# Why Aren't People Working? (Personal anecdotes only) **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 5, 2024, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-people-working-personal-anecdotes-only/995662 "2024-01-05T17:34:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 17
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2024, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-people-working-personal-anecdotes-only/995662/321 "2024-01-13T16:20:31Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > > [@Kimstu](#): > > > > I read an article not long ago (great cite, I know, sorry) about decaying red-state communities in which going on disability is basically the only realistic alternative to grinding poverty. > > Oddly, you can move state to state in the USA without a passport or even a visa. Maryland has low SDI rate and low Unemployments rates. “Oddly”, many poor people precariously employed in decaying low-income rural communities face substantial obstacles in the fairly expensive and risky process of relocating to a distant locality (usually with a higher cost of living) to improve their chances of getting a better job. Of course, the paperwork and approvals for disability benefits isn’t a totally zero-barriers procedure either. But AFAICT, most of the poor people in these decaying rural communities who do get on disability do so in the process of getting treatment locally for some genuine injury or illness. The injury or illness may not always be truly severe enough to physically prevent them from holding down a job ever again (though of course in many cases it is: poor rural workers do sometimes get seriously disabling injuries and illnesses), but it’s enough to provide justification for benefits eligibility. And dealing with some local offices and filling in forms to apply for disability benefits is a hell of a lot more feasible for most poor and low-skilled rural workers than upping stakes and moving out of state, far from your own communities and support networks, in the not-always-realistic hope of being able to score a better job that you can live on in that more expensive new location. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2024, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-people-working-personal-anecdotes-only/995662/322 "2024-01-13T16:37:48Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > She had two younger workers (late 20’s) That’s another factor in older workers’ increasing dissatisfaction with their workplaces, of course. Namely, as you get more senior you frequently acquire more leadership and management responsibilities. Then the problems of incorporating new employees (who are frequently young employees) into your workplace become your problems. So all the inevitable individual frictions and bad apples start to seem like systemic failings on the part of “kids today” in general. ---
**Author:** ![squeegee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/squeegee/32/14537_2.png) [@squeegee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/squeegee)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2024, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-people-working-personal-anecdotes-only/995662/323 "2024-01-13T16:57:37Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > That’s another factor in older workers’ increasing dissatisfaction with their workplaces, of course. Namely, as you get more senior you frequently acquire more leadership and management responsibilities I was a software developer and that was a big factor in my retiring - I got too senior and was given not very enjoyable leadership work. Designing stuff for other people, meetings, long initiatives, writing white papers. I liked to write code. I loved to write code. I wasn’t writing code and they weren’t letting me do so. So I hung it up after quite a while of just no longer enjoying my career. ---
**Author:** ![Euphonious\_Polemic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/euphonious_polemic/32/3002_2.png) [@Euphonious\_Polemic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Euphonious_Polemic)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2024, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-people-working-personal-anecdotes-only/995662/324 "2024-01-13T17:16:18Z")
The engineer’s dilemma. “Bob is the best in the department at writing code. Let’s promote him to manager so he can deal with human resources issues, petty squabbles between co-workers, and attending meetings with upper management”! Thing that are not in Bob’s skillset, nor thing that Bob enjoys. Bob goes on from being a happy, excellent coder to being a miserable shitty manager. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2024, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-people-working-personal-anecdotes-only/995662/325 "2024-01-13T17:21:38Z")
I am being sucked into this and I’m barely into my 40s. I assigned myself some technical writing away from one of the kiddos as a treat last week. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2024, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-people-working-personal-anecdotes-only/995662/326 "2024-01-13T17:28:49Z")
Retirement is a major factor to be sure, but I suspect it’s overrepresented here because of the age of the people posting. I believe childcare is also a major factor as well. The cost of childcare is insane, and that’s if you can even get in. At the time **Wee Weasel** was born it wasn’t uncommon for there to be six to eight months long wait lists. Of course since our planned child care fucked off to another country during the pandemic, we had no advanced warning when we really needed it. I almost had to quit my job then. It was a very close call. The only reason we got away with it is my husband was just starting his business and got to set his own schedule, unfortunately that came with a massive loss of income and drained our savings. So we had a nanny for three days a week (since I was working three days a week) because we didn’t want to put the kid in daycare with COVID going around - fully acknowledge it was a privilege to be able to make that choice. But we were just on the knife-edge of being able to afford it. Then **Wee Weasel** started daycare after he became vaccinated and I simultaneously took a full-time promotion. To give you a rough idea of what we’re talking about here, in my neck of the woods, childcare for one child M-F costs $1600/month. COVID actually drove the wages up around here, to around $16/hour, so by my calculation, working a full-time job at $16/hour and putting a single kid in childcare leaves you with $448 take-home pay for the rest of your expenses. Luckily we found a spot for him with only about three months’ notice (it was impossible to know ahead of time when the vaccine rollout would be.) We did not have a choice where to put him. Fortunately, it was a good place. I think our situation was the best-case scenario. We had one friend who was able to stagger her hours with her husband’s to provide round-the-clock childcare, but it’s very difficult to do that, obviously. Now my son is in school part-time. The school district seems utterly indifferent to the needs of working parents, not only are there a billion breaks and inservice days, but they have scheduled some things during the day like two days in advance. When I was a kid I’m not sure what the demands were like, but it always worked out because I could just walk home from the school bus around the age of 7 or 8 and sit at home at night until my Mom came home from work. You can’t do that any more. I also could just spend Spring Break with my grandparents or something. **Wee Weasel** has no present grandparents. But despite changing times, there has been no compensation for the increased demands on parents’ time. That’s not even getting into how there was no school at all during the pandemic. Fortunately we dodged that bullet. ---
**Author:** ![chela](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chela/32/21582_2.png) [@chela](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chela)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2024, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-people-working-personal-anecdotes-only/995662/327 "2024-01-13T17:45:06Z")
The only youngish people I know who aren’t working are white guys on disability. Their wives work while the men hunt fish go snowmobiling, hang out at the hardware store and generally do everything able bodied people do. Michigan has a pretty high disability approval rate. 60%. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2024, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-people-working-personal-anecdotes-only/995662/328 "2024-01-13T18:02:17Z")
> [@Dinsdale](#): > > Many people will claim there are huge impediments to relocating for work. I don’t really buy it, if one’s goal is to provide for oneself and one’s family. > [@Kimstu](#): > > “Oddly”, many poor people precariously employed in decaying low-income rural communities face substantial obstacles in the fairly expensive and risky process of relocating to a distant locality (usually with a higher cost of living) to improve their chances of getting a better job. They could also vote out their useless bigoted GOP politicians, and get some who can bring jobs in. ---
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2024, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-people-working-personal-anecdotes-only/995662/329 "2024-01-13T18:06:55Z")
> [@MandaJo](#): > > Homeownership can be a weird trap. Yeah - IF you own your home. And if it isn’t worth much, you aren’t worse off than if you’ve been renting. Sunk costs. Hard to compare different generations/cultures, but consider the great migration from the south, or past immigration from Europe/Asia to the US. Or modern immigration to the US. Many people, if they find their current situation untenable, they figure a way to move, and hope the immediate hardships will be worth it over time, at least for their future generations. But others seem to resign themselves to living where it is cheap enough, and where someone else will support their meagre existence. How do you devise a safety net that does not either discourage initiative or encourage perpetual reliance? ---
**Author:** ![doreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/858c86/32.png) [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2024, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-people-working-personal-anecdotes-only/995662/330 "2024-01-13T18:25:50Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > The school district seems utterly indifferent to the needs of working parents, not only are there a billion breaks and inservice days, but they have scheduled some things during the day like two days in advance. Schools have been indifferent to the needs of working parents for as long as I can remember. It’s actually getting better in my area- when I was a kid , kindergarten was half-day. When my kids started school pre-K was half-day. My granddaughter’s 3K last year was full day. But they still have random days off and half days and daytime events scheduled on short notice. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2024, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-people-working-personal-anecdotes-only/995662/331 "2024-01-13T20:21:04Z")
> [@MandaJo](#): > > Now, if you move and abandon the house, or sell it for pennies, the spouse will lose their job, and depending on the job, it may not be very portable. So your new oncome has to be enough to cover this huge new expense (housing), plus what reduction in income your spouse has. And you’ve lost your safety net. Professionals can get a job before they move. People in this dilemma can’t. It’s a big risk to move to a new place and then look for a job, especially if you don’t have much savings. A lot of immigrants did have a safety net - relatives or people from their town in the old country who could help when they moved to the new country. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2024, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-people-working-personal-anecdotes-only/995662/332 "2024-01-13T20:30:23Z")
> [@ZipperJJ](#): > > Ok but it costs money to live day to day. Are we talking older people who retired earlier than they had planned (50s and 60s) and are living off investments and pensions? Or are we talking younger people? If younger, what are they doing for day-to-day money? Two younger people anecdotes from me, both former co-workers: One has moved back in with her elderly parents and is now their caregiver in return for room and board. One discovered that her family didn’t really need her to work and she went full-on full time housewife, and in fact wound up taking in a minor relative to save her from an abusive home situation. It’s working just fine for them. > [@chappachula](#): > > I think it’s calculated (in addition to counting the number of people lined up at the employment agencies)by asking people who currently have no job “do you want a job”. If they answer “yes”, they are added to the statistic. > But if they answer “no”…then they are ignored, and the statistic (3.7%, in our example) stays artificially low. The usual unemployment number quoted is the U3 number, which is as you describe. The one with the working-age people who aren’t actively looking for work included is the U6 number, which is always higher than the U3. [This chart from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm) shows the U3 number for December 2023 as 3.7% and the U6 number for that month as 7.1%. Also has definitions underneath the chart. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2024, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-people-working-personal-anecdotes-only/995662/333 "2024-01-13T20:53:52Z")
> [@Dinsdale](#): > > I do see a number of cases in which someone applies in their 30s or 40s, not having been married, but never having worked. It always kinda makes me wonder just what kind of a lie they have been living, and how they have maintained it. My late spouse had a cousin like that - her parents had let her siblings go to school but kept her home to help mom, and as they grew older she wound up taking care of them and running the household. Then they died. She was a 40+ year old woman who had never been to school, never learned to read or write, never learned more than the absolute basic math needed to cook, never learned to drive, never had a bank account or written a check or paid a bill… Normal intelligence but kept deliberately ignorant well, well into adulthood to service her parents. Functionally crippled. Very sad. It was a very cruel thing her parents did to her. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2024, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-people-working-personal-anecdotes-only/995662/334 "2024-01-13T20:56:33Z")
> [@Euphonious\_Polemic](#): > > The engineer’s dilemma. > > “Bob is the best in the department at writing code. Let’s promote him to manager so he can deal with human resources issues, petty squabbles between co-workers, and attending meetings with upper management”! > > Thing that are not in Bob’s skillset, nor thing that Bob enjoys. > > Bob goes on from being a happy, excellent coder to being a miserable shitty manager. Yep. I killed my career by refusing promotions, because the next position up required endless travel, being berated by upper management, dealing with employee headaches, etc. All for maybe another $10,000/yr. And the next position after that would have required moving to another city. Nope. One of my friends at work was a rising star because he was an excellent coder, and loved it. His idea of a fun weekend at home was rewriting parts of his network stack to improve something or other. He was the guy everyone would go to if they had a problem they couldn’t figure out. Anyway, his manager announced to him that he was so awesome he was being promoted to management. My friend is a serious introvert. He told his boss he didn’t want it, he just wanted to code, please don’t promote him. The manager said he didn’t like his attitude, that he was expected to ‘step up’ when asked, and promoted him anyway. My friend was a terrible manager. Couldn’t confront people, didn’t like meetings, stayed quiet, etc. He was miserable. So of course he got a bad performance review. He asked if he could just go back to being a coder. Nope. So he tried for longer, got another bad performance review and ‘demoted’ back to engineering with a mark on his record that he had been promoted and demoted. He was happy to be coding again, but his career in the company was completely destroyed. He got laid off when I did. Our company kept promising a ‘technical track’ for developers who did not want to be managers, but it never really materialized. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2024, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-people-working-personal-anecdotes-only/995662/335 "2024-01-13T21:00:32Z")
> [@Maserschmidt](#): > > > [@Dangerosa](#): > > > > That could be “fuck it, I can retire.” It could also be reflective of getting let go at 50+ and then trying to find another job is an uphill battle. > > Just so I understand your point, you’re saying they retire because they know it will be difficult to land a job because of age? You’d think with the increase in open jobs they would have better chances than historically, but I can see how that perspective is likely. Ageism is a real thing. It really, really is harder to get a job past 40, much less past 50. I speak from experience on that. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2024, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-people-working-personal-anecdotes-only/995662/336 "2024-01-13T21:17:35Z")
Sometimes ''ageism" is valid, especially in complex technical fields. A while ago I had to do requirements analysis for a project, and I completely rejected Javascript because my experience with it was that it would not perform. But I had been off coding C++ for a few years, and hadn’t looked at Javascript for a while. It turns out that it’s now just fine, and was in fact the correct solution for the project. Aging engineers carry around a lot of expired knowledge, often have significant burnout, etc. To be honest, one of the reasons I was hesitant to get back out and find a coding job was because I wasn’t sure I was still up to snuff for my level. The last few years of my career were a flurry of new technologies I had to learn: Github, Docker, a whole slew of Javascript libraries, OpenID, React, responsive design, app development. yada yada. Endless new tech to learn, which gets harder as you get older. And now a lot of that stuff is already obsolete or nearly so. Then there’s the issue that if you hire someone and spend the money to onboard them, train them, etc., you want to get your value back out of them. And also, you’re always hiring looking for superstars that might be a real asset to the company over decades. When you hire a 60 year old engineer, you’re basically hiring someone you know will be gone in a few years. And they want more money than new hires, are set in their ways, don’t take direction from juniors as well, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2024, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-people-working-personal-anecdotes-only/995662/337 "2024-01-13T22:35:08Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > I believe childcare is also a major factor as well. While I believe that childcare has been a persistent factor in keeping people out of the labor force, I don’t know if it’s much different of a factor now vs 2019. Participation by women had largely recovered to pre-pandemic levels. However, some childcare subsidy ended at the end of September, and we’ve seen a half-point drop in December from October. That’s too small and too short to say whether it’s a trend or noise, but I think it’s worth keeping an eye on. ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2024, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-people-working-personal-anecdotes-only/995662/338 "2024-01-13T23:37:24Z")
Boy is this a hijack, but that whole topic is fascinating…and it wasn’t without its reward for the middle classes, that managed to “uplift” the British working class into suffrage (the men) who then voted along side the working class, giving the Liberal party a hold on government and alos stabilized the middle class by creating a working class workforce that was tied to the timeclock and had the values that translated into “good factory worker” - that the nascent middle class now had careers managing. But yeah, at the same time, both here and in Britain, these sorts of woke efforts ended slavery, child labor, created workplace protections, created local health services, public education (or extended it), etc. ---
**Author:** ![epbrown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e47774/32.png) [@epbrown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/epbrown)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2024, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-people-working-personal-anecdotes-only/995662/339 "2024-01-13T23:43:50Z")
> [@Dinsdale](#): > > But others seem to resign themselves to living where it is cheap enough, and where someone else will support their meagre existence. > > How do you devise a safety net that does not either discourage initiative or encourage perpetual reliance? This frequently comes up and I just don’t get it. It fails in part because great is the enemy of good - there will _always_ be a small percentage of people that aren’t going to work. Letting the world burn while we find a point where everyone has enough to survive but is so miserable they take a job is nuts. Second, the idea that if a UBI gave everyone a bare subsistence living, 99% of people would stop working completely disregards our current reality: most _working_ people are drowning in debt already because they want the finer things - they’re not going to settle for a life of leisure eating gruel and hard-tack because it’s free. They may not work as much, and the crappier jobs will have to improve working conditions, but eventually they’ll want a new iPhone or PS5. ---
**Author:** ![Boudicca90](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boudicca90/32/16818_2.png) [@Boudicca90](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boudicca90)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2024, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-people-working-personal-anecdotes-only/995662/340 "2024-01-14T01:46:18Z")
I’m 39 and I haven’t had a job for about 2 1/2 years now. In my case, I’ve received VA disability for conditions that were exacerbated during my time in the Air Force for years since I was discharged, starting off at 50% and increasing to 70% over time. This helped me survive while trying to maintain employment since I don’t qualify for much beyond slightly more than minimum wage. I was finally able to make the case for them to agree to bump me up to 100% when I was working as a security officer back in 2022, but the deal is I can’t gain an income beyond a certain amount or my benefits will be reduced back down to 70%. So I’m living off of disability money entirely now, since getting a part-time job would slash my income and make it harder to live and getting a full-time job would ultimately end up with me getting roughly the same as I’m getting now, so what’s the point of getting a job at this point? Plus, all I really qualify for are jobs like security, so it’s not like society is missing me participating in the workforce. That isn’t to say I do nothing. Not working has given me a lot more time to dedicate to various local political and mutual aid organizations as well as volunteer opportunities in my community. Which are things I tend to care about a lot more than making some wealthy assholes at the top richer while I get the scraps, if any. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-people-working-personal-anecdotes-only/995662.md?page=16) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-people-working-personal-anecdotes-only/995662.md?page=18)