America Needs to Get Work Right

Is Bidenomics working? Government officials and regime media outlets are eager to tell us that Everything is Fine! But as we head into Labor Day, the signs that these sanguine declarations are wishes at best and lies at worst keep cropping up. Things are getting more expensive and the labor market is getting worse. And that is a problem. Because we fulfill our human nature by work, these developments are especially destructive. Now is a good time to think about what good work is and what we all can do to get work right in America.

First, though, the bad news that our Pravda-like media are trying to cover up. Zero Hedge reports on the continuous downward revisions that have been made to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports through the Biden years. The newest revisions are stunning: numbers of job openings reported in July have been revised to 8.827 million—the first time we had fewer than 9 million since March 2021. This would have been a drop of almost 800 thousand since May, but for the fact that the May numbers were themselves revised down from 9.582 million to 9.165 million. In other words, it hasn’t been as big of a crash in job numbers as we might have thought…because the numbers had already started tanking.

The Zero Hedge report shows that it’s not just job openings that have been revised down. It’s also: housing data, monthly payroll, industrial production, manufacturing production, cap utilization (the measure of how much of their productive capacity is being used), number of workers quitting jobs (larger numbers mean workers are confident they can get another job), and the number of hires themselves—this last being the lowest since January 2021.   

These are not good signs. And they point to the biggest picture point about what we can do to get work right in America: that is to evict the Democrats from the White House. Whether the Republican candidate is Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis or someone else, all those who care about our country must get behind the Republican candidate and evict the Democrats from the White House. 

The reason this is so important is that having your party in power in the White House doesn’t just mean the possibility of vetoing bad bills or making executive orders. It means the possibility of appointing your people to important positions in our overgrown administrative state—positions that involve real regulatory power. I’m confident that both Trump and DeSantis know that fairly radical solutions are going to be needed to reduce administrative power and make what remains of it work for the American people. This will directly affect American business.

So voting is important. But there is a lot more that needs to be done by those who are job creators, those who are managers, and those who are parents and educators. Too many people hear and respond to the left’s siren song because too often people in business do not think about the design and management of jobs as an essential and difficult task.

First, for those who create jobs, there is the need to think about what good work involves. It certainly involves making a good product or a good service. But there is more to it than that. Jobs should pay well. They should also be designed to use the gifts that workers have. Pope Pius IX wrote in 1931 about how shameful it is “when dead matter comes forth from the factory ennobled, while men there are corrupted and degraded.” Scott Adams’s legendary Dilbert cartoon has for several decades tapped into the fact that it’s not just factories; too many American white-collar workers have jobs that feel meaningless and deadening. 

Good job creation designs jobs so that workers can be responsible, use their minds, and develop their own skills. It establishes clear authority structures and allows employees to have a say in how the work is accomplished and establishes that management is there not only to “keep an eye” on those lower than them, but to protect and provide for those under them to do their jobs. It is also to work to develop those employees so that they will be able to make their own contributions to the way the company operates. Quite often, even in very low-skill jobs, those who are on the line or making the deliveries develop insights about what will make the job safer, more efficient, and indeed better. And this has been backed up by countless management studies, which all show that the people on the ground, not the suits in the office, are the ones who know how to improve the products and the services. Having this participation makes workers better off and happier. It makes companies succeed.

If job designers and managers have a task, so too do parents and teachers. Clearly helping American kids develop a work ethic and getting them job experiences is a major part of this. But there is more.

 One of the great difficulties we have today is that much of the education system—and not a few parents—has given off the impression that there are some kinds of work that are “lower” than others. If you are not in the laptop class, the message is, then you are not really doing something dignified. Developing an understanding of the dignity of all work—including manual work—is essential to our country.

In fact, though the bad news in the BLS statistics is that there has been a contraction in the number of job openings, what is also true is that the construction and manufacturing sectors combined have almost a million job openings. A Fox News report on the state of these industries highlights the real needs for new people to replace the older generation. It quotes Aidan Madigan-Curtis, a partner at the venture capital firm Eclipse Ventures: “The problem that we’re facing today is that a lot of the workforce that’s been engaged in those roles is retiring and we’re not replenishing the workforce with new recruits into these jobs because the Millennial and Gen Z generations—they kind of grew up with a different idea in mind of what was a well-paying and what was a very meaningful job.”   

Madigan Curtis says there is currently a shortage of 750 thousand welders and machinists, a shortage that will grow to 2 million within a few years. So too with electricians who can aid in the U. S.’s quest to develop our own semiconductor capacity.

Parents and teachers need to prepare American kids to see the opportunities that are in front of them, opportunities that may well involve coding or writing but may also involve a welder’s torch or a nail gun. They need to teach kids that work is good for them, work dignifies them, and that work will build up their families and their communities.

Perhaps as we crank up the grill and crack open the cold ones this Labor Day, we can have some real conversations about work. If we’re with our colleagues, we might talk about how to make our own workplaces reflect the dignity of the people in them—and not reflect a Dilbert strip. If we’re with young people, we might talk about the work we have done that has used our gifts and made a difference. We might even suggest some ideas for work that they may not have thought of—ones that might make them a good wage and help our country.

For America to work right, we’re going to need to get work right. That will require all of us, from the White House to our house.

David P. Deavel teaches at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas, and is a Senior Contributor at The Imaginative Conservative. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @davidpdeavel.