Recent interest in shorter workweeks is part of a larger shift among millennials and younger workers toward “living our lives rather than making a living” and accumulating money and possessions, Benjamin Hunnicutt, a historian at the University of Iowa, told Vox.
….
The rise of “just-in-time scheduling” made retail and other service work increasingly unpredictable, leaving workers unsure if they’d get enough hours to be able to pay rent,
But that’s OK, I write at Vox, I’ll believe both.
The two things aren’t quite opposites though. It is one thing working shorter hours and accepting a lower standard of living. Having an unreliable income could be more of a problem when you have regular outgoings to meet.
Juiceboxer in NYC whose only jobs were in journalism for the NYT and Vox tells us that the nature of work across large parts of the economy is changing in a big way. Cites academic whose only jobs were in academia as proof of contention.
My response: Sure, sweetie, whatever you say.
Recent interest in shorter workweeks is part of a larger shift among millennials and younger workers toward “living our lives rather than making a living” and accumulating money and possessions
I understand that youngsters in London make similar points, in between complaining that they can’t afford to buy a flat.
I work as a casual now (Australia, for UKians I think zero hours contractor would be a better description). No benefits or leave of any kind, but lots of flexibility. Which suits me, I’m happy with the trade off.
.
But with 25 years of graft behind that, both to give me a cushion and build up my reputation so my bosses put up with me wanting an unconvential arrangement for an engineer.
If millenials think they’re going to get the best of both worlds – benefits and flexible working from day one – well, good luck with that.
The author seems surprised that increasing demands for more benefits and ‘rights’ at work are leading to more insecure employment being offered. Fancy that.
Vox thinks that “Millennials” should live rent-free in apartments that have been built and paid-for by “Boomers”
Solved that for you
@ Ltw
I have spent more years as a self-employed contractor or sub-contractor, mostly the latter, than as an employee. When people started talking about “the gig economy” as a new phenomenon I had to bite my tongue. When journalists started to talk about “Generation Z” being worse off than their parents [no, the data said that they were worse off than the cohort 10 years older but noticeably better off than their parents’ generation, but most journalists are innumerate] I did some sums and found that my first two jobs paid less, adjusted for inflation, than the minimum non-means-tested part of Gen Z’s JSA [the first was a holiday job, bar porter, at Butlin’s, the second was computer programmer]
My first paid job was £40 *A* *WEEK* in 1988 aged 19. One pound an hour!
Ugh
I started- with a real physics n maths degree – at Ferranti in Bracknell, working for their Digital Systems Division, which built neat computer snd automation systems for the RN.
I started at 1100 pounds a year.
@BiTiN, my £1100 starting salary in 1969 was supplemented by 3/- luncheon vouchers. I discovered much later – when the supply had dried up – that they could be used for services in Cynthia Payne’s brothel!
My rent on the flat I lived in was enough to pay the mortgage on vastly more than any mortgage company would lend me: if I could have bought the flat I lived in, then I would have been better off had I had a mortgage. Bizarre. I understand that the situation is, if anything, worse now, but only a few years before I graduated, a smaller salary was enough to buy a house that when I graduated and subsequently was always priced beyond my means, even though my daily consulting rate today is considerably more than my annual salary back then, which amuses me even though part of the difference is due to inflation..
£1.72 per day as an Army Apprentice in 1972 and contrary to popular opinion at the time we had to pay food and accommodation as well as pay for haircuts, boot polish, blanco etc.
IIRC, unlikely, by Feb 73 we were getting monthly inflation adjusted pay rises (plus increases in food and accommodation.
Earned NMW in 2001.
And still earn NMW in 2021.
But today I have wikipedia, facebook, and a smartphone. Massively better off intellectually. Not so much in terms of pussy as Chubby Brown once said about the Blairite attempt to make Iraq like the West. Food much cheaper, in some cases e.g. cheese and pasta the same in nominal.
@ jgh
£6 a week in 1964, but that was good pay for a 17-year-old – I met a roughly equally old guy a year or so back chatted and learned that he had started on £2 13s 4d a week, roughly equal to £22 in 1988 or £63 in 2020
I started on 2 Pounds 3 shillings and 6 pence a week at the age of 16 back in 1954.Not much, but after paying for my keep at home, better than the 5 bob a week pocket money I used to get.
1976, 16 years old, Import Clerk, 9 – 5.30, 42.5 hours, £13 per week = £0.30p per hour. In todays’ money, £95.69 per week = £2.25 per hour.
“YOU WERE LUCKY. We used to DREAM of being paid £13 a week”*.
*Apologies to the 1948 show.
Oh, and that princely 1100 pounds a year started in 1969, fresh out of Sheffield University.
At the time, us young’uns dreamed of scaling the ladder at blinding speed, so that the few highly competent ones might dream of a salary of 3,000 pounds a year when we hit our 30th birthdays..
Physicists speak of ‘inflation’ in the early universe. The universe of salaries had a similar blow-up at some point between then and now…