GordonGekko
Footballguy
Direct Headline: Americans Are Overworked And Over Work
Michael Blackmon Oct 18, 2021
....In a mass exit dubbed the “Great Resignation” ..., nearly 4 million people left jobs this past June, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics’..... Another 4 million left in July, the fourth consecutive month of such high departure rates. In August, 4.3 million people left their jobs, a record number....Kimbrough, chief economist at LinkedIn, told me ... the “social contract [of] work is being rewritten...”...there are several industries in flux because of worker shortages, including healthcare, transportation, and logistics, which can encompass “everything from truck drivers to warehouse inventory to the people managing supply chains.....”
....She feels like her labor isn’t valued and employers have sometimes explicitly said as much, she told me. “I'm constantly having the fact that I'm replaceable just being shoved in my face. If I felt like I mattered, I would care more. I would do a better job....I would love to work for a place I was loyal to, but I don't think that that exists anymore....”...Employers now face the challenge of figuring out how to retain talent. Some employers ... have chosen to give signing bonuses....Kimbrough, the LinkedIn chief economist, said that white-collar and blue-collar workers are also demanding that employers meet their needs regarding flexibility. Office workers might want to choose which days to come into the office, while those whose work is physically demanding might want more control over the timing of shifts. “They want better pay, but they want work-life balance...That’s the number-one priority.”
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/michaelblackmon/the-great-resignation-stories
VIDEO: Work-life balance — Jeff Bezos Nov 14, 2017
In this Sessions short, Jeff Bezos details why there is no such thing as work-life balance. ....“I think work-life harmony is a good framework....I prefer the word ‘harmony’ to the word ‘balance’ because balance tends to imply a strict tradeoff....In fact, if I’m happy at work, I’m better at home — a better husband and better father.... And if I’m happy at home, I come into work more energized — a better employee and a better boss....”....Bezos keeps an incredible work-life balance that only exists in every employee’s dream. He gets eight hours of sleep every day; eats breakfast at home with his kids; starts work around 10 a.m.; and checks out by 5 p.m.
The New York Times reported that employees at Amazon were routinely asked to work overtime, expected to check work emails past midnight and were often found crying at their desks. Amazon disputed many of the claims at the time. But earlier this year, a set of British newspapers revealed that Amazon’s warehouse workers in the U.K. were required to process 300 packages an hour; some staffers worked so intensely that they had to pee in bottles to save restroom time.
Americans are increasingly working too many hours.... 85.8 percent of males and 66.5 percent of females in the U.S. work more than 40 hours every week....A recent Gallup poll survey revealed that the average work week for U.S. full-time employees consists of 47 hours. That almost adds up to an extra full day of work every week....11 percent of those surveyed worked 41-49 hours, 21 percent put in 50-59 hours every week, and a whole 18 percent work 60 or more hours. That means that almost exactly 50 percent of full time workers log more than 40 hours every week...Out of the approximately 200 countries in the world, 134 have laws capping the maximum number of hours an employee can work, including every industrialized nation....However, the United States is one of the minority countries and the only industrialized nation without laws setting the maximum hours of work in a week.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfGbyW6fs5w
observer.com
www.businessinsider.com
Direct Headline: America Gave Up on Overtime—and It’s Costing Workers $35,451 a Year
BY NICK HANAUER APRIL 21, 2022
....If it feels like you’re working longer hours for less money than your parents or grandparents did, it’s because you probably are. Adjusted for inflation, average hourly wages have actually fallen since the early 1970s, while average hours worked have steadily climbed. American workers are increasingly underpaid, overworked, and overwhelmed....What went wrong? In part, overtime pay....
If you’re under the age of 45, you may have no idea that overtime pay is even a thing. But believe it or not, middle-class workers used to get a lot of it, while you likely don’t get any at all. That means that every hour you work over 40 hours a week you work for free, contributing to a giant pool of free labor that modern employers have come to expect and exploit. Profits are up, real wages are down, and income inequality has soared to its highest level since the Gilded Age.....Think about it. If, as your employer, I can convert 2,000 40-hour-per-week jobs into 1,600 50-hour-per week jobs, then I get to pocket the wages of 400 workers. At the median annual wage that comes to over $20 million, more than enough to buy myself a brand new private jet—every single year....
..... Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)...literally changed the way we think about work: by establishing a salary threshold below which workers were guaranteed time-and-a-half pay for every hour worked over 40 hours a week, it ...created both the weekend and the eight-hour day. ....a robust federal overtime standard served as a kind of minimum wage for the middle class, providing both a valuable source of extra income and an invaluable shield against the imposition of exploitative working hours....For more than three decades overtime pay was the norm; most American workers expected to be paid 150 percent of their regular wage for every hour worked over 40 hours a week, and most employers expected to pay it. And since time-and-a-half gets expensive fast, employers were strongly incentivized to hire more workers in order to avoid routinely incurring the added cost....Today’s $35,568 overtime threshold now stands at only 67 percent of the already diminished median wage and covers only 15 percent of salaried workers, compared to over 60 percent in 1975. If you earn more than $35,568 a year (and 85 percent of American workers do), chances are you’ve been misclassified into an “exempt” position that does not receive any overtime pay at all. As the memory of overtime pay fades away, employers are taking full advantage.... 52 percent of full-time workers report working more than 40 hours a week; 39 percent work at least 50 hours a week, and 18 percent work at least 60. Yet few of these workers are paid a penny of overtime for all the extra hours they put it in on the job. Overtime pay is no longer the norm. As a result, Americans are working longer hours at lower wages while employers and shareholders reap record profits.....
...full-time workers report working an average of 47 hours a week. If they got paid an additional time-and-a-half for all seven of those extra hours—instead of the current norm of zero dollars—that would amount to an average 26.25 percent increase in weekly pay. At the current median weekly full-time wage of $1,010, that would come to an additional $13,787 a year (or $27,573 for a two-worker household). And that may even be an underestimate. According to a 2021 survey by the payroll services giant ADP, North American workers now put in an average of nine hours of unpaid overtime every week—the equivalent of $17,726 a year in stolen income ($35,451 for a two-worker household) at the full-time median wage. Either way, it’s a lot of money. Just imagine how much better off the typical middle-class family would be with either a few tens of thousands of dollars a year of additional income—or a few hundreds of hours of reclaimed free time..... Today, “free time” is something you’re expected to surrender to your boss. And the pandemic-inspired work-from-home “revolution” isn’t make things any better. In fact, according to ADP, those working from home report putting in even more unpaid overtime than their traditional workplace counterparts.....
....Of course, do it at a single tech startup and you end up with a bunch of miserable burned-out twenty-somethings working crazy hours in exchange for decent pay and a shot at striking it rich off stock options. But do that 60 million times across the entire economy, and you effectively kill 20 million middle-class jobs. This has been the most underappreciated driver of stagnant wages and rising inequality over the past 50 years.... rising inequality since 1975 is responsible for a $50 trillion upward redistribution of wealth and income from the bottom 90 percent households to those in the top 1 percent—roughly $2.5 trillion in 2018 alone. That $2.5 trillion is enough to more the double median income—enough to pay every single working American in the bottom nine deciles an additional $13,728 a year (an amount remarkably close to the additional $13,787 a year the median wage earner would take home if they were paid time-and-a-half for the average seven hours of overtime worked every week)....
https://time.com/6168310/overtime-pay-history/
Michael Blackmon Oct 18, 2021
....In a mass exit dubbed the “Great Resignation” ..., nearly 4 million people left jobs this past June, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics’..... Another 4 million left in July, the fourth consecutive month of such high departure rates. In August, 4.3 million people left their jobs, a record number....Kimbrough, chief economist at LinkedIn, told me ... the “social contract [of] work is being rewritten...”...there are several industries in flux because of worker shortages, including healthcare, transportation, and logistics, which can encompass “everything from truck drivers to warehouse inventory to the people managing supply chains.....”
....She feels like her labor isn’t valued and employers have sometimes explicitly said as much, she told me. “I'm constantly having the fact that I'm replaceable just being shoved in my face. If I felt like I mattered, I would care more. I would do a better job....I would love to work for a place I was loyal to, but I don't think that that exists anymore....”...Employers now face the challenge of figuring out how to retain talent. Some employers ... have chosen to give signing bonuses....Kimbrough, the LinkedIn chief economist, said that white-collar and blue-collar workers are also demanding that employers meet their needs regarding flexibility. Office workers might want to choose which days to come into the office, while those whose work is physically demanding might want more control over the timing of shifts. “They want better pay, but they want work-life balance...That’s the number-one priority.”
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/michaelblackmon/the-great-resignation-stories
VIDEO: Work-life balance — Jeff Bezos Nov 14, 2017
In this Sessions short, Jeff Bezos details why there is no such thing as work-life balance. ....“I think work-life harmony is a good framework....I prefer the word ‘harmony’ to the word ‘balance’ because balance tends to imply a strict tradeoff....In fact, if I’m happy at work, I’m better at home — a better husband and better father.... And if I’m happy at home, I come into work more energized — a better employee and a better boss....”....Bezos keeps an incredible work-life balance that only exists in every employee’s dream. He gets eight hours of sleep every day; eats breakfast at home with his kids; starts work around 10 a.m.; and checks out by 5 p.m.
The New York Times reported that employees at Amazon were routinely asked to work overtime, expected to check work emails past midnight and were often found crying at their desks. Amazon disputed many of the claims at the time. But earlier this year, a set of British newspapers revealed that Amazon’s warehouse workers in the U.K. were required to process 300 packages an hour; some staffers worked so intensely that they had to pee in bottles to save restroom time.
Americans are increasingly working too many hours.... 85.8 percent of males and 66.5 percent of females in the U.S. work more than 40 hours every week....A recent Gallup poll survey revealed that the average work week for U.S. full-time employees consists of 47 hours. That almost adds up to an extra full day of work every week....11 percent of those surveyed worked 41-49 hours, 21 percent put in 50-59 hours every week, and a whole 18 percent work 60 or more hours. That means that almost exactly 50 percent of full time workers log more than 40 hours every week...Out of the approximately 200 countries in the world, 134 have laws capping the maximum number of hours an employee can work, including every industrialized nation....However, the United States is one of the minority countries and the only industrialized nation without laws setting the maximum hours of work in a week.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfGbyW6fs5w
Jeff Bezos’ Secret to Work-Life Balance Is Great Advice—But Not for Amazon Employees
The richest man on earth gets eight hours of sleep everyday, eats breakfast with his kids and gets work done before 5 p.m.
observer.com
Jeff Bezos has called work-life balance a 'debilitating phrase,' and says work and life are actually a circle
Jeff Bezos has said "work-life balance" is a "debilitating phrase," and that he encouraged Amazon employees to not view the two as a trade-off.
www.businessinsider.com
Direct Headline: America Gave Up on Overtime—and It’s Costing Workers $35,451 a Year
BY NICK HANAUER APRIL 21, 2022
....If it feels like you’re working longer hours for less money than your parents or grandparents did, it’s because you probably are. Adjusted for inflation, average hourly wages have actually fallen since the early 1970s, while average hours worked have steadily climbed. American workers are increasingly underpaid, overworked, and overwhelmed....What went wrong? In part, overtime pay....
If you’re under the age of 45, you may have no idea that overtime pay is even a thing. But believe it or not, middle-class workers used to get a lot of it, while you likely don’t get any at all. That means that every hour you work over 40 hours a week you work for free, contributing to a giant pool of free labor that modern employers have come to expect and exploit. Profits are up, real wages are down, and income inequality has soared to its highest level since the Gilded Age.....Think about it. If, as your employer, I can convert 2,000 40-hour-per-week jobs into 1,600 50-hour-per week jobs, then I get to pocket the wages of 400 workers. At the median annual wage that comes to over $20 million, more than enough to buy myself a brand new private jet—every single year....
..... Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)...literally changed the way we think about work: by establishing a salary threshold below which workers were guaranteed time-and-a-half pay for every hour worked over 40 hours a week, it ...created both the weekend and the eight-hour day. ....a robust federal overtime standard served as a kind of minimum wage for the middle class, providing both a valuable source of extra income and an invaluable shield against the imposition of exploitative working hours....For more than three decades overtime pay was the norm; most American workers expected to be paid 150 percent of their regular wage for every hour worked over 40 hours a week, and most employers expected to pay it. And since time-and-a-half gets expensive fast, employers were strongly incentivized to hire more workers in order to avoid routinely incurring the added cost....Today’s $35,568 overtime threshold now stands at only 67 percent of the already diminished median wage and covers only 15 percent of salaried workers, compared to over 60 percent in 1975. If you earn more than $35,568 a year (and 85 percent of American workers do), chances are you’ve been misclassified into an “exempt” position that does not receive any overtime pay at all. As the memory of overtime pay fades away, employers are taking full advantage.... 52 percent of full-time workers report working more than 40 hours a week; 39 percent work at least 50 hours a week, and 18 percent work at least 60. Yet few of these workers are paid a penny of overtime for all the extra hours they put it in on the job. Overtime pay is no longer the norm. As a result, Americans are working longer hours at lower wages while employers and shareholders reap record profits.....
...full-time workers report working an average of 47 hours a week. If they got paid an additional time-and-a-half for all seven of those extra hours—instead of the current norm of zero dollars—that would amount to an average 26.25 percent increase in weekly pay. At the current median weekly full-time wage of $1,010, that would come to an additional $13,787 a year (or $27,573 for a two-worker household). And that may even be an underestimate. According to a 2021 survey by the payroll services giant ADP, North American workers now put in an average of nine hours of unpaid overtime every week—the equivalent of $17,726 a year in stolen income ($35,451 for a two-worker household) at the full-time median wage. Either way, it’s a lot of money. Just imagine how much better off the typical middle-class family would be with either a few tens of thousands of dollars a year of additional income—or a few hundreds of hours of reclaimed free time..... Today, “free time” is something you’re expected to surrender to your boss. And the pandemic-inspired work-from-home “revolution” isn’t make things any better. In fact, according to ADP, those working from home report putting in even more unpaid overtime than their traditional workplace counterparts.....
....Of course, do it at a single tech startup and you end up with a bunch of miserable burned-out twenty-somethings working crazy hours in exchange for decent pay and a shot at striking it rich off stock options. But do that 60 million times across the entire economy, and you effectively kill 20 million middle-class jobs. This has been the most underappreciated driver of stagnant wages and rising inequality over the past 50 years.... rising inequality since 1975 is responsible for a $50 trillion upward redistribution of wealth and income from the bottom 90 percent households to those in the top 1 percent—roughly $2.5 trillion in 2018 alone. That $2.5 trillion is enough to more the double median income—enough to pay every single working American in the bottom nine deciles an additional $13,728 a year (an amount remarkably close to the additional $13,787 a year the median wage earner would take home if they were paid time-and-a-half for the average seven hours of overtime worked every week)....
https://time.com/6168310/overtime-pay-history/
