The Death of American Ambition?

I recently came across an article titled "The death of American ambition: Staff at blue chip firms are refusing to work weekends and are demanding raises if asked to take on extra tasks - as TikTok 'act your wage' movement helps trigger outsourcing to India." The gist of the article is that professionals and other white collar workers in businesses where people traditionally worked long hours to get ahead are now refusing to work those long hours without suitable compensation. 

    The article relates:

    The shift in attitude, the [Wall Street] Journal report indicates, stretches beyond fields commonly associate with lengthy hours and high workloads, while also spanning virutally [sic] all of the US' 50 states and multiple generations. 

    The phenomenon was thought to be based in younger workers, but the various accounts and data collected by the Journal seem to suggest otherwise. It was criticized last week by 93-year-old Home Depot founder Bernie Marcus as a product of the Biden Administration.

    'Nobody works. Nobody gives a damn,' the billionaire, who started the big box empire in 1978, said.

    The co-founder of Home Depot slammed 'woke people,' said nobody wants to work anymore and called Joe Biden 'the worst president in history' for putting obstacles in the way of entrepreneurial success.

    Bernie Marcus, 93, believes the success the company he began with Arthur Blank in 1978 couldn't happen today because of people standing in the way of the business community.

    'We would end up with 15, 16 stores,' he said in an interview with the Financial Times. 'I don’t know that we could go further.' 

    Marcus added that he's worried about capitalism and said thanks to socialism, 'Nobody works. Nobody gives a damn. "Just give it to me. Send me money. I don’t want to work - I’m too lazy, I’m too fat, I’m too stupid."'

Or maybe they just have more leverage than at anytime in the past several decades.

    For many white collar workers, the promise of promotion is the carrot for working extra hours or taking on extra duties. The stick is the risk of being fired or sidelined if one doesn't put in the extra hours. Promises of future advancement or promotion based on hard work and long hours are largely worthless and I think most employees have come to realize this. The article relates, for instance, the following from an accountant interviewed for the story:

    Wiggins, 23, described how his dad worked long hours as a manager at a grocery store in his hometown of Houston without ascending to the store-director level and making below six figures.

    'I know how many hours he’s put in, how much he’s given to this company,' Wiggins said, revealing how he was surprised at his father's salary after seeing it when he cosigned a loan to buy his first car. The salary was not much higher than his. 

    'There’s not compelling enough correlation to make me become the person that’s going well above and beyond what I need to do.' 

And threats of losing one's job do not mean much when the employee can readily find another job and/or knows that the threats are empty because the employer will not be able to replace them. 

    What we are seeing is that the supply of labor has constricted and/or demand for labor has increased, driving up the costs of labor. And workers are taking advantage of this where possible. 

    So when we read that people are not willing to work long hours without remuneration, it's probably a result of supply and demand, not a lack of ambition or work-ethic. If the economy were to contract and unemployment were to increase, we'd probably see people willing to work for free in order to keep their jobs the return of ambition.