People are not just costs — The Good Jobs Strategy

Call it a great resignation, a great inspiration or a great rethinking, it’s clear that with respect to work life for many people things are never going to be the same as in the ‘before times’.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing, because far too many jobs were awful then, too.

“Our People are Our Most Important Asset”

Whatever they say while sloganeering, the reality is that many employers treat front-line workers as “low-skilled.” This aggravating way of clumping people into supposedly higher-skilled (and therefore better compensated) and lower skilled workforces leads to any number of unfortunate results, and not just for the workers concerned, but for their employers as well. I have written previously about the pernicious effects of requiring college degrees for all kinds of jobs that don’t really need them, which has the unintended consequence of raising the price of that labor. It also shuts out people who can’t afford the time or money to get a degree.

Never mind that a great many of those jobs directly have to do with quality of life. Serving customers in the hospitality industry, keeping hospitals clean and safe, unloading critical goods, unclogging a drain, replacing a critical part on a vehicle… the list of things that are essential is vast…