As I hiked across the plains I often heard the lament that Americans do not want to work hard any more. What prompted this lament was the influx of Mexicans to work in meat-packing plants. If we are to consider working “hard” as working “long,” putting in many hours, as a whole nation this lament simply is unfounded.
I live on a street with 12 households. The majority of those households had a single wage earner in the sixties; the majority has two wage earners in the new millennium. If you are my age you know precisely what I’m talking about. As you were growing up, wherever that was, the households in your neighborhood generally had one wage earner. The neighborhood where you are now either has households with two wage earners, or just one adult.
That’s why I don’t get too excited about unemployment statistics. There are a lower percentage of males employed now than fifty years ago, but there is a much, much higher percentage of females employed. As a whole, even when unemployment is high, we have households working more hours than when I was growing up. It’s more than coincidence that a trending decline in community involvement accompanies this trending increase over fifty years in regards to how long households work.
Rather than a panic over getting more people employed, or angst over the amount of welfare provided those who aren’t, there should be greater concern over why this has become a necessity. One wage earner working 40 hours, or two wage earners working 20 apiece, should be sufficient to cover housing, health, food, clothing, utilities and education costs. It’s not, and neither long hours nor welfare to compensate the inadequacy of wages does much for building community. Out of the two choices, our society views long hours as the more virtuous, even as the conflict with family and community is all the greater.
There’s another aspect to the lament that people don’t want to work hard. Working hard in our society implies a virtuous burden, a cross to bear about which to complain or boast in comparison to those not working “hard.” More on that in the next part.
