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Laboring under the “Nobody wants to work” narrative
Think pieces, deep dives, news stories, all drinking deep from the draft of “nobody wants to work”…this isn’t one of them.
Sometimes we hear things over and over again until they become the general consensus by repetition more than merit. Common knowledge truthisms take the jagged edges between the moving tectonic plates of societal change and try to explain the grinding and shaking with the simplest possible explanations. Often, they are explanations without full thought or reasoning, the way the ancients attributed the sun to the sun god, the moon to the moon god, and everything else to miscellaneous unknowable something somethings that control such things.
Economic upheaval is a complicated subject of much debate, so it is no wonder that when business after business hang out “Help Wanted” signs, coupled with endless news stories of “labor shortage,” there are going to be some factual shortcuts to get the explanation down to a soundbite. That sound bite of late is “nobody wants to work” and it has spread until it is a recited part of our current cultural and political catechism.
It was just over a year ago that a fast food joint put the sign out “We are short-staffed. Please be patient with the staff who did show up. Nobody…
