Is the worker shortage really due to a mass "Great Awakening" of purpose or did we romanticize an old, familiar problem?

The current problem that I am fascinated with solving is this one: when entitlements have increased to the point of removing the financial discomfort often accompanying unemployment, where will the urgency to return to work come from? One of the most basic motivators to obtain and retain a job is the dignity that comes with providing for yourself and your family. When that dignity is nullified through other means, what will be the motivating reason to return to work for the majority of Americans? Over 60% of the US population lives paycheck-to-paycheck; many families are accustomed to conservative standards of living already. If a comparable standard of living is being afforded via entitlements and subsidies, without the burden of employment, it’s arguably a beneficial trade-off to accept a slight reduction in the standard of living if it means 100% less work.

Through the pandemic, policy after policy has conditioned and supported a large proportion of our workforce to be accustomed to staying home and being out of the workforce. I’ve heard one theory that is gaining traction is that people have re-evaluated what’s important to them and have realized that perhaps their job is not worth giving up time for more important things in life, such as time with their family; people have awaked to the reality that they would rather focus on the things that are important in life as opposed to work their lives away. Which is certainly a fair and noble realization, and an important part of life that needs to be wisely addressed. We only have this one, fleeting life.

But what are the chances this (what I'm labeling as) "The Great Awakening" is truly at the heart of why so many Americans have yet to reenter to the workforce? My gut tells me something is off here. Firstly, as we all know, change is hard. It’s so difficult that most of us often fail to make the basic changes that we know we need to make in our lives. Changes we know would benefit us almost even immediately, we still often fail to make. And when we do manage to make the change - and stick with it - it’s usually such a big success story that everyone hears about. But why would people care about a change we make? One reason is that we love to celebrate others' successes. And I believe another reason is because we realize how difficult, how uncommon accomplishing a real change is in our lives.

Americans don't reliably fulfill their New Year’s Resolution, with over 50% giving up on them within six months. I've seen polls even state nearly 70% of resolutions have been abandoned within the first 32 days. I don't think anyone is surprised by these polls, either. Yet we have been led to believe that this same demographic has experienced such a drastic change, and stuck with it, that they have re-evaluated life and decided that work was an impediment to living a full, meaningful life? Philosophers have been discussing how work imbues our life with meaning for thousands of years, yet we have been told that the reason people haven't returned to work (the same work which has been praised as a conduit to meaning and growth in life by some of the wisest men and women who have ever lived) is because they have judged it as coming up short? Something wreaks of hubris, here. I just don't buy the narrative of a mass Great Awakening being at fault for the workforce shortage. At least, not wholly. There's sure to be a few outliers, just as someone inevitably wins the powerball. But to explain the whole, or even a noticeable percentage of the problem through this lens seems to me.... naively hopeful, at best.

To quote Ecclesiastes (or Shakespeare), “There’s nothing new under the sun.” I personally believe the workforce shortage is more likely attributed to established patterns we are already well aware of. Not that we have figured out how to solve for them, but I believe we certainly know the causes. I have worked on and wrestled with these issues for years in my efforts to launch re-eentry employment programs across the State for those coming out of incarceration and other crises situations. And this current experience feels, at least to me, more like difficulties in overcoming the issues associated with re-entry employment programs than it does, say, trying to convince a fisherman to lay down his rod because he's seen the light and he now believes work to be the bane of his existence. While it isn't the highlight of everyone's day, it's almost inarguably one of life's greatest necessities. Work has a mysterious ability to be the well from which we draw not just a paycheck, but also human dignity, worth, accountability, purpose, routine, relationships, growth, challenge and struggle, victory, a mission, a reason to get out of bed, and countless other necessities to a decent life that.

No, my theory behind the workforce shortage isn't a mass Great Awakening. It's more probable to be a familiar foe - the consequences of long-term unemployment. We have well-established data going back decades on the negative impacts associated with long-term unemployment. Which I believe to be a better and more relevant dataset for comparison purposes when we are trying to solve for why so many Americans are not returning to work. In a study by The Urban Institute, aptly titled “Consequences of Long-Term Unemployment, the study goes into detail outlining the numerous hazards, moral and otherwise, associated with long-term unemployment. For reference, I’ve listed the study’s points of focus: 1) Declining Income and Consumption, 2) Declining Reemployment Wages 3) Declining Human and Social Capital 4) Impacts on Future Labor Market Attachment 5) Impacts on Physical and Mental Health 6) Impacts on Children and Families 7) Impact on Communities.?All of these points work together in a snowball effect in a way that compounds the low probability that an individual will return to the workforce.

I’ve included the link here for those who want to dig deeper into the study and review the findings and correlations for yourself: https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/23921/412887-Consequences-of-Long-Term-Unemployment.PDF

After reviewing this study, which was published in 2013, it has led me to believe that what that long-term unemployment, as opposed to a “Great Awakening”, is likely to blame for the worker exodus in mass. It’s not expedient nor politically popular to call this mass workforce exodus what it is, which, I posit, is a failure of multiple systems, the conditioning, and the supporting of a large populace for mass unemployment.? Our policies have subsidized and continue to subsidize those unemployed. And while this continues to be the case, we will be faced with an uphill battle to incentivize individuals to return to the workforce.

Of course, this theory isn't meant to be a silver-bullet or the single explanation for a multi-faceted problem, either. Just another piece to the puzzle.