Does everyone hate their jobs now?

Or do we just hate working?

Last week’s post about my plans to exit academia, partly because of how much the job has changed (and not in a good way), elicited a lot of comments about other people’s similar desires to escape their own jobs. Then I was at a friend’s house for drinks and, unprompted, someone told me about how their girlfriend, who’s a doctor, was also wanting to get out of medicine. She’s a doctor, which is supposed to be a fairly good gig, but the various pressures of working in a rural medical system were getting to her. Wow, I thought, even doctors want to quit.

It all got me wondering, does everyone hate their jobs now?

Of course during the pandemic, the great resignation was supposed to be a signal of how our brush with death and the almost total collapse of society had led to this amazing awakening in which we all realized we were more than our jobs. There are a lot of problems with this argument, including the fact that massive amounts of people did not actually resign from their jobs. Some switched to better jobs. Many women were forced out of the workplace because of childcare demands and have not found a way back in, but I would hardly call that a great resignation. More like the great sexist shove.

In my small circle of friends, one person perhaps moved up his retirement plans after the pandemic (and yes, I’m jealous), but he was already headed in that direction. My husband took a college retirement buyout, which moved up his retirement by an entire two years and was all about the buyout rather than the pandemic. Nationwide, only 2.9% of adults 55-70 said they moved up their retirement due to the pandemic, while only 2.3% said they delayed retirement for the same reason.

We didn’t leave our jobs in vast numbers, but do we hate our jobs more than ever? Maybe? Maybe not? The trusty Pew Research Center says that 51% of Americans are extremely or very satisfied with their job overall. Not surprisingly, those with higher incomes are more likely to be satisfied with their jobs than those with lower incomes. I was a bit surprised to find that older workers, those over the age of 65, are most satisfied with their jobs. Is it because they’ve worked their way up the ladders and they’re in a cushy job? Or just another indicator of how older people are happier in general? Not sure what’s going on there. I’d say it’s because if you’re that old, you’re working because you want to instead of because you have to, but I know that’s not how it works for a lot of Americans, who can’t afford to retire.

As hard as I found it to believe, another survey reports that job satisfaction among American workers is at an all-time high in 2023, at 62.3%. Really? So it’s just my small social circle that are so disgruntled?

On the other hand, a 2022 Gallup Poll says that 60% of people report being emotionally detached at work while 19% go with full-on miserable. Only 33% report feeling engaged. Yes! I’m right! Everyone hates their jobs!

Obviously, how you ask questions about job satisfaction matters. What does it mean to be emotionally detached from your job? What’s the difference between being satisfied with my job and feeling engaged? Surveys are complicated things.

For example, if the Pew Research Center called me up and asked me how satisfied I am with my job, I’d probably say I’m pretty satisfied. In my head, I’d be doing a comparison to other jobs I might have and I know that this one’s pretty great, all in all. I set my own schedule. I work Monday/Wednesday/Friday. When I need a day off, I can take it, and when I tell my “customers” that they won’t be getting the service they’ve paid me for that day, they rejoice instead of complain.

On the other hand, if the administrators at my college were doing a survey of job satisfaction, I would be smack-dab in the middle of that miserable category. I’d be comparing my current job to the job I had when I started twenty years ago. And I’d be using the survey to express how pissed off I am about my declining salary and benefits and just the general lack of investment in undergraduate education.

All of which makes me wonder, maybe it’s not that we all hate our jobs now. Maybe it’s that we hate working. Period. The truth is, I don’t want a different job. What I want is to not have to work at all.

Trust Uncle Karl

There I said it. In fact, I’ve been saying it for a while. I remember how surprised I was after my first sabbatical (which, if we’re all going to have to keep working, everyone should have access to) to find that I DID NOT MISS WORKING. It was a revelation and for all of 3 seconds, I wondered if this made me a horrible person. Then I channeled my good friend Marx and realized, no, it didn’t make me a horrible person. It just made me a regular human being.

Working sucks because selling your labor in order to survive, friends, is alienating! It always will be! Marx figured that out over 200 years ago now, but the power of the ideology that exists to convince us we’re not alienated is so much more powerful than Marx ever imagined. The capitalist overlords want you to believe that not wanting to work is somehow sinful, but they are wrong. They want you to believe that if you don’t miss working, it’s because you just haven’t found the right job. You know the one? That job that doesn’t feel like work or whatever the fuck that quote is about, “If you find the right job, you’ll never work a day in your life.” Capitalist propaganda!

Maybe in our post-pandemic, late-stage capitalist world, it’s not that we hate our jobs, but that we’re just done with this whole idea that we have to work in order to live. Maybe those ideologies that exist to convince us of bullshit like “hard work makes you virtuous” or “your whole worth reduces to your productivity” are finally starting to lose their hold on us. Maybe, 200 years later, we’re finally starting to believe Marx when he said that capitalism as a system is, yes, inherently exploitative, but also goes against everything about our very human nature.

Well, it’s about time. I mean, it’s 2023! Why haven’t we moved on? We don’t have flying cars or transporter devices. Could we at least have some universal basic income? If we’re really in late-stage capitalism, shouldn’t this stage be ending soon, already?

Other random things

- I’ve learned the most important hack for my life with Substack. NEVER. CHECK. YOUR. SUBSCRIBER. COUNT. I wish this were an integrated feature of the Substack dashboard (please, oh Substack overlords!). If I could customize my dashboard to never see my subscriber count, I would do it. My low-tech solution is to hold my hand in front of the place on the screen where the subscriber count appears. It is glorious, friends. Every now and then I think, oh, but I’ll just check it real quick. What can it hurt? And then I remember, it can hurt. And it will not matter one fucking bit to what I write. So I don’t. I highly recommend it.

- Yes, after 17 seasons with the Reds, my beloved Joey Votto appears to be at the end of his days in Cincinnati. Those of you who know me and my deep Joey obsession will understand my mourning. Stay tuned this week for a special tribute to Joey on the newsletter, something I think you’ll enjoy even if you’re not a baseball fan or a sports fan. It’s for everyone. Except Cubs fans. Because Cubs fans suck.

I know it’s early, but if you’re within driving distance, come to the Louisville Book Festival this weekend and get some of your holiday shopping done. It’s Friday and Saturday, 10-6, at the Kentucky International Exposition Center. I’ll have copies of all my books to sign and I’ll be giving a talk at 12:00 on Saturday.

As always, you can buy my book at the link below, but if you’d like a signed copy, I have some I’ll be selling for the holidays. Contact me here or just reply to this e-mail if you’re interested.