From the Great Resignation to Lying Flat, Workers Are Opting Out. By Allen Wan at Bloomberg Businessweek.
The Great Resignation has U.S. workers quitting their jobs in record numbers — more than 24 million did so from April to September this year — and many are staying out of the labor force. Germany, Japan, and other wealthy nations are seeing shades of the same trend. …
The pressure has been building in developed countries for decades. Incomes have stagnated, job security has become precarious, and the costs of housing and education have soared, leaving fewer young people able to build a financially stable life. …
Millennials (born between 1980 and the late 1990s) and Generation Z (the demographic cohort after them) tend to marry, buy houses, and have children later than their forebears — if at all.
China’s “lie flat” movement … is also about opting out. It’s a reaction against a system in which a grueling “996” work schedule — 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week — is common in industries like technology. So is unrelenting pressure from family, society, and even the government to keep climbing the ladder.
The country’s economy has doubled in size over the past decade, but not everybody is reaping the benefits: In many big cities the rising cost of living is outstripping wage growth.
As a result, some see the lie flat phenomenon as a warning of impending Japan-style stagnation — one that’s arrived unexpectedly early in the economy’s development. …
Almost half of the world’s workers are considering quitting, according to a Microsoft Corp. survey. About 4 in 10 millennial and Gen Z respondents say they’d leave their job if asked to come back to the office full time …
In the face of existential threats such as the pandemic and climate change, the Great Resignation and lie flat have the potential to spark a deeper discussion about the relentless pursuit of wealth, at the individual level and for nations as a whole.
“When confronted with the prospect of mortality, people definitely behave differently,” says Benjamin Granger, head of employee experience advisory services at Qualtrics. “People are looking at work through a very different lens. The lens is things like, ‘I am not working for a paycheck. That’s not what this is about. I need to be fulfilled.’” …
Jack, a 32-year-old tech worker [in China] … was full of ambition when a telecommunications company hired him five years ago. But a punishing workload failed to translate into the success he’d hoped for, and over time his enthusiasm drained away. He’s still working, but not as hard. … That Shenzhen is among the world’s least affordable cities adds to his woes. “Even for well-paid professionals like me and my girlfriend, it’s still crazy,” he says. “The down payment for a flat in Shenzhen is 2, 3 million yuan [about $314,000 to $471,000]. That’s like both our savings, plus very huge help from our parents.”
While the country’s migrant workers were once celebrated for their industriousness, these men and women have developed a reputation for whiling away their time playing online games or streaming TV, picking up day jobs only when they need money to pay their phone bill or rent. Shunning longer-term work and factory jobs in favor of less demanding service roles, they sum up their lifestyle in a simple mantra: “Work for a day, have fun for three.” …
As a nation gets richer, its workers can afford to be more choosy. …
Because of the combination of an explosion in student debt and the plodding recovery from the Great Recession, this generation is likely to be the first in U.S. history to be less wealthy than their parents.
There is more to life than working harder to be able to bid more for scarce housing. The average hours worked per year per worker may have declined, but more households send both parents to work.
If houses were cheaper, as they were in decades past, we wouldn’t need to work as hard.
The bureaucrats in charge of money supply and interest rates, and the bureaucrats in charge of zoning and building regulations, are mainly responsible for the high housing prices.
