“No one wants to work anymore!” One of the many unfortunate things COVID-19 has left us with is this inaccurate and demeaning phrase. Over the past decade we have seen this general attitude or perception that younger people don’t “want to work.” This was made far worse after the pandemic where we saw a huge spike in unemployment that we continue to see even as the pandemic seems to recover. But the issue isn’t people getting lazier, its people getting smarter.
There seems to be this general idea that the labor shortage post pandemic is all the fault of people, especially younger people, who are “too lazy” to work when, in reality, many people are eager to work or get back to work. What they aren’t eager to do is work for unlivable wages in exploitative environments, and it’s about time this happened.
Recent inflation has brought up prices across the country from gas to groceries and all other everyday purchases. However, workers still aren’t making enough to keep up. According to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, if the minimum wage in America grew with productivity and inflation in the country, it would be almost $21.50 an hour.
How can we expect young people to enter the workforce for the $7.25 an hour federal and Idaho minimum wage when the numbers clearly show that a livable wage in the current economy is almost triple that?
But at a person’s first job, it is almost a cultural norm that you will be underpaid and exploited in some way. Which leads to this perpetual attitude that we all deserve that treatment and need to suck it up and stick with it for your miniscule, unlivable check.
For most people, this is their only choice. As the cost of everything rises, including higher education, college students are really forced into these lesser jobs as an attempt to make a dent in the overwhelming debt they build up just for trying to get an education so they might rise above these underpaying, exploitative jobs. This only continues the cycle of exploitation and inevitably forces the average college student to participate in it.
So how do we break this cycle? Unfortunately, there’s no clear answer. Raising the minimum wage would most likely be met with resistance from major corporations that thrive on underpaying their workers and, even if it was raised, they would just raise prices even further, cancelling out the benefit of a higher wage. A universal basic income sounds great in theory but would never have a chance to be implemented in this country, at least not for a while.
But the situation certainly isn’t hopeless. A small step toward making it better would be to abandon the awful idea that people don’t want to work. Self-worth isn’t laziness, and it can’t be treated as such if we want to improve our country for the next generation. Isn’t that our responsibility?
Tracy Mullinax can be reached at [email protected]