The Daily: Why Aren’t People Going Back to Their Jobs?

August 6, 2021

By Lauren Jackson

This week, our team talked to a lot of hesitant people. Today, we heard from those who were skeptical of getting vaccinated about their decision making. And for Tuesday's episode, we spoke with both employers and prospective employees across the country to get a better sense of why so many Americans are reluctant to return to work.

Both are extremely personal decisions with significant social ramifications. So in this newsletter, we wanted to take a closer look at the latter — digging into the context and proposed solutions for America's labor shortage. Then, we take a look behind the scenes at how our team is thinking about covering recent news related to race and identity.

Why Aren't People Going Back to Their Jobs?

A restaurant in St. Louis advertised positions for servers and bartenders. Whitney Curtis for The New York Times

Like many of us, the American labor market is "sick with the virus," with companies complaining about a shortage of workers that is slowing the country's economic recovery. The employers we spoke to for Tuesday's episode said that generous unemployment benefits, which have incentivized workers to stay home, are to blame (a sentiment echoed by Republican lawmakers).

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But the reality is more complicated. While many states are halting federal unemployment benefits, employees still aren't rushing back to work. Many experts have proposed solutions: They say increasing wages (which many companies have), ensuring workplaces are safe and building more flexible scheduling options will re-engage workers. But the workers we spoke to in our episode say that the problems run deeper, and that a fundamental reimagination of American work culture is necessary. So what could that look like?

Both companies and the federal government are scrambling to find an answer. The United States has historically ranked low in assessments of workplace protections, accused of a "systematic violation of rights" by the International Trade Union Confederation. Now, President Biden is declaring that this moment provides an opportunity for employees to "demand to be treated with dignity and respect in the workplace."

For help envisioning a future of work that is both dignified and flexible, we asked economists and researchers to point to international comparisons that could help Americans imagine a new future.

Increased protection for gig economy workers

Fabian Stephany, a researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute studying the gig economy, believes that the pandemic is expediting the "platformization" of work, or the allocation and monitoring of labor via digital platforms. This business model pervades the growing, and increasingly precarious, gig economy.

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With more people working online, he believes we need to imagine new ways of ensuring that flexibility for employees and the efficient allocation of work for employers doesn't come at the cost of worker protections. He points to the world's first collective agreement for a platform company — between a Danish union and Hilfr, a company connecting clients to cleaning services — as one example in which workers were able to secure "holidays, sick pay, pension contributions and a minimum wage of  19 euros per hour."

This kind of bargaining relies on strong unionization. But in the U.S., many gig economy workers are classified as contractors, not employees, limiting opportunities for collective bargaining.

Dr. Stephany sees opportunities for governments to change federal policies to better support workers, such as the European Union's establishment of minimum rights for gig economy contractors. Dr. Stephany also points to Estonia, Lithuania and Sweden's facilitation of easier tax payments and income reporting for Uber drivers, a policy that eases friction in platform workers' access to social security benefits.

Creating re-entry support for working parents

American women are struggling to re-enter the workforce after many gave up their jobs in response to the disproportionate demands placed on them during the pandemic.

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Now, working mothers are facing brutally hard choices about whether to stay home or to search again for work. This decision has been made easier for many British women who, thanks to the country's furlough policy, stayed employed throughout the pandemic with the government choosing to pay partial salaries in the interest of avoiding mass unemployment. "This means it has been seamless to bring those employees back to work when demand picked up again," said Thomas Pope, deputy chief economist at the Institute for Government, based in London.

Still, new polling shows nearly a third of British parents are concerned their caring responsibilities will make them more vulnerable to layoffs when furlough ends. "I do not think that extending the furlough scheme, especially once the economy is 'back to normal', is the solution to potential problems for working parents," Pope said. "Instead, any solution will be related to flexible working, which we would expect many employers to adopt."

In both countries, Amanda Taub, our Interpreter columnist, points out that supporting flexible re-entry is essential to avoid long-term regression in gender equality. She points to Sweden, which heavily subsidizes day care and has one of the highest rates of female labor participation in the developed world, as one example of success. She also identifies the need for more predictive policymaking, including clarity around reopenings, and a functioning health care system as essential support for parents planning their return to work.

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THIS, LISTEN TO OUR EPISODE:

Stories From the Great American Labor Shortage

We speak to businesses scrambling to find workers — and the former employees unwilling to return to those jobs.

By Asthaa Chaturvedi, Lynsea Garrison, Robert Jimison, Luke Vander Ploeg, Diana Nguyen, Clare Toeniskoetter, Sydney Harper, Michael Simon Johnson, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Dan Powell and Chris Wood

Here's What Else You Need to Know This Week

From our race stories team.

Compiled by Desiree Ibekwe

Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

At the beginning of the year, the Daily producers and editors formed teams to dive deep into The Times's most urgent, important topics of 2021. Race, of course, was one of them.

Each week, a group of us meet multiple times to talk through stories that focus on issues of race as well as identity. A lot of our discussions have centered on where the racial reckoning that was unlocked by the murder of George Floyd has left us today. What does it actually feel, and sound, like for the entire country to be confronting its past, and debating its future? What has changed in the year since last summer's mass protests, and what hasn't?

Ultimately, in anything we're pursuing, we're always looking to figure out what the story helps us understand about this unprecedented moment that we're in. Like how the passage of reparations legislation in Evanston, Ill., reflects an important shift in what has long been a taboo conversation. Or, how the fierce debate around critical race theory illuminates Americans' deep divisions in how we understand racism and history. We have a lot of ground to cover. Stay tuned. — Anita Badejo, senior editor for The Daily

Here's what the team has been thinking about:

Zoning in Charlottesville: A look at how a hyperlocal zoning dispute in Charlottesville, Va., reveals something deeper about where we are in our national reckoning around race.

The Olympics Reliance on 'Black Girl Magic': A sharp analysis of all the ways in which this year's Olympics have laid bare the burdens that Black women face at the Games.

The Impact of Pandemic Aid: An explanation of how federal aid during the pandemic has slashed the poverty level that goes beyond policy, highlighting the impact on American families.

The Workers Who Kept New York Alive: A beautiful interactive that does in images what we've also spent a year and a half striving to do in sound: telling the stories of people who've carried the weight of the pandemic.

Nooses, Anger and No Answers: An examination of the racially charged events at a future Amazon distribution center in Connecticut that raises important questions about responsibilities that out-of-town employers have to the communities they enter.

On The Daily this week

Monday: What do breakthrough infections mean for the efforts to fight the pandemic?

Tuesday: We hear stories from the frontline of the great American labor shortage.

Wednesday: Tunisia was the darling of the Arab Spring. Now, its decade-long experiment with democracy is in peril.

Thursday: A report into sexual harassment by Gov. Andrew Cuomo was worse than many expected. Could it be his undoing?

Friday: Why not get vaccinated at this point in the pandemic? We hear from some of America's unvaccinated.

Plus: A special show for you. You may have heard that Antoinette Nwandu's "Pass Over" just made its Broadway debut, the first Broadway opening since theaters closed in March 2020 and the first since a coalition of theater artists of color demanded change from the historically white institution.

Nwandu spoke with Michael Paulson, our theater reporter, about the changes she's personally bringing to the theater, and her hopes for the industry — still grappling with the pandemic — as the curtains rise again.

LISTEN NOW: