Linguistics, stats, and the angry employer

I recently came across this picture selection question in Duolingo where I had to choose the picture of “the employer”. The one thing I noticed was that the actual answer (“der Arbeitgeber”) was the only option that had a facial expression, and not just that: he had an angry face.

This question started to puzzle me. Why do employers have such a bad reputation? As I came across this issue in a language learning context, it was natural that I started my analysis with going back to the origins of the expression to see if I understand the root cause of this resentment. I’m not aiming for glory in the field of linguistics, but please bear with me for a minute.

The English word “employ” comes from the Latin word “implicare”, meaning “enfold, entangle, involve, be connected with, unite, associate” (etymonline.com). Associating with someone in a business context didn’t sound like such a bad thing at all, so I continued my quest with looking for synonyms to see if the source of this anger was just lost in translation.

The next word that came to my mind was the word “entrepreneur”. I am particularly fond of this word in my native language (Hungarian). The Hungarian word entrepreneur (“vállalkozó”) comes from the word “shoulder” (?váll”) or “taking something on one’s shoulders” (“vállal”), i.e. taking responsibility for something. The English word “enterprise” also has similar origins. Coming from French, the word roughly means “an undertaking”, or in an “[a]bstract sense [it means] ?adventurous disposition?…” (etymonline.com). So again, nothing to explain the angry look on that imaginary employer’s face – so I started looking elsewhere.

The second thing I did was to return to my beloved numbers, data and statistics to see if they provide me with the catharsis I was in desperate need of. What have these entrepreneurs done to earn such a bad reputation?

According to the Hungarian National Statistical Agency (KSH), there were 755 905 enterprises in Hungary in 2018. 718 579 (95%!) of these companies employ less than 10 people, and in total 1.1 million people work for these firms, which makes up 36% of all people employed by enterprises in Hungary. And they do this while accounting for only 20% of total revenues earned by enterprises. Having a closer look at the stats one can see that the bigger a company gets, the more revenue it generates per employee. The other way to look at it is to say that the vast majority of companies (95%) takes care of significantly more people from the same amount of money (revenue) than the remaining 5%. And just to demonstrate the scale of this, the enterprises in the 2-9 people category employ a person for half the revenue the largest employer category (250+ people) does.

So here we are: employing someone means to associate with someone to embark on an adventure. It is about starting something new, it is about commitment and taking responsibilities – and doing this with lax resources in an absolutely uneven game.

Since I started working with SMEs at PénTech I came to admire these brave people. Doing business is not easy. You have to be excellent at what you do so that your product is competitive – while also singlehandedly dealing with all the issues of running a business: sales, finance, HR, you name it.

Employers don’t deserve contempt. They deserve belief – or in other words – credit.