On February 4, the United States released data on the non-farm payrolls for January.
In January, 467,000 people were employed in non-farm payrolls in the United States, far exceeding the expected 150,000. The number of new non-farm payrolls in December, which was 200,000, was also raised to 510,000.
At the same time, the GDP growth rate of the United States climbed to 5.7% in the fourth quarter of last year, an increase of 1 point from 4.7% in the third quarter. All of this shows that the United States has a boom in employment and a strong economic recovery.
On social media, however, Americans' working lives are a completely different picture.
01
Great Resignation
Records show that 4.5 million people in the United States resigned last November, accounting for 1.5% of the total U.S. population and 3% of the U.S. workforce. The highest level since 2000.
Management scientist Anthony Cruz coined a new term, Great Resignation, to describe the phenomenon. Note that the "Great Resignation" here rhymes with the former "Great Depression" pronunciation.
A girl named Doreen Ford, who had been working in a restaurant in Boston for 10 years, got bored and started raising her own dog and started talking about games on blogs and live streams to earn an income.
Ford is the originator of anti-work. Back in 2013, Ford created the r/antiwork section on reddit to encourage people to work for themselves by reducing the monotony of traditional work.
Ford said that work is meaningless, is exploitative, and degrading.
Opinions vary as to Ford's remarks and practices. But r/antiwork has become a base camp for young Americans to complain about working life.
The most classic thing above r/antiwork is this "leave dialogue" -
One of the moderators took a leave of absence: "My father died yesterday, I am going to the memorial service on Monday, I am sorry not to rush to work." ”
The boss responded: "Lao Tzu's uncle died a few days ago, and I also lost my grandmother, don't pretend to be a victim!" ”
As a result, as soon as this dialogue came out, it was warmly received on r/antiwork.
And this "salary talk" —
The boss asked the employee to work overtime, and the employee asked to give 3 times the salary. The owner does not give.
So this version friend decided to gracefully "resign" -
I quit.
On r/antiwork, spitting on exploitation has also become a fixed operation.
For example, I help the boss earn 1 yuan, I earn 1 point -
Once Musk, Zuckerberg and others are mentioned, it will always be Sh*t, F**k and other words -
When some moderators encounter unfair treatment, r/antiwork will also call on people to support them.
After 1,400 Kellogg workers reached a deadlock in negotiations with the company's unions in October last year, Kellogg announced the dismissal of the striking employees after the strike began. R/antiwork friends post spam to Kellogg recruitment mailboxes to support workers and boycott Kellogg-produced goods.
02
Antiwork
Of course, aside from "gracefully" resigning and spitting out bosses about the rich, r/antiwork is moving toward a real organized labor platform. At the same time, Antiwork, as a cultural phenomenon, has quietly emerged among young Americans.
Many moderators use a black humor to encourage more people to discuss the work system, salary, vacation, the meaning of labor, and so on.
Some code farmers will "hack" into the printers of some large enterprises and print out the text with the concept of "antiwork". For example, "time is your most precious asset."
These various operations have transformed r/antiwork from a depressed platform into a base camp for positive action.
In addition, antiworkd is also stepping out of Reddit, and there is currently a surge in talk about antiwork on TikTok, Youtube and Twitter.
Coincidentally, labor relations events are not only happening in the United States, but also in China.
In the last week before the Spring Festival, a large Internet factory that began with T thought that the post-00 employees refused to work overtime, and sent an email in the company's internal mailbox system that "angry at excessive overtime"——
Of course, after all, this big factory replied with eight words very wisely: serious reflection and rectification as soon as possible.
But this is just the tip of the iceberg in China's labor relations. Last year, many large factories on the Internet reported that they had carried out tragic layoffs. But Chinese is generally more tolerant, nothing more than sending a few resumes and finding a new job. Where is not part-time work.
Not only the United States, but also many other countries have this trend of thought. Perhaps the manifestations are different, but the essence is the same.
Just like in China, the management of many enterprises has been complaining over the years, saying that "the post-90s are not easy to manage", "the post-00s are not easy to manage", "resign when they don't agree". This bears more or less some resemblance to the "anti-work" culture of the United States. Even the "lying flatness" of young Japanese people is the same source.
In the previous generation, hard work will be closer to success, and the worst can improve life. And this generation itself lives in the wealth accumulated by the previous generation, but success is too far away for them to reach.
In the 1990s and even the first decade of the 21st century, for Chinese, buying a house was something that could be achieved by working hard enough; after the 2008 financial crisis, house prices soared, and buying a house became more and more out of reach.
Work, for the previous generation, is the way to get rich; for this generation, it can only be subsistence, at best, to support the family.
03
Inflation adds fuel to the fire
Inflation is raging right now, and the "anti-work" wave will exacerbate it even further.
Why?
On Thursday (February 10), the United States released its January CPI and PPI data. In January, CPI increased by 7.5% year-on-year and PPI increased by 9.5% year-on-year. Among them, PPI hit a new 11-year high, and CPI hit a 40-year high.
Many analysts have concluded that the Fed's previous hawkish stance was "beating inflation through interest rate hikes expectations"; and inflation will fall back in 2022.
Now 2022 has just been the first month, opening the door and punching the face.
The causes of this round of inflation are elusive. Inflation could not rise after the 2008 financial crisis; the Federal Reserve promised "unlimited" liquidity, and the balance sheet surged 1 times, and inflation did not rise. At present, the interest rate hike is imminent, and the yield of the 10-year Treasury bond has broken through 2, but the inflation has become more and more intense. There is a great posture of "adding chaos".
According to the traditional understanding, inflation is caused by excessive currency. However, in recent years, the over-issuance of money has never caused inflation, but now that the currency is about to close, inflation cannot be stopped. Why does the traditional logic of analyzing inflation all fail?
Inflation is defined as rising prices. Prices are affected by supply and demand, and price increases are nothing more than increased demand or decreased supply. Traditional analytical methods, excessive currency over-issuance led to increased demand; but after 2008, the "quantitative easing" water release model allowed excess money to flow to "asset reservoirs" – such as Chinese houses and US stocks – rather than into the real economy. So no amount of inflation can come up with water release.
And why is inflation creeping up this time? The root cause is supply. The contraction in supply is the root cause of this inflation. The reason for the contraction of supply is not economic reasons, but political, social, international trade, geopolitics and so on.
In March 2021, the Suez Canal blocked ships, European trade was blocked, and prices soared, unveiling the "tip of the iceberg" of the global supply chain blockade. Since 2018, the Sino-US trade dispute has developed into the field of science and technology, and the "chip war" has made many industries suffer from the "lack of core", the price of chips has risen, and the production capacity of many industries has been blocked.
These are all sorts of trends that can be summarized as a trend that deviates from the economic globalization of the previous 40 years, that is, "anti-globalization". Either lead to supply contraction, or lead to supply blockage, and eventually transmit to the terminal price, forming inflation.
The current "anti-work" trend of thought sweeping the United States is also subordinate to one of the general trends of "anti-globalization".
Many financial institutions have expressed concern about the potential risks posed by the "anti-work" culture. For example, Goldman Sachs recently released a research report saying that the "anti-work" culture will affect the labor force participation rate in the United States, which in turn will jeopardize long-term economic growth. Western economies are at risk of relapsing into "stagflation."
Nevertheless, in the minds of young people, it is another account:
Anyway, the economy has grown and I don't have my share, so why am I still working so hard?
04
epilogue
At this point, the logic is clear. Whether it is anti-work ideology or inflation, it is actually the inevitable result of the unsustainable development of economic globalization to the extreme, the decrease in increments, and the intensification of stock competition. Even diplomatic discord between major powers and local geopolitical crises – these phenomena are of the same logic.
So what if the "anti-globalization" inverted needle is twisted back to a positive pace?
The reason is simple, the economy needs to return to growth. How to promote economic growth? Only technology and innovation. It's simple to say, but it's not easy to do.
It seems that the wave of "anti-work" ideas cannot be blamed solely on the failure of this young people to appear. After all, their fathers were too capable to eat their cake, even their children's cake, and they didn't have to eat it, so they had to stop eating it.