Greg Ip
speaker
528 appearances
8 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2018
last heard Sep 2024
Greg Ip’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
If the unemployment rate weren't so low, then employers would not be quite so willing to grant all the accommodations that they are currently.
There are many stories in the Wall Street Journal about employers who ordered employees back to work and suddenly had a revolt on their hands and more or less had to give in.
No, that's absolutely true.
And by the way, that's not a new thing.
The nature of work has been evolving for the past century.
There was a time when we used to work 50 hours a week.
And then in the late 1930s, the 40-hour workweek became standard.
Things like vacation became standard.
Regulations meant our workplaces became safer.
After World War II, it became more common for women to work in the workplace.
So you might say that the pandemic was like the World War II of our generation in terms of affecting their balance between work and life.
And so the fact that this change means that workers get more what economists call non-monetary amenities, which is a fancy word for things like benefits and more vacation and so forth, that shouldn't be so surprising.
It is essentially another step in the evolution of work becoming essentially more pleasant.
The thing that is most likely to change is, frankly, a recession.
I mean, I said a minute ago that one reason employers are giving in to these new attitudes is because it's very hard to get workers.
Well, if the unemployment rate were to go up a lot, as it typically does in a recession, you would find that the leverage would change, the bargaining position would change, and workers would be more likely to come into the office, more anxious about losing their job, and perhaps, therefore, less likely to take their full vacation.
But I don't think that we'll go all the way back.
And just look at surveys of employers that find that the number that are offering things like parental leave and paid leave for any reason at all has gone up.
And that tells us that a lot of this is a permanent shift.
Showing 241–260 of 528 · page 13 of 27
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