Does Full Employment lead to burn out?

The economists want to move the economy towards Full Employment. A thought struck me. What if full employment leads to employee burnout? What if getting more people into work is wrong-headed?

So, to start, the abled-bodied workers are all going to get a job, but soon the competitive workers will all be used up and businesses will be forced to hire less desirable employees. The elderly, the sick, and the disabled. Fat chance getting them to work at the same pace as others. And, doing so will cause them to burn out and leave work.

Did I get it right?

 

No. Burnout is from unreasonable expectations, nothing more. The employer is responsible for setting expectations.

 

I think full employment means pretty much everyone that is looking for a job is employed. If the sick, elderly and disabled are not looking for a job, no one is going to force them to work.

I have been working full time since graduation and I do not feel burnt out. As long as you take your vacation time, I think the majority would be fine.

 

Economists think they can move people around like pieces on a chessboard. How dare they as Greta Thunberg would say. I love how elitists think they have all the answers but they couldn't change a tire on their car if their lives depended on it.

 

By 'full employment' are they referring to actual '100% employment' or the ~95% employment of the employable, that economics theory generally recognizes as optimal? Generally, a few % of people unemployed and a few % of jobs open represents the 'consensus' of the best balance that keeps quality workers available for new positions and quality positions available for prospective workers. When there's too many jobs open, workers tend to slack off and productivity falls because employers are worried about finding a quality replacement so they tolerate less productivity. But when there's too many people looking for work, employers begin adopting unreasonable expectations since its so easy to replace people who don't meet them.

 

Does Full Employment lead to burn out?
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~ No. Unemployment does .

 

Actually, what happens is you get people who fell off the “employable” rolls because it has been so long since they worked.

 

For some people, it could. I would think it is more an issue with older workers who have settled and are just trying to bide time until retirement. They have no further career aspirations than to make it to their anointed retirement age.

The elderly sick and disabled are not going to work, nor are the people who take care of them. Don't feel like searching for it again, but read a report a few years back that a pretty good chunk of those people who are under 65 and not employed or seeking a job reported they are caregivers for children, the elderly, the infirm, etc. and not able or willing to enter into formal employment.

 

Hell I work 10:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. full time, aside from kind of sometimes erratic sleep schedules I feel fine and I'll be 41 shortly. As a matter of fact I'm posting from work.

 

It's that ~95% employment. Full employment doesn't mean that everyone has a job, there are always going to be a few who are between jobs, etc.

But economically it's also possible for the economy to briefly grow beyond full employment in the short term, where the aforementioned elderly, sick, and disabled workers are all that's left and who get a job.

 

One option is that the elderly, the sick and the disabled become actors playing the role of elderly, sick and disable family members and friends of the workers in the company.

They could all be formed into a film production cooperative and / or kibbutz and / or company or two or three of each.... and they could promote the products and the services of that company in a way that each of them would be capable of........

the average hourly salary for a Disney film star with one spoken line is a thousand dollars per hour....... the stars of the film will be make at least a thousand percent more than that.........


Churches and other non-profit and charitable organizations could play a huge role in this basic concept....


Large churches in democratic nations should print their own currencies.

Here is a look at the economy of the year 2185.... after the dust settles and the smoke clears away..... but dust and smoke can be stirred up in many, many, many different ways.... and some of those ways could be amazingly positive....



https://near-death.com/howard-storm-nde/

....

Could technology by that time be so advanced that it is invisible to somebody from the year 1985?????

 

Full employment as in an unemployment rate of <5.5%. No. It will lead to high wages though. The Labor Force Participation Rate is what we need to get back up to the high 60% instead of the current low and that would involved the able bodied, the elderly, sick and disabled aren't necessarily counted in that.

 

Not only did you not get that right, you didn't even define the basic terms and parameters which would've made it make any sense in the first place.

Full employment is a ridiculous pipe dream, and no rational person would ever think such a thing was possible, let alone desirable.

There are always going to be a large percentage of people who are unemployed because they're basically unemployable.

 

Full employment is considered just either side of 5.5% depending on the economist. Some like 4.5% but that is probably dated because we are more mobile these days and as you said there are always people in transit between jobs either because the lost their job or chose to change on their own. And as we saw in Trumps years it got below that and incomes started to rise. Same happen Bush/Rep years when unemployment recovered after the 2001 recession. It flat lined the Dem/Obama years in that non-recovery which Biden led.

 

Yes and No, from my experience. I was laid off from my job on 9/19/19 and had my current job basically fall into my lap and started back to work on 8/23/21. Almost two full years sitting around the house led to an interesting version of burnout. But I'm fundamentally a pretty lazy dude so it wasn't all that bad. But the real burn out I experienced was working for the company that laid me off. Massive offshoring of engineering work to India. No import taxes on any of the work that was done in India displacing 10 US jobs with 20 IN jobs at 2/5 the cost and 1/5 the productivity. As I predicted neither HRC or DJT would do a damn thing to address this issue. HRC never had the chance and DJT didn't do dick about it.

STEM is a nerd f'fest of classes and particularly difficult degrees compared to business and some of the arts and sciences programs. Politicians talking smack about the importance of STEM education, yeah, sure, whatever....

Anyway, that job burnt me out so bad that I took 6 months of that layoff off and I was barely interested in ever going back to work, as an engineer or even less for any other activity trading my time for money. Finally around 18 months off I came across an opportunity to get back in the game of my particular area of engineering expertise and I scored the job. Certainly there are some annoying corporate distractions foisted upon the workforce by a company that is too profitable perhaps in that it pays too many people who make super marginal contributions to deliverables to tell more directly productive members of the company how to be a better person and do a better job because of being a better person. It's a global corporate fantasy / PR stunt that millions of employees around the planet are Orwelled into displaying on-the-job enthusiastic buy-in everywhere all-the-time. So the corporate need to tell me how to live I can do without, but the challenges of solving problems in a work environment I'm kinda addicted to.

 

Full employment leads to you being able to take care of your family and retire comfortably....

 

~ I hope you find your passion in self-employment.

 

Given the increasing growth of automation and computerization unemployment can only increase, I guess you could task half the unemployed with cutting out paper dolls and the other half disposing of them...or as Pelosi has suggested it gives people more time for other pursuits, like dumpster-diving to survive. It's much better to have more jobs than people to fill them.

 

If you are not employed, what are you doing?
If you are working, you are usually paying taxes snd SSI. If you are not working, you are usually pulling money out of the system.

We say it is good for you to work and it is, but we really don’t like supporting able bodied people who would rather live off the system.
In the 90’s we ran out of labor. We hired adults who had never worked,ex cons. God, the stories I could tell. Then a wave of Mexicans came in and they got replaced.

Offshoring? All congress has to do is re write the guidelines for corporate charters. It puts the interests of shareholders first, nation second. It is tricky, but it can be adjusted.
Full employment? We don’t have the industrial base anymore. Hopefully, China’s problems will lead to higher inflation.

 

I'm in a University studying and have an economics class this semester. Which is what inspired me to create this thread topic.

 

But if you could make the same amount and work one day less a week and thereby creating an opportunity for someone else to work 1 day more a week, why not. I think the fundamental problem is that we are so conditioned to 40 hours/5 day weeks, couple weeks off during the year model, many are just not open to any other models of employment.

Let us take me for instance. I get a lot of passive-aggressive comments from my level or lower people at my work because I am not physically in the building a lot. I do more than my fair share but most of it is done working remotely/virtually. It was something that started pre-covid when I was doing my undergraduate. The owners wanted to keep me working as much as possible while still going to college. I have a work cell that my work extension forwards to. I can remotely access my work computer from home which is something they set up. With scanning and emailing and such, there really is no reason for me to be in that building now except to pick up and drop off and have a few face to face meetings a month. When i was doing my undergrad, we also did a to and from UPS box every week. I have been doing this long enough that an 8 hour day, five day a week strapped to a desk just wouldn't work for me. I almost never work a proper 8 hour day either. I worked three hours this morning starting before 5, worked another hour a bit ago, will go in for a couple hours in a little while, and will probably do a couple hours this evening or about 8 hours between 5pm today and 9am monday morning. I also have a handful of customers/clients who drop by my house after hours for work related stuff.

Anyway, just pointing out that sometimes flexibility matters. Employers just need to find people who can add value and adapt the jobs to their needs if that is what it is going to take to get/retain them.

 

Nope. You got an "F" for the semester and are now on academic probation.

Apparently, you don't understand the terms or methods used to make employment calculations.

Our starting point is the Civilian Non-Institutional Population.

If you're wondering about the title, it's because at one time not too long ago, institutionalized people were counted as part of the work-force, much to the ire of Jimmy Carter. Institutionalized people are people in prison, jail, hospitals, insane asylums, nursing homes etc etc etc.

Carter eliminated those people (statistically, not physically.)

The CNIP is 261,766,000 and is all persons age 16 and older who are not institutionalized.

From that, we create two groups, one of which is Not in Labor Force.

Why aren't they in the labor force? Who cares? It's not really anyone's business. They could be retired, disabled, or going to school, volunteering, a home-maker, caring for children or other family members, pursuing hobbies or they don't need to work or don't wanna work.

Currently, 100,373,000 people are not in the labor force.

Using 4th Grade Math:

261,766,000 - 100,373,000 = 161,393,000 are in the labor force.

Using 5th Grade Math:

161,393,000 / 261,766,000 * 100 = 61.7%

61.7% is your Labor Force Participation Rate. That is almost 5 points (66.5%) lower than it historically is, but not a shocker, since this was widely discussed in the late 1990s.

I'm truly sorry that many did not participate in those discussions, but thanks to the internet, you can catch up on them.

From your labor force, we create two groups: those who are working and those who have looked for work in the 30 days prior to the Current Population Survey (CPS) conducted on or about the 16th day of each month.

There are 154,026,000 people working at present. Therefore:

161,393,000 - 154,026,000 = 7,367,000 unemployed

7,367,000 / 161,393,000 * 100 = 4.6%

Voila! That's you're unemployment rate.

So, you are only 0.6 points away from FULL EMPLOYMENT.

Why? Because full employment is 96% or an unemployment rate of 4% (and 96% + 4% = 100%)

Q: Does full employment mean adding more people to the labor force?
A: No. All you have to do is decrease the number of unemployed from 7,367,000 to 6,455,720

0% unemployment or 100% employment is undesirable and indicative an inefficient economy.

In an efficient economy, unemployment should always fall between 2.5% and 4.0%.

Why? And why is that efficient?

Because people can quit their jobs and devote all their efforts to finding a better job, or their dream job, and they have confidence that they can do that, because the economy is good and it is efficient.

There should always be unemployed people, because an efficient economy weeds out non-performing, under-performing, unessential or inefficient operations, meaning those businesses have closed and that frees up Capital to be used more efficiently, which will create jobs.

See how that works?

Not on this planet.

Hint: Yes, a robot welder displaces a welder, but the robot-welder creates 3 jobs, so your +2 jobs to the good.

Because it's expensive.

You don't seem to understand that the Wage Cost is just one component.

Labor Cost = Wage Cost + Tax Burden + Benefit Cost

 

Um, SSI is Supplemental Security Income.

That is a joint State and federal program unrelated to Social Security benefits. It is for people disabled since birth, or disabled prior to their first job, or people who do not have enough credits for OADI, or for OASI, or whose OADI or OASI are less than the monthly benefit rate for SSI.

It doesn't say much that you can't even get the terms right.

 

No, you don't.

Since you don't understand what passive-aggressive means, I'll explain it.

First, passive-aggressive behavior is both non-physical and non-verbal.

Passive-aggressive behavior is an action taken in lieu of both physical and verbal abuse.

Examples:

1) You and your SO argue, because your SO wants you to go to the store before you go do whatever is you're gonna do. You get ready to go and you can't find your car keys, because your SO hid them.
2) You and your SO argue over what to watch on TV, your SO says fine, watch whatever you want and leaves the room. You run to the bathroom or kitchen and come back to find the channel is changed. You spend 20 minutes looking for the remote because your SO hid it, and then when you do find it, it doesn't work because your SO removed the batteries.
3) You and your SO argue over an article of clothing. Your SO says fine, wear whatever you want. A few days later you go to look for that article of clothing but can't find it, because your SO threw it in the garbage and now it's buried in a land-fill.

In the work-place, you argue with another employee, then you run to the water cooler and come back only to find that a report that was laying on your desk is missing, or your mouse is missing, or the batteries have been removed from your mouse, or someone peed in your coffee, or someone turned your photos upside down, or someone drew mustaches on the people in your photos, or your chair is broken, or someone switched your chair with a broken chair, or someone super-glued your desk drawers/locker/filing cabinet shut etc. etc etc.

As everyone can see, no comments were made.

 

You don't seem to understand that money has no intrinsic value.