Enough Is Enough

by Rob Dietz

  The problems of unemployment, under-employment, and unsatisfactory employment stem from three main flaws in the economic system. The first flaw is the misuse of gains in labor productivity. Technological progress has allowed businesses to become more efficient at producing goods and services, such that it now takes less labor to produce the same amount of stuff than in the past. However, instead of using new technologies to reduce working hours, we have largely used them to produce more goods and services, while keeping working hours relatively constant. This choice has made economic growth a requirement for creating and maintaining jobs. As economist Peter Victor explains, “The shortage of employment has become more important than the shortage of products. Whereas in the past we needed to have more people at work because we needed the goods and services they produce, now we have to keep increasing production simply to keep people employed.”3

  But the strategy of increasing production and consumption to secure employment has become untenable, especially for those economies that already use too many resources and emit too much waste. Indeed, the transition to a steady-state economy, in which resource use and waste emissions remain within ecological limits, requires reduced production and consumption. Less production in the current economic configuration, however, leads to less work and rising unemployment—in short, not enough jobs to go around.

  The second flaw is that employers frequently lack flexibility. In trying to cut costs by standardizing their operations, firms often institute one-size-fits-all rules for work schedules and hours. For example, some companies offer only full-time positions with no opportunities for alternative work schedules. As a result, many employees end up in arrangements that are far from their ideal.

  The third flaw is a mismatch between the kinds of jobs supplied by the economy and the kinds of jobs that society really needs. Available jobs reflect societal values, but we are undervaluing the maintenance of healthy communities and ecosystems while overvaluing the consumption of stuff. The mock newspaper The Onion hit the nail on the head with a disconcertingly realistic article about consumer-product diversity exceeding biodiversity. The article joked, “Last year’s introduction of Dentyne Ice Cinnamint gum, right on the heels of the extinction of the Carolina tufted hen, put product diversity on top for the first time.”4 Many jobs that need doing don’t get done because it’s unprofitable to do them (e.g., repairing damaged ecosystems). At the same time, people perform many jobs that don’t really need doing, but that are supported by the market (e.g., brokering purely speculative financial deals).

  These three flaws are hindering effective employment—they are preventing willing workers from landing jobs that would provide benefits for society. These flaws need to be fixed as we make the transition to a steady-state economy, and two key policies can help.

  WHAT COULD WE DO INSTEAD?

  The goal for employment in a steady-state economy is straightforward: secure enough jobs for people who want them, and make sure labor is directed toward constructive and meaningful tasks. The economy should value the services of talented people like Deb Wren and dedicated organizations such as ECO City Farms as they strive to do important work. The ecological economists Martin Pullinger and Blake Alcott propose two key policies to help people secure meaningful jobs in a steady-state economy: work-time reduction and guaranteed jobs.

  Work-Time Reduction

  Work-time reduction provides a way to reallocate the fruits of increasing labor productivity. Instead of using productivity gains to boost production, we could gradually shorten the working day, week, year, and career.5 In Western economies, the quantity of goods and services that a worker produces per hour of labor has typically increased by about 2 percent per year. Assuming that labor productivity continues to increase at this rate, we could have a four-day workweek in twelve years, a three-day week in twenty-five years, and so on, with no decrease in incomes.6 Of course, there are limits to increasing productivity, and some industries may have slim prospects for gaining more productivity. For example, it’s difficult to increase productivity in human-service industries, such as physical therapy or counseling, in which effective results depend upon people spending time in direct (and often one-on-one) contact.7 Even so, trends in technological progress and productivity suggest that working hours can decline significantly from present levels.

  Using the benefits of technological progress to reduce working time, rather than increase production, would likely appeal to many people. Survey data indicate that, given the choice, the majority of people would rather work less than earn more money. In a U.S. Department of Labor study, 84 percent of respondents said that they would like to trade some or all of their future income for additional free time.8 Moreover, even if reduced working time resulted in a decrease in pay, a large number of people would still be on board. A study conducted in fifteen countries found that 41 percent of people would prefer to spend less time at work (and earn less), compared to 10 percent who would prefer to spend more time (and earn more).9

  There are many potential ways to achieve work-time reduction. Perhaps the most obvious is to shorten the standard workweek. In the United States, the forty-hour workweek traces its roots back to the 1930s when Franklin D. Roosevelt, the unions, Congress, and the courts butted heads over the length of the workweek. At the time, the $0.25-per-hour minimum wage was regarded as a more controversial measure, even though the forty-hour workweek had plenty of powerful detractors.10 The minimum wage has changed with the times, but the standard workweek has not. The number of hours has stood firm for decades, and it seems arbitrary. Why not thirty or thirty-five hours? Even with a supposed forty-hour workweek, actual working hours have risen. Many college graduates are working more than fifty hours per week, and married couples with children are working many more hours than they were a generation ago, despite evidence that working such long hours is unhealthy.11

  Another simple way (at least conceptually, if not politically) to achieve work-time reduction is to lower the retirement age or offer workers options for early retirement. Unfortunately the quest for economic growth and fiscal balance is leading governments to raise the retirement age. For example, in 2010 the Italian government enacted a plan to raise the retirement age from sixty-five to sixty-eight in an attempt to reduce pension payouts, retain a larger workforce, and decrease spending deficits.12 An even simpler reform would be to increase vacation time. The contrast between minimum paid vacation time in the United States (none legally required, but typically two weeks) and Europe (around five weeks) is striking.

  Other progressive policies, such as increased opportunities for parttime work, job sharing (in which two or more people combine part-time work to make up a full-time job), options to take career breaks, and parental leave, can also reduce working time. These are often called “work–life balance” policies, and several European countries have been practicing variations on them for years.13

  The European experience provides valuable examples of how work-time reduction could succeed in a steady-state economy. In the United Kingdom, parents with children under the age of eight (or eighteen if the child is disabled) can choose to work shorter hours, with a proportionate reduction in pay. In the Netherlands, work–life balance has been integrated into the overall employment strategy. Under the Wassenaar Agreement, signed in the 1980s, unions and employers agreed to reduce unemployment by sharing the available work.14 Individuals also have the right to request reduced working hours in their jobs, and the right to take career breaks of up to three years in length under the Life-Course Savings Scheme, introduced in 2006. The Life-Course Savings Scheme offers people greater sovereignty over their time, allowing them to enter and leave the labor market more easily, with protection from adverse impacts on their career or future employability.15 It also provides them with greater financial security by allowing workers to spread income more evenly over their lifetimes.

  These policies have helped the Netherlands to achieve the lowest working hours among high-income c
ountries—about 1,377 hours per year. For comparison, the average American works 1,778 hours per year, and the average Brit works 1,647 hours per year.16 That means the Dutch work about ten fewer weeks per year than Americans and six fewer weeks than the British! The Dutch have also achieved low rates of unemployment (below 4 percent in 2009) and a high labor force participation rate (almost 80 percent of the working-age population).17

  Work–life balance policies, such as those that exist in the Netherlands, explicitly address the flaw of employer rigidity by institutionalizing flexibility in the workplace. In addition, work-time reduction addresses the flaw of misused gains in labor productivity by spreading the decreased number of working hours more evenly throughout the population. As increasing productivity decreases the need for labor, everyone does a bit less paid work, and fewer people are forced out of their jobs. Applying work-time reduction policies more generally would not only prevent job losses, but also reduce financial burdens on governments that pay unemployment benefits.

  In addition to providing relief for unemployment, work-time reduction is likely to produce a well-being dividend. Spending fewer hours on the job opens opportunities to seek purpose and fulfillment outside of work. Once we’ve acquired the basics, most of us don’t need more consumer goods; we need more time. Less time at work means individuals can pursue well-being in less materialistic ways, such as spending time with friends and family, participating in community events, engaging in creative activities, and embarking on personal or spiritual development. We are faced with the “inconvenient truth” that current lifestyles cannot continue due to environmental limits, but the “convenient truth” is that working and consuming less can lead to increases in well-being.18

  Work-time reduction also has the potential to generate environmental dividends, by reducing resource use and waste emissions. If working hours went down at the same rate that labor productivity is going up, people could work less and still earn the same income. They could spend the same amount of money and consume the same volume of goods and services as before. With stable levels of consumption, the environmental impact of the economy would likely decrease over time as methods of production became cleaner and goods and services became less resource-intensive. Alternatively, if paid working hours decreased faster than labor productivity is increasing, people would earn less, spend less, and consume less. In this case, total consumption would fall and the environmental impact of economic activity would be reduced more quickly.

  Let’s suppose that a society embraced work-time reduction and established appropriate policies. We’d begin to accrue the social and environmental benefits, but people might still struggle to find jobs, especially ones that are truly needed by society. A policy beyond work-time reduction—one that addresses the mismatch between the kinds of jobs supplied by the economy and the kinds of jobs we need—might still be necessary to achieve all the employment goals of a steady-state economy.

  Guaranteed Jobs

  A guaranteed-jobs policy appoints the state as the employer of last resort and creates jobs for those wishing to work but unable to find employment. Guaranteed jobs may seem like a radical idea, but the right to work is included in Article 23.1 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and has been partially enacted in India, Argentina, and some European cities (e.g., Zurich).19 In the same way that the public sector guarantees primary schooling, garbage collection, and medical care (in most industrialized countries), it could also guarantee jobs, and, in the process, decouple the goal of full employment from the size or growth rate of the economy.

  Traditionally, indirect means have been used to fight unemployment. Economic growth, deficit spending, and even work-time reduction policies are examples of indirect economic approaches to achieve full employment. Although they create conditions that may generate jobs, there is no guarantee that jobs will be created. The alternative is to battle unemployment head-on. A guaranteed-jobs policy directly ensures success in achieving full employment, and at the same time furthers three important goals:

  1. It provides income for people who need it.

  2. It uses relatively cheap labor to accomplish useful public works (e.g., caring, cleaning, gardening, building, and so on).

  3. It relieves the psychological and social problems that arise when people want to work but can’t find a job.20

  Of these three goals, the third is arguably the defining one, because the first two can largely be achieved by other means. For example, the first goal could be achieved through a minimum income (see Chapter 7), while the second could be achieved by financing public works through conventional means.

  The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) is one of the most famous and successful guaranteed-jobs programs in U.S. history. The CCC existed only from 1933 to 1942, its life cut short by the onset of World War II, but it accomplished remarkable works over that brief time span.21 With the Great Depression draping a shroud of unemployment over the economy, many young men were desperate for jobs, including Isaac Louderback. “I wasn’t doing anything. I needed the job—that’s the reason I got into the CCC.”22 Louderback enlisted as a nineteen-year-old after having completed high school and one year of college, joining 275,000 other young men nationwide who had enrolled within the first ninety days of the program’s inception.23 He was stationed on the high ridges of Shenandoah National Park among the mountain meadows and undulating forests of Virginia’s countryside. The park had been established only seven years before, and Louderback worked on forest health projects—surveying sites to remove nuisance shrub species—in addition to rock-breaking assignments on Skyline Drive, the scenic roadway that rolls over the spine of Shenandoah.

  When asked about camp life in the CCC, Louderback says, “It was a wonderful experience, it was wonderful training. It made you more self-reliant.” But more important, the experience helped shape the rest of his life. “I think maybe the successes that I’ve had … came from my early training with the CCC. [It] gave you a lot of trades and things that you could do that would help you later on.”24 Many of the men who started with the CCC went on to careers in forestry, carpentry, mechanics, engineering, masonry, and wildlife management.25

  The experience also provided immediate relief for families in urgent need of income. Enlistees came from families who were on, or eligible for, welfare. Each man received $30 per month in pay (the equivalent of about $500 today), but by law, he had to send $25 of it home to his family.26 Enterprising recruits like Louderback often found ways to earn supplemental income. He made a deal with his fellow recruits to stay behind and clean the barracks over weekends when everyone was on leave. His barracks-mates paid him 10 cents each for this chore. With his earnings, he was able to help put his younger brother through business school.27 In the end, 3 million men found employment through the CCC.28 They restored natural areas that had suffered from generations of abuse and built some of the most enduring and beautiful structures on the American landscape. From his time in the hills and hollows of Shenandoah, Isaac Louderback could look back proudly and say that the CCC “was a wonderful thing—it actually accomplished something.”29

  Economic growth presents us with a dilemma: on the one hand, we rely on growth to generate employment; on the other hand, continuous economic growth is undermining the life-support systems of the planet. More than anything else, it’s the specter of unemployment that haunts economists and public officials when they contemplate the end of economic growth and prevents them from considering the alternative to growth. Policies like work-time reduction and guaranteed jobs offer a way out of the dilemma. They provide reassurance to economists, public officials, and everyone else across society that we can maintain full employment in the transition to a steady-state economy. And the changes might just help us get some useful things done, too.

  WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

  The economic system has serious flaws if it constantly puts people out of work. It has flaws if many of its jobs really don’t need to be done. And
it has flaws when people find themselves stuck in unfulfilling occupations. Policies such as work-time reduction and guaranteed jobs have the potential to eliminate, or at least mitigate, these flaws. But like many of the changes required for the transition to a steady-state economy, the changes in employment policies will require a shift in values, especially a shift toward stronger environmental and community values. The shift is necessary to confront the challenges of today’s environmental and social conditions, which stem from too many people consuming too much stuff. The social and environmental landscape now contains degraded ecosystems, broken communities, shrinking supplies of energy, and declining government services. This may seem like a scary landscape, but it’s also full of opportunities, especially opportunities for securing employment.

  Ecosystems are in need of restoration, and communities are in need of healing. The end of the era of cheap oil will likely mean a greater demand for human labor. Helping children learn to read, tending community gardens, caring for the elderly, restoring native plants along stream corridors—these are examples of labor-intensive tasks that could employ many more people if we were to make them higher priorities. In a nutshell, there’s plenty of work waiting to be done, many hands ready and able to do it, and practical policies to match people to the work. But first we have to change our values so that we can properly value the work that needs to be done.