Why don’t low-skilled workers try harder to better their condition? While this might seem a neoliberal question, it weighs on Barbara Ehrenreich’s mind:
I was baffled, initially, by what seemed like a certain lack of get-up-and-go on the part of my fellow workers. Why didn’t they just leave for a better-paying job, as I did when I moved from the Hearthside to Jerry’s?
She starts with some textbook economic answers. There’s transaction costs:
Part of the answer is that actual humans experience a little more “friction” than marbles do, and the poorer they are, the more constrained their mobility usually is. Low-wage people who don’t have cars are often dependent on a relative who is willing to drop them off and pick them up again each day, sometimes on a route that includes the babysitter’s house or the child care center… I have mentioned, too, the general reluctance to exchange the devil you know for one that you don’t know, even when the latter is tempting you with a better wage-benefit package. At each new job, you have to start all over, clueless and friendless.
And information costs:
There is another way that low-income workers differ from “economic man.” For the laws of economics to work, the “players” need to be well informed about their options…
But there are no Palm Pilots, cable channels, or Web sites to advise the low-wage job seeker. She has only the help-wanted signs and the want ads to go on, and most of these coyly refrain from mentioning numbers. So information about who earns what and where has to travel by word of mouth, and for inexplicable cultural reasons, this is a very slow and unreliable route…
Soon, however, she appeals to industrial psychology. Employers win workers hearts and minds – what Ehrenreich calls, “the co-optative power of management, illustrated by such euphemisms as associate and team member.” And don’t forget learned helplessness:
Drug testing is another routine indignity. Civil libertarians see it as a violation of our Fourth Amendment freedom from “unreasonable search”; most jobholders and applicants find it simply embarrassing…
There are other, more direct ways of keeping low-wage employees in their place. Rules against “gossip,” or even “talking,” make it hard to air your grievances to peers or-should you be so daring-to enlist other workers in a group effort to bring about change, through a union organizing drive, for example. Those who do step out of line often face little unexplained punishments, such as having their schedules or their work assignments unilaterally changed. Or you may be fired…
The big picture, though, is that the capitalist system breaks workers’ spirits:
So if low-wage workers do not always behave in an economically rational way, that is, as free agents within a capitalist democracy, it is because they dwell in a place that is neither free nor in any way democratic. When you enter the low-wage workplace-and many of the medium-wage workplaces as well- you check your civil liberties at the door, leave America and all it supposedly stands for behind, and learn to zip your lips for the duration of the shift. The consequences of this routine surrender go beyond the issues of wages and poverty. We can hardly pride ourselves on being the world’s preeminent democracy, after all, if large numbers of citizens spend half their waking hours in what amounts, in plain terms, to a dictatorship.
The obvious response to all of these stories, however, is: “Why don’t the same factors prevent high-skill workers from trying to better their condition?” Let’s consider each in turn.
Transaction costs. While high-skilled workers have fewer problems with transportation and child-care, they also have much more specific skills. This seriously impedes job search. To find a new job, most nuclear engineers – and many professors – would have to not just sell their homes, but move to a new city. The high-skilled are also more likely to be in two-earner families, which makes relocation doubly disruptive.
Information costs. Firms often publicly advertise low-skilled wages. This is much less true for high-skilled jobs.
Hearts and minds. High-skilled workers seem much more likely to identify with their employer – and to define themselves in terms of their work.
Learned helplessness. Again, the indignities required for starting a high-skilled job probably exceed those for low-skilled employment, especially if you’re a government contractor. Once hired, however, the petty indignities high-skill workers endure are admittedly lower. (Here’s why).
The capitalist system. Almost no employer cares for kvetching, but high-skill workers probably feel freer to speak up on the job. Off the job, however, they are probably more worried about offending bosses, co-workers, or clients. Who cares what a waiter posts on Facebook? In any case, why should lack of voice reduce enthusiasm for exit?
So why then don’t low-skill workers try harder to better their condition? All of Ehrenreich’s answers prove too much. The better story is simply that there is a distribution of desire to better your condition. In short, human beings have heterogeneous ambition. Some burn to rise; others take life as it comes; most lie somewhere in the middle. And though mere desire hardly ensures success, ambition usually works in the long-run. The more you want to better your condition, the better your condition eventually tends to become.
Like Ehrenreich’s story, my story explains why low-skill workers seem “stuck.” Unlike her, however, I can also explains why high-skill workers seem mobile. In short, what my “heterogeneous ambition” story lacks in Social Desirability Bias, it makes up for by explaining mobility and inertia, rather than inertia alone.
READER COMMENTS
nobody.really
Oct 22 2019 at 10:18am
Cool. What policy implications flow from the observation that people naturally differ in attributes–including ambition?
Phil H
Oct 22 2019 at 7:58pm
The answer that is given all too often is that no support/effort/changes should be made to help those on low incomes because they have demonstrated by their low incomes that they simply do not prefer high incomes. It’s a nasty bit of self-fulfilling policy.
I think a better answer would be that plenty of respect, status and support should be available for everyone, no matter what their income is. And we should remember that the low income group is made up of at least two different types of people: those who prefer the low income/low pressure status, and those who do not prefer it but are temporarily stuck there.
john hare
Oct 23 2019 at 4:34am
It is definitely wrong to give status, support, and respect to everyone regardless of their attitude and accomplishments. Everybody gets a trophy doesn’t work in productive society. People that are always late to work, shirk the hard jobs, refuse responsibility, are dishonest, etc, do not deserve the same treatment as people that get the job done. Or, low productive people are not the same as high productive people.
This from over three decades as an employer having to deal with some people that choose to act as a burden rather than an asset to the company. I have all too often heard “If you paid me more I would work harder.” from people I am already losing money on. There is no incentive for me to increase my loses. Raises to the slothful are insults to the productive that should be rewarded.
This viewpoint is from an industry where the wage span is about triple between new hires and experienced workers going to the same job site in the same truck. Many top out at perhaps 40% of top wages, and mostly don’t seem to understand why. In this topic, you don’t give me the same respect and status as Bryan Caplan, and you shouldn’t.
nobody.really
Oct 23 2019 at 10:58am
Caplan hypothesizes that people naturally differ in ambition. Likewise, I hypothesize that people naturally differ in height. And I offer an additional hypothesis: A society with more resources tends to become a taller society—but offering more incentives to any given individual will do little to increase that individual’s height.
When recruiting for a basketball team, I may not want to treat short people the same as tall people; height can have a relevance to a given objective. But I should not delude myself that short people are short because they have chosen this circumstance. I should not delude myself that telling short people about how much more money they could make if they were taller will alter their height. Nor should I worry that if I transfer money to short people, it will cause more people to become short.
Rather, I should expect and accept that populations have natural ranges of variance (often along a bell curve), and should design public policy accordingly. I should refrain from inventing morality plays that suggest that people at the high end of a distribution have some kind of unique moral virtue.
After all, if we flipped 100 coins 100 times each, you’d find some that land on heads a disproportionate number of times, and some that land on tails. We might invent morality plays about the virtue exhibited by the heads-prone coins and the vice exhibited by the tails-prone coins. But it might make more sense to talk about the existence of head-proneness and tails-proneness as attributes of the COLLECTIVE. Yes, libertarians will tell us, we can only see this attribute manifest in individual coins, and thus is it wrongful to take note of the distribution curve formed by the collective. But not everyone wears a libertarian’s blinders.
john hare
Oct 23 2019 at 6:06pm
It is not necessary to make moral judgement on people to understand that it is vital to make value judgments on them if you are in any field requiring performance. A short basketball player has less value than an equally talented and motivated tall player. A short player would need to bring extra talent and drive to make up the difference. Not understanding that value judgments must be made guarantees a losing team, company, or ultimately a country. This is not a moral issue.
A person cannot choose to be tall or male or white or whatever other genetic characteristic that is thought to confer an advantage. That is a totally different situation than people that won’t try to better themselves and blame it on others, all the while expecting those others to support them in various ways.
This is not an academic discussion to me. When all workers are treated exactly the same, the good ones go elsewhere where they are appreciated. There are bad employees just as there are bad companies. Some of them are a liability at any wage, much less what ivory tower types think is a “living wage”.
nobody.really
Oct 24 2019 at 10:41am
Uh … I understand Caplan’s premise to be that a person’s natural allotment of ambition is rather like other natural allotments, and NOT subject to the person’s volition.
Fair enough. But some people oppose basic income guarantees on the theory that providing people with income unrelated to effort would undermine ambition. Caplan’s premise seems to remove that argument.
Phil H
Oct 24 2019 at 12:21am
Thanks, John. I certainly see that as a good reply. I guess I meant something different by support, status, and respect to what you thought I meant. I certainly don’t think that you necessarily have to pay everyone the same; and within your company, it’s fine to treat people differently based on their level of success.
Anecdotally, though, I lost my last job for “underperforming”. I’m pretty certain that I didn’t underperform – in fact, I worked out what they wanted me to do, and calculated that by doing that I could never make back what they were paying me. What I in fact did (I’m pretty sure) helped them much more than what they wanted; but it wasn’t something they were set up to measure.
What I drew from the experience is that even if someone is genuinely committed to being a good worker (you’ll have to take my word for it, but I was), there can easily be structural impediments, or just misfits that prevent them from doing so. And there are many, many stories out there of people who struggled to find their place in the workplace because of structural impediments (all the -isms, for a start); so I wouldn’t want to jump straight to “the reason that person isn’t performing well is because she is just not as good”. That person may not be a great fit for this job; but I don’t think underperformance or even failure in a job is sufficient for me to say: that person is worth less respect, status and support.
I suppose there may well be ultimate differences in quality between people. But to my mind, all the progress in the world has been won by saying: let’s assume that everyone can do better. That workers can read. That women can vote. That Walmart workers could become more productive workers, if the circumstances were different.
Rob Rawlings
Oct 22 2019 at 10:39am
Is it in fact the case that low wage workers show low levels of upwards mobility? It strikes me that looking at groups of people who currently earn low wages and asking why they don’t try harder to get better jobs is not going to answer this question.
– There may be a large group of workers who used to earn low wages but no longer do because they had the drive and ability to move to higher paid work
– Some portion of current low wage workforce will eventually move to higher paid employment so clearly do have the drive and determination to do so, just hasn’t paid of yet.
– Some workers who currently earn low wages may actually have shown drive and determination to get as far as they have. For example cleaning toilets and working on reception are probably both minimum wage jobs but I bet many people in the latter role had to work hard to get there and ‘earn’ the increased status and easier working conditions that come with it.
– And for very low productivity workers just getting to the level where they can hold down a minimum wage job at all may show levels of drive and determination that would put the rest of us to shame.
Mark Brady
Oct 22 2019 at 10:56am
“Why don’t low-skilled workers try harder to better their condition? While this might seem a neoliberal question, it weighs on Barbara Ehrenreich’s mind.”
What makes a question a “neoliberal question”? Bryan, if you’re going to use that contentious expression, I suggest that you should define those weasel words “neoliberal” and “neoliberalism.” Seriously.
Mike Hammock
Oct 22 2019 at 11:16am
Bryan’s argument is plausible, but then again, any explanation for differences in behavior that uses tastes and preferences as the answer is plausible. That doesn’t make it a satisfying or correct answer.
Why did Windows Phone fail? I could just sayp that it was due to consumer preferences and leave it at that. I could also say that there was a network effect that discouraged app developers to write apps for platforms with few users, given the existence of two successful Pre-existing platforms. Which answer seems more likely to be correct?
Preference based explanations should be a last resort. Has Bryan really exhausted all possible incentive-based explanations? I don’t claim to have one, but I am reluctant to accept Bryan’s explanation.
Mike Hammock
Oct 22 2019 at 3:40pm
Apologies for the typos. I was typing that very quickly on my phone, and didn’t have time to proofread. I should have waited and written a full response later.
Gary Lowe
Oct 22 2019 at 11:44am
I typically agree with much of Bryan’s analysis on many issues, but his analysis here seems like it came from someone who has never had to work a non-academic job. For context, I was a software engineer for 19 years and am have been an IP attorney for 10 years.
Transaction costs. While high-skilled workers have fewer problems with transportation and child-care, they also have much more specific skills. This seriously impedes job search. To find a new job, most nuclear engineers – and many professors – would have to not just sell their homes, but move to a new city. The high-skilled are also more likely to be in two-earner families, which makes relocation doubly disruptive. [Here’s what people in high skilled professions do, they live in a place where there are a cluster of companies that require their skill. Alternatively, if they live in an area that has one such company, that company treats them well because it is harder to require other with that talent to the area.]
Information costs. Firms often publicly advertise low-skilled wages. This is much less true for high-skilled jobs. [This is crazy. I am constantly bombarded with recruiters offering new jobs. Every day LinkedIn.com suggests many jobs.]
Hearts and minds. High-skilled workers seem much more likely to identify with their employer – and to define themselves in terms of their work. [When I had my first job in 1989, people did think this way. The first company had never laid off anyone and people used to think they would be “lifers”. Then they did their first layoff and after that people started jumping around. I have had like 10 jobs in 30 years of employment. I have no illusions about identifying with any employer.]
Learned helplessness. Again, the indignities required for starting a high-skilled job probably exceed those for low-skilled employment, especially if you’re a government contractor. Once hired, however, the petty indignities high-skill workers endure are admittedly lower. [This is also crazy. Almost every job I’ve had was hard to get (lot’s of credentials and interviews), but part of the reason for that was because once on the job, I was given an large amount of autonomy.]
In closing, when I was kid, I worked in a grocery store doing a variety of tasks. It was an informative experience because it convinced me that I should go to college and not be trapped in jobs where you had little autonomy and didn’t learn much. I’ll agree with Bryan this much in that I also learned that many folks don’t want that autonomy or to have to learn much.
P Burgos
Oct 23 2019 at 3:54am
You don’t have to go to college to get a job at Walmart. You do have to spend years of study to get a job as an engineer. I think that those extra years of study is the “indignity” Kaplan is referring to in regards to getting a high skilled job.
Gary Lowe
Oct 24 2019 at 10:39am
No, if he means that then he’s being inconsistent. I read the case against education, and his description of college and the seriousness with which college students treat it, make it sound like fun. And that was exactly my experience. College, signaling and all, was a blast.
Rebes
Oct 22 2019 at 1:11pm
Barbara Ehrenreich’s question is valid, but her explanations are lame, all avoiding personal responsibility.
A more obvious response to all of her stories would be: “Why don’t the same factors prevent ALL low-skill workers from trying to better their condition?”
Bryan’s ultimate answer remains the same. Some burn to rise.
Mark Z
Oct 22 2019 at 8:01pm
Workplaces can’t really be ‘free’ and ‘democratic’ in any system (they certainly haven’t been in the non-capitalist societies that have actually existed), so what is this objection supposed to mean? Work is only free when what work or how much work you do is optional, and no coordination is necessary, e.g., when robots replace all jobs, everything is free, and scarcity no longer compels us to work. And democratic? What majority decides what the hours are, and how a factory is run? The arbitrary majority of workers who happen to be employed there when the revolution happens? And who decides what firm I work for? Do I? And if so, why can’t I elect to work at a firm that pays me extra in exchange for my ‘vote?’ Economic democracy seems like a nice term to induce fuzzy feelings until one starts to define it, and then it’s either just another arbitrary list of rules restricting voluntary interactions limited only by the personal preferences of the person using it, or it degenerates into Athenian-style democracy where the citizen is the property of the state.
Thaomas
Oct 22 2019 at 8:37pm
Stuck or not, a whopping wage subsidy type EITC would sure help. And perhaps raise the returns to investment in owned human capital.
dylan
Oct 23 2019 at 8:04am
As someone who has been unemployed for a few months, there seems to be a simple additional level of “friction” that is not mentioned here. Getting a new job is hard! It’s both a lot of work, and involves skills that are quite different from the ones you need in a lot of jobs. I’m a fairly intelligent and well educated guy, and every job I’ve ever had I’ve been promoted pretty quickly to well above where I started (last company I went from office admin to partner in 5 years). Yet, I find it almost impossible to even get an interview when looking for new jobs.
I’m at least lucky when it comes to interviews, and I seem to do pretty well, in that (so far) I’ve never had an interview without being offered a position, it just takes me months of trying to get even one interview. My wife is in the opposite predicament, wse has far more real world skills than I have, and doesn’t have much problem finding jobs that could use her, but she gets incredibly nervous during interviews, and rarely makes it past that stage.The last two jobs she got, were after the company hired other people that then didn’t work out, and she was kind of their last resort (which they seemed happy to let her know).
Both of us have backgrounds that advantage us in the job search compared to the majority of the population. Good social skills, work ethic, support network that can recommend us for positions and help prepare, and yet we still completely suck at the art of finding a new job. Which makes me think, if I’ve got such a hard time, with all the advantages I have, what’s it got to be like when you have none of those advantages? And the experience of looking, with constant rejection, a lack of jobs that seem to match my skills, while constantly hearing that in this economy “anyone with a pulse” shouldn’t have any trouble finding work…all of that is pretty disheartening. Which makes me think that the experience of having even a bad job, is probably better than trying to put yourself through all of this, when the chance of improving your position seems so low.
john hare
Oct 23 2019 at 6:17pm
My reply above was about people that have jobs and don’t do them well. We went through so many horrible people that we quit trying to expand the company in the normal way. I wonder how much of your trouble getting interviews is caused by burnout of the seeking companies. My regulars and I were fed up with people that (among other things) lie, steal, are unreliable, lazy, require constant supervision, etc. The result is that we don’t hire at all now even though we would like to. And quite a number of other local companies do the same.
You may be swimming in waters poisoned by the indolent that preceded you. I think I once before replied to you and was way off base, so that’s not ruled out.
Dylan
Oct 23 2019 at 9:04pm
John,
You did reply to me once on this same topic, and while I think you’ve got a valid insight, I don’t think it applies in this particular case.
But more importantly, I didn’t really mean for that to be about me, just an observation that someone with a masters, access to a career center, coaching, and a big network of people to lean on to introduce me to companies, and it is still incredibly difficult and, so far, fruitless task. So, what is is like if you maybe didn’t finish high school, don’t have a consistent work history, aren’t naturally a people person?
I know for me, it takes me a minimum of a couple of days to apply for a job, in terms of the research I do on the place, time writing a cover letter that probably won’t get read, customizing my resume, etc… (heck, I’m researching and writing a 20 page case study for one position right now, just hoping that makes me stand out enough to get an interview). That’s probably excessive, but the point is that applying for just about any job that is high or low skill takes a lot of work, and the chances of you getting even to the next stage are pretty low. The last minimum wage(ish) job my wife got an interview for, she showed up in the first group, that was over 100 people, and they were only hiring for 2 positions! With those odds, you’re going to see a lot of rejection, and humans tend to not like rejection, and will do just about anything to avoid it, even if that means forgoing a chance at a better life.
john hare
Oct 24 2019 at 4:42am
I think it is regional differences that color my viewpoint. I have been involuntarily unemployed a total of less than a week in nearly five decades. In this county at this time, no one that wants a job has trouble finding something quickly. That’s part of my troubles finding new hires that the remaining unemployed are those that are less than desirable employees.
I have enough trouble relating that I feel like one of the ivory tower types I complain about. All theory and no experience in trouble finding work. My take is that my knowledge is regional and perhaps not generally applicable.
Dylan
Oct 24 2019 at 9:39am
Honestly, I’m not so sure about that. I’ve had difficulty finding a job under almost all circumstances, in good economies and bad ones, when looking for entry level jobs, and professional jobs, and in different regions in the country and around the world.
I think the simpler explanation is that getting work, particularly in a blind apply kind of way when you don’t know anyone, takes a fair amount of skill, and it is something that I’m just not very good at. Not sure why, I try to take advice from people who are good at getting work, have them proof-read my resumes and cover letters, etc…I think my lack of success comes down to a) just not being that good at selling myself and being unwilling to exaggerate my accomplishments, and b) essentially being too old for the jobs where I’ve got the right level of experience, and not having the specialization that is required for jobs that match my years of experience. This unfortunately goes down even to basic entry level jobs, as I’ve applied to some retail type places in the neighborhood, hoping to at least have some minimal part time income, but those places (rightly) are wary of hiring someone that they expect will leave as soon as they get a better job.
john hare
Oct 24 2019 at 4:43pm
@ Dylan 9:39 am 24 Oct
I think I have located my disconnect. I have always gotten jobs through knowing someone in the company, often the owner. My business has been overwhelmingly repeat and referral. In short, I have always had a network and have no clue how well I would do in a new location or new field.
JK Brown
Oct 24 2019 at 1:51am
Well, a low income worker is very close to the edge and jumping to a new job is risky. And if you lose that new job for some reason, then you are unemployed.
But it is true that motivation is a critical factor. Anecdotally, if you watch welding, auto diagnostic, HVAC youtubers, eventually they will address the many inquiries they get on “getting in their field” but also the frustration they have since many of those couch potato dreamers don’t follow through to actually get the skills beyond the passive youtube video.
We can’t discount the constant influence on the working class that breaks their motivation. Today it goes by the name “social justice” as Thomas Sowell discussed in his most recent appearance on Uncommon Knowledge. He offers two anecdotes of men who wanted to learn to fly, but had been given the idea that White people wouldn’t permit it, even though there have been African-American generals in the USAF. But Orwell wrote of the wearing down of the working class in ‘The Road to Wigan Pier’. I believe on the great advantages of a top university is that he graduates are given an expectation of getting what they want with limits increasing as one goes down the “elite” scale. Getting past the limitations in the culture, by the teachers, bosses, etc, in which you live and work is how one escapes to higher achievement.
–Thomas Sowell
–The Road to Wigan Pier, George Orwell, ch 3
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