By James Pethokoukis

During the worst of the pandemic — especially during the shutdown and the months soon afterward — there was a lot of buzz about turning government payments into a universal basic income. That, combined with the “Great Resignation” phenomenon, fed into the notion that perhaps the American worker was entering — or could conceivably enter — a post-work era to some extent. And the sooner the better given that so many of us hate our jobs. (Apparently.)

Of course, we don’t all hate our jobs. This from Derek Thompson in The Atlantic:

In April 2021, the Conference Board reported that job satisfaction in the first year of the pandemic was the highest that the organization had recorded since 1995. . . . Let’s check with a gold-standard pollster, like the General Social Survey, which has been asking Americans about their working life since 2002. Every year of the survey, more than 80 percent of respondents have said that they’re “very” or “moderately” satisfied with their job. From 2018 to 2021 — after an economic crisis, mass layoffs, and a surge in unemployment — the share of very or moderately satisfied workers fell from about 88 percent to . . . about 84 percent. . . . A 2016 Pew survey poll found that American workers are “generally satisfied with their jobs”; more than half of full-time workers said they were “very satisfied.”

And whether or not we like our jobs, we seem to be either switching from one job to another or simply getting off the sidelines as the economy continues to expand. Lots of evidence in the Labor Department’s March jobs report even if the 431,000 increase in nonfarm employment was below expectations of 490,000 net new payrolls:

• Job growth in the household survey was a robust 736,000. Household employment is now only 408,000 short of its February 2020 peak.
• The unemployment rate fell from 3.8% in February to 3.6% in March (below expectations for 3.7 percent). JPMorgan: “That matched the reading from December 2019 and was only a tenth above the 3.5% low reported just before the start of the pandemic. The broader U-6 rate (which fell from 7.2% in February to 6.9% in March) also now stands just a tenth above the pre-pandemic low of 6.8% from December 2019. 
• The labor-force participation rate ticked up to 62.4% in March and is now up 0.7 ppt over the past six months. [The below chart is from Capital Economics.]

As for the Great Resignation, I think the answer my colleague Michael Strain gave me in a Substack Q&A remains as relevant as ever:

Pethokoukis: What would you want a reporter to know before writing a story about the “Great Resignation” or a reader to know before reading such a piece?

Strain: Four things: The first is that resignations are certainly extremely elevated. But it’s also the case that more people are being hired each month than in any month prior to the pandemic. The second is that people’s decisions about job opportunities depend on their circumstances. When savings account balances — swollen thanks to generous pandemic support from government programs — come back to earth, many of these “bad jobs” will look a lot better. Third, I am worried that labor demand will cool before many workers who are currently on the sidelines come back to work. Workers who are waiting for the perfect job — enabled to do so in part by swollen savings accounts — might find it difficult to secure any job if they wait too long. Finally, I am concerned about the tenor of this debate. Lower-wage service-sector jobs give people the opportunity to make meaningful contributions to society. That work has inherent dignity. Opinion leaders are both wrong and doing the nation a disservice when they degrade those jobs.

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