58.000 the nineties and the two thousand's kind of flatlining or 0:02:58.080 --> 0:03:02.240 decreasing wages across the board for most of America. Where 0:03:02.600 --> 0:03:06.080 was the job market at in two thousand nineteen going 0:03:06.120 --> 0:03:09.680 into the pandemic. Largest employee 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 and a sense is about one thought of 0:03:19.480 --> 0:03:23.079 the labor market. Mark says, Basically, the U. S economy 0:03:23.320 --> 0:03:26.320 was fueled by US making stuff, and now it's an 0:03:26.320 --> 0:03:30.320 economy fueled by US buying stuff. Basically, eight of the 0:03:30.320 --> 0:03:33.600 economy is driven by consumption. Okay, so all those strip 0:03:33.680 --> 0:03:36.080 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. 0:03:39.280 --> 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 is really simple 0:03:52.560 --> 0:03:56.560 to understand. There's the top, and that's where all the 0:03:56.600 --> 0:03:59.080 returns have gone. That's where all the money has been made. 0:04:00.960 --> 0:04:02.880 So let's bring this up to the present. What does 0:04:02.880 --> 0:04:05.360 it look like going at the pandemic half of the 0:04:05.400 --> 0:04:09.840 American labor market gets twenty an hour or less. Really 0:04:09.880 --> 0:04:11.840 hard to do the American dream on twenty bucks an 0:04:11.840 --> 0:04:21.200 hour or less. COVID hits. What immediately happens in the workforce? 0:04:22.440 --> 0:04:27.320 Everybody went home. It was very weird. March two thousand nine, 0:04:28.000 --> 0:04:30.240 people around the world start getting sent home from work, 0:04:30.440 --> 0:04:32.920 which meant less stuff was getting made. Less people were 0:04:32.960 --> 0:04:36.359 working and earning wages, but the demand for stuff was 0:04:36.400 --> 0:04:38.960 still there. And as we are now an economy that 0:04:39.040 --> 0:04:42.680 runs on consumption buying stuff, the government needed to send 0:04:42.680 --> 0:04:45.560 stimulus checks out to make sure people could still purchase 0:04:45.640 --> 0:04:48.800 things to keep the economy going, and it was whether 0:04:48.880 --> 0:04:50.640 one likes or not, the right thing to do, because 0:04:50.640 --> 0:04:53.640 the alternative would have been the largest contraction of the 0:04:53.680 --> 0:04:57.360 economy since records begun, which probably would have been worse 0:04:57.400 --> 0:05:00.400 than nodding ten percent on the national debt. People went 0:05:00.400 --> 0:05:02.800 home for a while, collected checks, and then began to 0:05:02.839 --> 0:05:05.200 come back as we sort of started to get a 0:05:05.240 --> 0:05:08.600 handle on the pandemic. As far as unemployment goes, it 0:05:08.640 --> 0:05:12.320 was more that people got furloughed, So COVID technically put 0:05:12.400 --> 0:05:14.640 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 --> 0:05:19.839 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 --> 0:05:26.480 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 0:05:29.440 --> 0:05:31.159 someone had to be home with the kids. Right, So 0:05:31.200 --> 0:05:33.480 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 --> 0:05:42.520 lot of older couples boomer age, you know, right before 0:05:42.560 --> 0:05:45.080 they were about to retire. They got put out of work, 0:05:45.279 --> 0:05:47.240 and they were looking at their pretty healthy four oh 0:05:47.240 --> 0:05:50.560 one ks and thought, right, gladys were done right. You know, 0:05:50.600 --> 0:05:53.600 there's no point in going back now is ridiculous. So 0:05:53.720 --> 0:05:55.760 they began to actually leave it. So what you had 0:05:55.880 --> 0:05:59.640 is a drop in the overall labor force participation right right? 0:05:59.680 --> 0:06:02.360 How many people are actually in the labor market that 0:06:02.640 --> 0:06:05.240 began to draw. I know Mark said that there were 0:06:05.279 --> 0:06:08.000 two things, but there's a third thing. It's a big one. 0:06:08.480 --> 0:06:11.920 People finally had perspective at home, looking at the Mike 0:06:12.040 --> 0:06:15.000 jobs that they've been working, and started thinking, you know what, 0:06:15.080 --> 0:06:19.400 I kind of normalized abuse. I kind of normalized being 0:06:19.400 --> 0:06:22.080 shouted out and swore for like seven dollars an hour, 0:06:22.279 --> 0:06:25.039 and I'm just not going to do that anymore. And 0:06:25.080 --> 0:06:27.840 while employers are very reluctant to do this, the only 0:06:27.920 --> 0:06:30.040 way to keep those workers or to get them back 0:06:30.400 --> 0:06:32.920 was to raise wages. So if you think, you know, 0:06:33.000 --> 0:06:36.240 Amazon used to do about twelve bucks an hour, I think, uh, 0:06:36.360 --> 0:06:40.000 now sort of there are minimums about fifteen, sixteen, seventeen. Uh. 0:06:40.040 --> 0:06:42.120 There's a gas station down the road from me. It's 0:06:42.120 --> 0:06:44.280 a local company. Whatever you're pumping up the gas station. 0:06:44.360 --> 0:06:47.440 It's like we're hiring seventeen an hour and benefits, right. 0:06:47.800 --> 0:06:49.719 So there's a way in which when you get that 0:06:49.800 --> 0:06:53.200 big supply shock, that aren't enough workers and people have said, 0:06:53.279 --> 0:06:54.960 you know, enough of this crop. I don't want to 0:06:54.960 --> 0:06:57.400 be treated like crop anymore. You're gonna have to change 0:06:57.400 --> 0:07:04.560 the game. So that's what's happening. The game has changed, 0:07:04.839 --> 0:07:07.479 is transforming in a big way. And I know there's 0:07:07.520 --> 0:07:11.360 this term that's been kicking around, the Great resignation, basically 0:07:11.360 --> 0:07:14.800 this grand exodus of people leaving the workforce during COVID 0:07:14.840 --> 0:07:17.720 and just not coming back. Now here's the funny thing. 0:07:17.960 --> 0:07:23.480 It tons really looks like we massively overestimated how many 0:07:23.560 --> 0:07:28.160 people had quite I know, we're massively underestimate how many 0:07:28.200 --> 0:07:32.000 people are coming back to work. So it looks like 0:07:32.080 --> 0:07:35.760 there hasn't really beaten this giant quote phone. After all, 0:07:36.960 --> 0:07:40.160 Mark says, economists work with estimates and over time they 0:07:40.200 --> 0:07:43.760 get more accurate. So have people just disappeared from the workforce. 0:07:44.080 --> 0:07:47.120 Probably not. So instead of calling it the Great resignation, 0:07:47.480 --> 0:07:50.560 We're going to call it a great transformation, a change 0:07:50.560 --> 0:07:53.360 in the way workers are thinking because now they are 0:07:53.560 --> 0:07:56.960 needed in a pretty extreme way. Employers need people to 0:07:57.000 --> 0:07:59.600 work more than ever, putting labors in a sort of 0:07:59.600 --> 0:08:03.320 position of power, and everyone's hiring. So employers that weren't 0:08:03.400 --> 0:08:06.840 valuing their employees have had a serious wake up call, like, well, 0:08:07.240 --> 0:08:08.760 what do you mean I can just pay somebody the 0:08:08.760 --> 0:08:12.320 minimum wage anymore and abuse them while that it work? Yeah, 0:08:12.400 --> 0:08:14.080 it looks like those days are done as well. I'm 0:08:14.080 --> 0:08:17.840 afraid because if you can get seventeen or eighteen Amazon 0:08:18.480 --> 0:08:21.160 on a kind of flexible basis and then complement out 0:08:21.160 --> 0:08:25.000 with Uber, then essentially I'm getting up to about six 0:08:25.320 --> 0:08:27.480 Why do I need to take you a minimum wage book? 0:08:28.680 --> 0:08:32.200 Another big transformation which shouldn't come as a surprise, more 0:08:32.280 --> 0:08:34.760 people are getting to work from home. A lot of 0:08:34.760 --> 0:08:38.400 employees and employers have asked themselves, do we really need 0:08:38.400 --> 0:08:40.800 to be in a crowded office to do this paying 0:08:40.800 --> 0:08:43.800 for rent and air conditioning and all that. Probably not, 0:08:44.040 --> 0:08:45.880 But there's real reasons to be in the office even 0:08:45.920 --> 0:08:49.080 in these jobs, because how do you do mentoring, how 0:08:49.120 --> 0:08:51.800 do you do team building? How do you decide where 0:08:51.840 --> 0:08:54.959 the talent should be allocated if basically everybody's on the screen. 0:08:55.559 --> 0:08:57.320 This is why a lot of jobs are now what 0:08:57.360 --> 0:08:59.640 we call hybrid, meaning you can work from home some 0:08:59.720 --> 0:09:02.120 days but also have a place to go into work 0:09:02.240 --> 0:09:06.800 on others. And while working from home has given a 0:09:06.840 --> 0:09:09.720 lot of people the freedom to be with their families 0:09:09.880 --> 0:09:12.600 or just have a more comfortable work environment, it's also 0:09:12.640 --> 0:09:15.600 made people realize everything else that comes with going to 0:09:15.720 --> 0:09:19.079 a job every day. It's about your social networks. It's 0:09:19.080 --> 0:09:20.920 about going out for a drink on a Friday night 0:09:20.920 --> 0:09:22.560 with your colleague that you happened to like so you 0:09:22.559 --> 0:09:25.160 can about the one you hate, right, I mean, that's 0:09:25.160 --> 0:09:28.280 that's part of what the whole experience 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. 0:09:40.440 --> 0:09:44.360 A strong work ethic takes pride in a job well done, 0:09:45.240 --> 0:09:49.320 sweats over the details. This is the kind of person 0:09:49.400 --> 0:09:54.200 you need. Express Employment professionals can help. Finding the best 0:09:54.200 --> 0:09:58.200 people requires more than sorting through applications. You need to 0:09:58.240 --> 0:10:02.480 conduct a thorough search. Express understands what it takes to 0:10:02.600 --> 0:10:07.480 hire the right person. It takes real people, real interviews, 0:10:08.400 --> 0:10:13.520 discovering the talents you need. We find good people matching 0:10:13.559 --> 0:10:17.480 their skills with the right jobs. At Express, we find 0:10:17.559 --> 0:10:21.000 people for jobs and companies of all sizes and industries, 0:10:21.240 --> 0:10:25.760 from the production floor to the front office. Sometimes finding 0:10:25.800 --> 0:10:28.280 the best new employee really is about who you know. 0:10:29.440 --> 0:10:34.360 Express Nose Jobs. Get to know Express, go to Express 0:10:34.400 --> 0:10:40.000 pros dot com to find a location near you. As 0:10:40.040 --> 0:10:43.439 we continue our conversation with economists and political scientists, Mark 0:10:43.520 --> 0:10:46.319 blythe we're gonna 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 --> 0:10:55.920 do seem drastic, but that's kind of how it's always happened. 0:10:56.320 --> 0:10:59.720 The figure is something and this is just an approximation, 0:11:00.120 --> 0:11:01.840 but it's someone like a third of all jobs have 0:11:01.920 --> 0:11:04.560 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 0:11:09.400 --> 0:11:11.760 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. 0:11:17.040 --> 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 --> 0:11:30.679 Mark says there are a lot different than other generations. 0:11:31.120 --> 0:11:33.920 They're no longer coming at a college, even the ones 0:11:34.000 --> 0:11:36.600 that I know and saying I'm going to Wall Street 0:11:36.600 --> 0:11:38.880 and I'm going to smash it. It's just not that. 0:11:39.080 --> 0:11:41.360 It's just not And for a while it was big 0:11:41.400 --> 0:11:45.280 tech until it became big tech evil big tech, and 0:11:45.360 --> 0:11:49.560 now that's that's a bit of a problem, right. Another motivation, 0:11:49.600 --> 0:11:52.880 he says, this new generation is acutely aware of the 0:11:52.920 --> 0:11:56.080 climate crisis, living in a world where they here Miami 0:11:56.120 --> 0:11:59.960 will be underwater by and that we're doing irreparable damn 0:12:00.200 --> 0:12:02.679 to the earth. If you really have that kind of 0:12:02.720 --> 0:12:06.520 like existential fear that everything is 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 eight hours a week for the man It's just not 0:12:10.000 --> 0:12:13.320 gonna happen, right, So I think there's a fair degree 0:12:13.440 --> 0:12:16.840 of trading off what would have been seen as the 0:12:16.880 --> 0:12:19.800 normal path of like struggling and struggling to make very 0:12:19.920 --> 0:12:23.080 very high income, because that's what you do to a 0:12:23.120 --> 0:12:27.160 model of I want to do something that doesn't make 0:12:27.240 --> 0:12:30.920 things worse and actually has a degree of self satisfaction 0:12:31.000 --> 0:12:37.080 for me. Mark says, if you ask executives at oil companies, 0:12:37.240 --> 0:12:41.439 mining companies, engineering companies, as far as carbon emissions and 0:12:41.520 --> 0:12:44.319 damage to the Earth is concerned. They know the finger 0:12:44.400 --> 0:12:46.880 is pointed at them, and it's become a lot harder 0:12:46.920 --> 0:12:49.600 to get people to work for them. It's no longer 0:12:49.679 --> 0:12:52.240 just about the money because they've got a bad reputation 0:12:52.320 --> 0:12:54.760 and people they've got a bad rap. Yeah. I spoke 0:12:54.800 --> 0:12:58.040 to the CEO of a very very big carbon intensive 0:12:58.120 --> 0:13:01.440 firm who's you know, 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 Bostard. That's a 0:13:10.360 --> 0:13:15.320 powerful motivator. That's so crazy. Um, I feel like that's 0:13:15.360 --> 0:13:18.360 such a huge shift. 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. 0:13:25.200 --> 0:13:28.079 He makes millions of dollars every day on the stock market. 0:13:28.360 --> 0:13:31.200 He chased the American dream and he got it. Well. 0:13:31.200 --> 0:13:33.679 This guy went and gave a lecture to students at 0:13:33.720 --> 0:13:36.360 a Miami university about how he got to where he 0:13:36.480 --> 0:13:41.080 is and they're just appalled by this guy. Everything that 0:13:41.120 --> 0:13:43.480 he thought was what you do. They're just like, why 0:13:43.480 --> 0:13:45.480 would you want to do that? That sounds grotesque. Why 0:13:45.520 --> 0:13:47.960 don't you just retire? Why do you spend? Why do 0:13:48.000 --> 0:13:50.880 you give your money away? You're never going to spend it. 0:13:50.880 --> 0:13:54.120 It's really interesting, 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 --> 0:14:07.160 changing and the pretty frequent threat of nuclear wars and 0:14:07.240 --> 0:14:10.679 COVID throwing all of our values into question, there's a 0:14:10.720 --> 0:14:12.640 way in which people listening you know, well, what's the 0:14:12.679 --> 0:14:16.800 means and what's the end? Right? The whole point of 0:14:16.880 --> 0:14:19.360 work is to enable you to take time off. I 0:14:19.360 --> 0:14:21.680 mean this is eqon one oh one. Right. We presume 0:14:22.080 --> 0:14:26.600 that you trade leisure for labor because labor enables you 0:14:26.880 --> 0:14:29.560 to have more leisure, right, But we don't. For years 0:14:29.600 --> 0:14:31.480 and years, we did the exact opposite of what the 0:14:31.480 --> 0:14:33.960 text book 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 0:14:38.640 --> 0:14:43.080 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, 0:14:45.800 --> 0:14:48.640 the more productive we are and the more self worth 0:14:48.720 --> 0:14:51.840 we have. Because of it, and for employers, breaks and 0:14:51.960 --> 0:14:55.120 time off for their workers stopped 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 --> 0:15:09.760 diapers because they get toilet brakes, which actually happens, right. Uh, 0:15:09.880 --> 0:15:12.240 And just basically getting to a point where going how 0:15:12.280 --> 0:15:15.160 did we get there? 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 --> 0:15:21.480 but then we're working through the weekend. Yes, that's exactly. 0:15:21.480 --> 0:15:23.840 It's a brilliant to put out exactly. Yeah, the labor 0:15:23.880 --> 0:15:28.040 movement brought you the weekend, and you gave it away. 0:15:30.600 --> 0:15:32.800 This is the beauty of those hybrid jobs we talked 0:15:32.800 --> 0:15:35.200 about earlier, where you can work from home some days 0:15:35.240 --> 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 --> 0:15:44.560 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 --> 0:15:48.840 can do with hybrid workers. You can walk the dog 0:15:48.880 --> 0:15:51.720 at better times. It's nice walking the dog twice a 0:15:51.840 --> 0:15:54.040 day gets you out of the house. It actually makes 0:15:54.040 --> 0:15:58.440 you more productive. Okay, so do you think the weekends 0:15:58.480 --> 0:16:01.480 coming back or or do you think we're gonna have 0:16:01.560 --> 0:16:04.640 a three day weekend. Well, here's the interesting thing, right, 0:16:04.720 --> 0:16:06.640 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 0:16:09.480 --> 0:16:12.280 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 --> 0:16:19.320 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, 0:16:24.240 --> 0:16:27.280 this this new mentality in the job market, and not 0:16:27.360 --> 0:16:31.600 just for younger generations. Everyone who's going back to work 0:16:31.680 --> 0:16:36.960 right now. Um, money is obviously still the point of working, 0:16:37.120 --> 0:16:41.280 but it's maybe less of the point, yeah, which means 0:16:41.280 --> 0:16:43.280 they're going to volue different things. They're going to value 0:16:43.400 --> 0:16:49.520 things like time rather than cash. This is the new 0:16:49.560 --> 0:16:53.280 wave that is washing over the workforce. This is at 0:16:53.280 --> 0:16:55.920 the heart of what we're gonna call a great transformation. 0:16:59.360 --> 0:17:02.680 The way we were has always changed. The industries people 0:17:02.680 --> 0:17:05.640 working have also always changed and will continue to do so. 0:17:06.119 --> 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 0:17:12.880 --> 0:17:15.680 if you're not working someone else's and they're going to 0:17:15.760 --> 0:17:19.120 get ahead of you, so you better get back to it. Well, 0:17:19.160 --> 0:17:21.920 Marcus saying is that people still really want to work. 0:17:22.160 --> 0:17:24.760 We're human, that's what we do. It gives us purpose, 0:17:25.200 --> 0:17:29.400 but today maybe it's less and less the dominant purpose. 0:17:31.000 --> 0:17:35.159 What advice would you give to someone who's entering or 0:17:35.280 --> 0:17:38.239 re entering the workforce in the new world, That is, 0:17:39.960 --> 0:17:43.400 explore the space and and be clear about what your 0:17:43.440 --> 0:17:45.000 goals are. Right, where do you want to be in 0:17:45.080 --> 0:17:48.640 five years, by which I mean is money really important 0:17:48.640 --> 0:17:50.520 to you? Because if it is, there are certain sectors 0:17:50.520 --> 0:17:52.920 where you can make an obsolete ton of money, and 0:17:53.000 --> 0:17:55.639 you know baking isn't one of them. But if, on 0:17:55.680 --> 0:17:58.879 the other hand, like you really like brioche and you 0:17:59.000 --> 0:18:02.000 like working with your on, then there's a tradeoff, right, 0:18:02.040 --> 0:18:03.920 So be aware of the trade offs and make the 0:18:03.960 --> 0:18:07.560 trade off accordingly. Other advice, he says, you don't need 0:18:07.640 --> 0:18:10.240 to go into crazy debt going to school. If you 0:18:10.280 --> 0:18:13.080 aren't sure what you want to do after, go learn 0:18:13.200 --> 0:18:16.600 on the job or jeesus, 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. 0:18:24.320 --> 0:18:27.879 I mean in crazy. Amazing thing about capitalism is it 0:18:27.920 --> 0:18:32.199 creates all these different opportunities for doing stuff. Explore it, 0:18:32.680 --> 0:18:37.719 try it. There's so much stuff you can do. So 0:18:37.800 --> 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 --> 0:18:47.400 the way that they've always done their job, and thinking 0:18:47.480 --> 0:18:50.760 about the world differently. People who are working in a 0:18:50.840 --> 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 --> 0:19:06.800 are you? Are you hopeful for the future? Yeah? Absolutely. Um, 0:19:06.880 --> 0:19:08.800 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 fast. There's more of us 0:19:10.600 --> 0:19:13.040 than over, so that's usually a sign 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 --> 0:19:36.480 link for it in the description of the show. On 0:19:36.520 --> 0:19:39.200 the Job is written and produced by me Otis Gray. 0:19:39.440 --> 0:19:42.520 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.