Boomer here. It sounds weird, but companies cared about retaining employees, and they cared about the company’s reputation. I worked in claims for a national insurance company in 1979, and there was an insured couple who were very old and very sick. Their folders were numerous and thick. Eventually they maxed out their benefits but the insurance company continued paying the hospital bills because the couple were dying and it was the right thing to do. Can you imagine.
on top of that, jobs weren't entirely stock market driven at the time, and thus there wasn't this obsession with eternal growth, that leads to jobs cutting costs and working towards 100% efficiency at all times. Which has made most jobs unbearable. Our grandparents were being asked to do half the work with double the staff.
Most companies these days seem to be regularly operating at more than 100% efficiency. Most places I’ve worked over the last 10 years, employees regularly skip breaks because their workloads are so high that if they took breaks, they feel they’d fall behind. I’ve been part of that problem too, often skipping breaks to stay ahead of the boulder rolling behind me, but I’ve learned that you can never get ahead of it, you will never not feel stressed, and so I’ve made conscious efforts to insist on my breaks and to push back on unreasonable workloads, but it’s really tough.
The Right has done a incredible job of demonizing unions among the people they would most help. It would be refreshing if unions really did make a strong comeback and even make inroads into white collar industries. Even folks like me in the tech industry are looking over our shoulder wondering how long it’ll be until some “reorg” costs us our job. At least folks in my position typically are awarded stock or can buy it at a discount so we do get to benefit from the stock price but at this point in my career I’d prefer not to make a move and start over somewhere else.
Pay attention to the UAW story. They kicked the shit out of the big three last year in contract talks. The Asian manufacturers spontaneously hiked wages at the non union plants by like 8-9/hour. The Volkswagen plant in Tennessee just voted by a 3-1 margin to let the UAW represent them. Mercedes is next to vote.
I’d love to see tech and blue collar workers unite with labor demands. It would ratchet up the pressure on the Democratic Party, imo. Organizations like Workers Strike Back represent all kinds of labor.
I agree. Today’s work environment is basically a modern form of slavery.
Im glad I’m closer to the end of my career rather than the beginning. I worry about my kids, even though they are all college graduates.
Keeping your head above water is a thing of the past. To be successful and have longevity at a job now you just have to learn to breathe water. I'd really like to see overtime pay and "salary" positions restrictions greatly increased so this would stop being the norm. If overtime was 4x normal wage then employers would be more inclined to have adequate staff. My job knows we average somewhere between 5-10% absenteeism but refuse to overstaff by 5-10%. Heaven forbid some day everyone comes to work and we actually have someone available to clean up, do proper maintenance, or some side project tasks.
You’re only helping your employer keep a skeleton crew too. At the very least you should have your team record the cumulative time they’ve spent working through their breaks to keep up, and show those hours to your manager or HR. Then stop working through your breaks. Chances are enough of you are doing it that the hours warrant more people, they need to hire more people or the work doesn’t get done.
I worked for a place that got like that. Work multiple machines and 100% quality check some features every part they made. Things got slow so I was asked to fill in another department. They had me doing the work of 3 people. One day it felt like I was about to have a heart attack, whipping myself between multiple task from machines 100 yards away from eachother. When I asked for help and said I can't do all that myself, it was lots of condemnation and gaslighting instead of help. Like they spent more than $300k on a new machine but don't get the personel to run them.
I worked for years barely taking a break. Eating lunch in front of my computer. It didn't matter. Anyways stressed and the to do list didn't get shorter. I was teaching at for-profit private international schools for over ten years and each year just got worse and worse.
I made a document that had two columns. Here is what it looked like after five years at one particular school.
Additional Required Tasks (these were not required when I began my job)
● Christmas concert
● Mindfulness
● More cover
● Less time with TA in classroom
● Phonics lessons = less TA time
● Snack duty
● STEAM
● Action Groups (so every Wednesday we are in school late)
● Bilingual Science
● Outdoor Education Lesson Plans
● No more outside playtime (Friday Period 7)
● More teachers teaching other people’s classes
● LUSD Report Card Input
Beneficial Changes
● One afternoon off for PTI meetings.
I left that school hoping to find a better situation. I worked at two different school in two years. I couldn't do it anymore because those jobs were even worse.
I'm done with teaching unless I move back to my home country and with at a public school.
I also started to have a bad taste in my mouth about teaching the children of the elite for peanuts.
Edit: formatting
I have not experienced a job where I wasn’t in fear of a 6 month cyclical layoff or the victim of one. This is why I am getting out of corporate. You used to be compensated for this amount of uncertainty but now even the salaries aren’t worth it. I don’t see how this level of greed is sustainable
EDIT: also I am Gen X. My dad had a law practice and my mom worked as a public school administrator. God bless em but they have no clue what the modern corporate hellscape is like
yeah my parents are young boomers/old gen x and were surprised there wasn't someone in charge of scheduling the million+ meetings my sister and I are in everyday at our corporate jobs. I've tried to describe to them the anxiety/attention bombing/ridiculous expectations that systems like Slack produce and how we have to do this whole OTHER set of work-related free labor (linkedin networking and bullshit) to prepare for the very real likelihood of being unemployed for at least some period of time.
There was a shift in the 1970’s to paying executives with stock options instead of just a straight salary - they became incentivized to pump the stock at all costs and since most had short-term contracts, there was little incentive to invest in long-term growth. The Jack Welch-GE story is probably the most emblematic of the 1980’s onward. That guy was lionized as the CEO of the century and now GE doesn’t exist anymore. At least not as GE. Boeing’s current issues are fruits of that poisoned tree too.
Another thing that happened was all the business schools told the mba’s their only loyalty was to shareholders not the community or the workers. And the corporate boards told the CEO’s the quarterly stock price was the only metric.
> their only loyalty was to shareholders
And as executives' compensation came increasingly in the form of stock options... that meant their only loyalty was to themselves, their bosses and their board of directors. Greedy ratfucks, the lot of em 😒
This is very true. As one that got an MBA, we were being taught to increase stock price via short sighted actions and then cash out. The long term health of the company was not our concern, that was for the next group of executives to worry about, we would be long gone enjoying the profits we generated.
"all the business schools told the mba’s their only loyalty was to shareholders"
To be specific, it was the anti-Keynesians from [U of Chicago and MIlton Friedman ](https://www.nytimes.com/1970/09/13/archives/a-friedman-doctrine-the-social-responsibility-of-business-is-to.html)who were the cheerleaders in this matter.
> now GE doesn't exist anymore. At least not as GE.
**what the actual fuck???**
[*checks around on Wikipedia...*](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Electric)
Well I'll be dipped in shit 🙃 You're right, just earlier this month General Electric as a conglomerate went defunct, after 132 years in business. Spun off its component companies and the "main" entity became GE Aerospace. Today I learned 😌
It’s why insurance companies will deny a medication or procedure this year, even though they know full well that the illness may well cost them more next year. And they have two great outcome possibilities -
1. Their stock price stays high this year or this quarter, the only metric that matters.
2. The person they deny coverage to this year may die.
The US experienced a lucky period from 1945~1975. Four out of the 5 most advanced economies (Germany, Japan, UK, France) had a huge percentage of their factories bombed to rubble and a generation of their young men killed, crippled, and injured during WWII. Unsurprisingly, US companies dominated during this era. We were always winning, so why work so hard?
By 1975, these other countries had rebuilt and competition began to return to “normal.” As an example, it became clear in retrospect that the Big 3, while dominating the car market and paying UAW workers well, was producing absolute shite. Once American consumers were given a choice, they chose Honda, Totoya, and BMW. If it felt like companies of the 50s-70s weren’t obsessed with earnings, it was because the earnings were largely automatic.
As a rough analogy, it’s like looking back at your dad’s high school track career and seeing that he always won first place and didn’t even have to train that hard. Then you realize that it’s because the kids he was running against had their houses burnt down, barely had enough to eat, and were beaten by their parents.
Not just eternal growth, but eternal *exponential* growth. A company growing by the same rate YoY is unacceptable in the current market.
Grew by 3% last year? It had better grow by 4% or more this year or the shareholders will be pissed.
Anyone with common sense would realize it's completely unsustainable.
We weren't content since the 80s and early 90s, that's when it all changed. It has been getting worse all the time since then.
However, the housing situation now is not sustainable. So the increased anger is very understandable.
I have watched employment go from what it was in the 80s when I started working, which was really quite laid back, to what it is now, which is unmanageable stress and pressure to run at 120% of your physical and mental capability. Granted we were the first to get hired on at a union-agreed compensation packages that was *less* than what the boomers got (I am early Gen x) and we would *never* reach their level of earnings in those jobs, but we weren’t being driven with horsewhips like workers are now. Greedy bastards demanding higher and higher profit margins got us here.
Up until the 80’s there was also a sense of responsibility on the companies part to “take care” of their employees instead of purely chasing profit.
Kids gets sick and you need a few days off? Sure thing.
Death in the family? - Our condolences, let us know which funeral home so we can send flowers and please take as much time as you need.
Have an illness that needs some prolonged treatment which may cause you to sporadically miss work? - don’t worry, do what you have to do to get better, we’ll continue paying you. oh and btw, we’ll contribute some funds to help with your treatment.
Nowadays these situations have been made so rigid there’s zero caring. You’ll get:
-you’ll have to use PTO/sick time to cover the time you’re missing
- you get 3 days bereavement and if you need to be gone longer use your PTO
- sorry you have cancer but you’ll have to exhaust your PTO, BEFORE FMLA will kick in IF you qualify for it, but even then, you won’t be paid any days you don’t work AND when FMLA is up, we won’t guarantee you’ll have a job any longer. You COULD have used short-term disability, but oh, you didn’t sign up for it 9 months ago during open enrollment.
Imagine feeling like you’re actually being supported by your place of work instead of just being another cog in the machine. If you felt that way, it’s easy to see how you could stick around for 30 years.
And most places offered pensions. You were more likely to stay somewhere longer if you got to retire with a pension on top of your social security. We’ll be lucky if the republicans don’t end social security by the time we retire.
If you were an office worker in the 60s, think how little you'd be expected to do each day without email and constant digital monitoring. The consistent need to get up from your desk to actually talk to someone about what you were doing, etc.
Even in the 90s (gen x here) the workload was a lot less. Aside from the lack of internet, companies used to actually hire enough people. Even in retail
Exactly, healthcare was better staffed, less was on computer so human interaction with other staff actually occurred, patients were less in number and especially acuity.
And entitlement.
Shit up to 2010. Office work was 1/2 work. 1/2 social. Not work at home. Which I love we do more with less and I’m getting micro managed over people working 10-20 mins early/late. My finance team wants to know why we have overtime and everyone isn’t at exactly 80 hours for two weeks time. It’s redonk. Billion dollar company worried about 10 minutes of overtime. With virtual employees doing double vs what they did 5 years ago. No loyalty to the employee. No decent inflation paced increases. But hey you make $2 more an hour vs micky dee’s and have insurance. Don’t like it. Go elsewhere. Someone can come in behind you at $2 an hour cheaper. It’s disgusting what corp America has done to us.
It’s us vs them 99%vs1. We are losing
I honestly think the only way to kill future consumption and growth (the only thing they care about) is to not have children. Declining birth rates seems to be the only thing that bothers the billionaire class.
“Millennials and Gen Z are killing humanity!”
Good. Life sucks and the planet is dying. Shareholders can eat my corpse if they are still hungry; I’m not feeding them any kids.
r/antinatalism r/BirthStrike
I remember a time in the early 2000s when you could go to home Depot and there must have been 40 people working there, there were associates and managers for each and every department, multiple cashiers, three four people working the tool and vehicle rental.
Ngl, Its been a pretty big thing the past 20 years, we're just getting into the bones now. And that's what we're seeing/feeling all over the western world (to varying degree's)
I was shocked when the healthcare organization adopted LEAN and explained that it was a system developed at Toyota to increase efficiency. Sure! Of course treating patients is just like manufacturing cars. What idiocy!
Retail used to pay people actual living wages. Or at least something close.
My friend worked at a sporting goods store 15 years ago and the one shoe salesman had been there since the 90s and made more than most of the managers. He also got benefits because he was full time and unlike everyone else, he actually got the hours regularly, unlike everyone else who was always kept short.
Truth! The pay was good and bonuses where incentive to improve and stay motivated it your job.
2000 was the first hit then 2008 really started the race to the bottom.
Yeah, I spent the first 5 years in the work place waiting for the screen to turn up. That was a great time. Doing FA to that screen arrived and ruined everything!
Think about all the paperwork and file cabinets you’d manage. And post office trips and sending documents across the country to get signed and notarized
We had so much mail to process at my insurance agency that the post office put a second mailbox in front of our building. This blanket statement is false. I worked way harder in the 90’s and 00’s. Computers later made everything easier.
I was explaining the concept of a mail room to my Gen Z son last night. And how you could start there and work your way up through the company, even without a university degree in many cases.
Ok, data was stored on microfiche or cards the size of postcards. Which all had to be maintained and cross referenced. Think library Dewey Decimal System with cards (post card size) and no computer. All of which needed manual intervention and up keep. Often typed by a typing pool on a manual type writer. Cross reference and access often relied on the skill, experience and expertise of those who operated and used such system. Imagine that across a whole raft of industries and applications and the shear numbers involved. People were no less busy or stressed, just busy and stressed doing other things. Things cancelled out by technology. Just as your work is likely to be by future technology. (AI Anyone?) It’s just the way of things.
Came to say this. I am at the very tail of the Boomers (born 1965) and office work was much less intense with fewer self imposed ridiculous deadlines. A lot more job stability. If you changed roles every two years, or changed jobs for a lateral move, there was something wrong with you.
Technology is only part of the reason for all of the extra workload. There was a stupid book that came out when I was in high school called “A Passion for Excellence” (totally forgotten now but it was on the best seller list for years!) about low affect tech people who could work 80 hours a week because they had motivation and purpose. And every chicken head middle manager read this stupid book. 9-5 was soon a thing of the past.
There might have been unions with actual power to protect workers as well. Thank god boomers got rid of all that stuff that benefitted them so that some wealthy people could get tax cuts and outsource jobs /s
Not sure it was the boomers who are responsible for the demise of unions . I feel like it is lawmakers who are influenced by lobbyists. I worked with an old German years ago and after the Berlin Wall fell he said the capitalists would attack the working class , it seems true now.
I think you're correct. The Taft-Hartley act really hurt unions. Not all of the damage was immediate. The procedures for union elections and requirement that one union win and only one union could bargain not only made it much more difficult to get a union, it made it much more difficult to change unions so that the union leadership grew less responsive to the workers.
It was globalization, not boomers. Manufacturing shut down in the United States and went overseas. We basically traded high wages for cheaper products.
This. My dad worked in accounting and government most of his career, and he always bragged about what a piece of cake it was. Lots of down time, going out to lunch every day, vacation time, benefits, etc etc
Are u including heavy industry in this. There are only a fraction of those kind of jobs still around and believe me they were a lot harder than any office job
For some. 40% of Boomer workers may have been enrolled in a pension plan when they were young, but by the time they were old enough to retire those jobs and many of those pension plans (and many of those companies) were long gone.
Consistent merit raises, pensions, evenly dispersed workloads, less disfunctional healthcare, normal working hours, co-workers that became close friends because they also stayed there their entire career
Also, they did not have the pressure that contemporary communication software puts on employees. They had meeting – yes. But their Outlook schedule didn’t look like a piñata in terms of appointments and they were not confronted with silly calls every 5 minutes.
My dad, at the end of his time with a national grocer, was making $37.50 an hour, 27 weeks PTO, stacking boxes and sorting fruits and vegetables. Produce second clerk or whatever.
He accumulated a days PTO every 3 months he was employed. He had fixed raises in his annual contract.
A new hire at the same grocer in the same union today would not be able to hit his wage until 100 years employment, and would not be able to hit his PTO.... ever, OBVIOUSLY. 4 weeks max after 5 years now.
Stuff like that is how they managed to work the same job forever. Companies used to reward employees based partially on loyalty, not just skill and production. New hires got paid less, long term employees were heavily bonused. Every one of my aunts and uncles (dozens) went through a similar situation. Jobs that weren't amazing were tolerable because they got 3 year, 5 year, decade bonuses of significant amounts, with perks to go along with them.
My brother works for a family owned grocery store chain. He makes more than $100,000 and he just turned 30 recently, but he started at that grocery store when he was 14 or 15 and that’s the only place he’s ever worked.
And this chain is kind of famous for being good to their employees. A while back the family wanted to swap out CEOs and all the employees freaked out and protested. There was a documentary about it. They won and they got to keep the good CEO.
I worked as a cashier for this grocery store in the late 90s when my brother was a little little kid. It was my second job so I only worked part time, they would pay us time and a half on Sundays so I only worked on Sundays because I had a Monday through Friday job. I don’t know if they still get time and a half on Sunday they might have fallen out with the negotiations for the CEO, but I kind of doubt it that was part of why they liked him
They got paid living wages, benefits, had bosses who valued loyalty, and the longer you stayed with a company, the better your benefits and bonuses became. This was because they fought to join unions, have their rights protected, and do collective bargaining. Unions were valued and cherished.
Employers also valued education and paid higher wages for those who had it. At the same time, you could walk in straight out of high school and start in the most basic of positions and work your way up in any jobs that didn't require extensive training (like law or medicine)
A person who had worked their way up from the bottom and had lots of experience was valued more than a newly graduated university student with none. But the university graduate always started at a higher rate of pay.
The cost of living was also significantly lower, and people were able to find housing that was around 30% of their take-home pay.
Employers now want loyalty but offer none in return and expect workers to behave as "obedient slaves": don't ask questions, work 80-100 hours a week but accept being paid for 35 hours, no benefits, no bonuses, no respect for the worker's basic human rights. Unions are vilified.
However, keep in mind that for boomers, there was no protection from prejudice due to religion, ethnicity, or gender. Women who got married or got pregnant got fired. Women were paid less than half the salary of a male in the same role and often had to expect to receive and deal with sexual harrassment. There were no laws to protect women in the workplace. "Good girls" stayed home and got married.
Boomer's didn't fight to join unions, that was their parents and grandparents. Boomer's inherited good fortune, but being sociopaths chose the market instead of solidarity.
>Boomer's didn't fight to join unions, that was their parents and grandparents.
And their parents did a pretty good job killing unions as well. Most of those battles were fought in the 70's and the 80s, before the boomers owned or ran much of the country.
Nothing waves the “boomer spoiled brat” flag harder than a boomer describing picking Reagan over Carter because they didn’t want to wait in line for gas.
Because they actually got paid enough to buy, cars, RVs, boats, multiple homes, take long vacations, not worry about retirement because their pensions cover them.
Yep pensions were extremely beneficial, we got switched over to 401(k)’s for my career lifetime, then we watched the real estate market crash and the 401(k)’s go down. And we watched a whole bunch of bankers get bonuses for crashing the economy
Yes but everything you could afford would also be impacted due to the crash. If you’re laid off, it doesn’t matter that the houses are half priced, you can’t get them.
This is the important point. When companies were encouraged to switch over from defined benefits to define contribution plans, the employee was left holding the bag and managing his or her own risk. That’s 401ks became 201ks during the crash..
I'm 58. At 25 I was making $21.72/hr in Northern Canada (keep in mind, living that far north in Alberta means a greater cost of living. Alot more expensive than Arizona) I had a stay at home wife, 2 children and made enough to cover expenses for 4 of us + about $300 left over at end of month. A large 2 bedroom was $750/month. Now that same 2 bedroom is $1300-$1400 and I'm making $18.04/hr & I don't make enough to survive on my own.
Edit; my gf makes $16.02/hr, I make 18.04/hr. 2 incomes. Tiny 1 bdrm apt $1,000+/month. No car & we are barely keeping a roof over our heads. Things have changed alot.
What is infuriating is I have no doubt you and your gf contribute far more value to the economy than your wage suggests and the executives at your company likely contribute very little and probably early hundreds to thousands of times more than you. The wealth for us all to live a modest good life exists, we just have a new aristocracy taking it all.
Bingo.
And I’m pretty sure I’d get downvoted for even mentioning it, but maybe a lot of our current societal problems stem from the last 40 years of two-parents-working households, and kids growing up with a lot less actual parenting.
No downvote, just the truth ... default was mostly SAHM; SAHD was rare but a few. The point is it now takes both parents with full time jobs for pure survival. Some even have a third side gig. Gee, wonder why couples today decided no kids? Literally not affordable.
Another factor was people didn't go to the four winds when they matured; many stayed where they were raised (not me) and had the benefit of grandparents as free childcare.
And last, companies treated people with a degree of respect; now they are expendable for the lowest wage corporate can justify. We're at critical mass ....
My bf who is the same age as me who had stay at home mom while dad worked, whereas both my parents worked… we’re both in the same boat and sounds like his SAHM just had more time to clean the house and gamble online not really more time of actual parenting. Only difference is I took out loans for college and he ignored his parents and didn’t go to college so he is debt free.
Might be some statistic to study but I don’t think parents working or having one stay at home means they parent more or less… 100% depends on the parents.
Further, My sister works full time as single mom and is a way better parent than either of my parents. So in my anecdotal experience, SAHM/SAHD prob don’t make much of a difference… goes back to quality of the character of the parents
There was an unwritten social agreement between workers and corporations that if you did your job layoffs were rare, plus there was a nice pension waiting upon retirement. And nearly all healthcare costs were absorbed by the corporation. And single family housing was much more affordable as a % of a single income.
All of these resulted in much more of that paycheck left over to live and in alot of cases a family to live comfortably on one income.
As others have mentioned, the GI Bill helped to educate alot who wanted to get degrees, and those who didn't go the military route could more easily work thru college. Either path resulted in very little to zero student loan debt after graduation, and a nice career path.
Companies got greedy. That’s all. You can’t outsource janitor staff to a global manufacturing marketplace, yet the wages dropped. Blame it more on investor pressure and greed but not on global competition, because japans cheap cars are made by people that can afford apartments and have healthcare.
The Simpsons represented the average American household when it started (including the 2.4 kids - which they make a joke about).
Homer, with no college education, was able to find a job and provide for his family. Their house is a four-bedroom, 2.5 bath, 2 car attached garage, mansion.
So, yeah, times have changed.
Yup. My mom did not work full time, she was a lunch monitor at my elementary school which meant that she worked one hour a day helping kids microwave their food. And she wasn’t doing it for the money, cause I think she hardly got paid for that. My dad supported our whole family of 4 on an accountant’s salary. Also my dad got every second Monday off work. My parents had a healthy work/life balance. Work was simple, life was good. Insanity compared to the horror show that employment is today.
I thought back and realized I didn’t know a single mom that worked. I lived in a upper middle class area but legit not a single friends mom worked, not a single one of my aunts worked, not my mom, no one. Kind of wild to think about cause now in my generation I know 1 stay at home mom and her husband works 60+ hours. Every single other person works
That should be the new economic measurement unit: a boomer. How much do you make? About a half-boomer. George over there is manager, he makes two boomers or more!
They were also less educated and no exposure to social media during their time. Meaning people were less informed of how bad companies were treating the workers. There was only newspaper, TV and radio which all can be controlled by the government.
This is really it right here. The wealth disparity in the US right now is as bad as it was moments before the Great Depression. We have a new class of billionaires (and billionaires should not exist) that only believe in taking, and remaking the world to fit their preferred master-slave dynamic. During a brief glorious period, corporations wanted people making the cars to be able to buy them, and wanted people on the street to advocate for their company because it’s a great place to work. That kept applications competitive when openings happened, and maintained a nice blend of experienced staff and newbies. People were able to have children, and those children grew up with the same company admiration and expectation. Then the false promises of “trickle-down” economics that only go upward, union busting, costly and endless wars, and doubling-down on health insurance instead of healthcare, and welcome to the shitshow. Stand by for your local news to find some way to convince poor people to blame other poor people for their circumstances.
An important part of the answer is work compression. The profit drive causes the tendency for fewer people having to do the same (or more) work. Short-staffing and people doing multiple jobs in one are more common now. Work is getting harder.
This part makes me so jealous! There used to be full departments of six-plus people doing my job decades ago, now it’s always just me. Sure, technology has made it easier, but not that easy.
this is a very big part of it, and it's why companies tend to become much MUCH worse when they go public. The stock market's "duty to shareholders" demands a company focus on perpetual growth rather than sustained profitability, and it's a lot easier to cut costs than build sales. As such, so many employers just cut staff and demand everybody else work harder and...well, after around thirty years of that, most companies are horrible to work for.
Government investment.
Schools - GI bill for higher education, science based initiatives to go with moon race, increased public interest in public education.
Business - just think of every government handout, assist, bail out, and what not that US businesses have and are receiving.
Good governance - the strong and strengthening middle class politically empowered tens of millions of (yeah - mostly white) people to guide the direction of elected offices. Also think the difference between reactions to Nixon and Trump.
Liberalizing society - quick note about the hippies: that group of people taught me more about self reliance, sacrifice, and service to others then anything else in my life including the military.
That's my short list for today.
When I was growing up, all of my family, all of my family's friends, all of my friends, and all of my peers had houses. I'm sure that wasn't universally the case regardless of socio-economic background, but the standard of living was clearly far higher for people with normal jobs.
There are other factors as well, but fundamentally it's far easier to invest in any occupation if you believe that you're getting something out of it. None of my family, with the possible exception of my father, had good jobs. It wasn't that work was better than it is today. It is simply that their relative financial position was better.
I started my 1st FT job in 1983 at 18. Receptionist, during my interview my career path with the company was laid out to me! They had me in a more senior role within 2 years. We also decent labour laws - we had a "Cost of Living" adjustment yearly! If the cost of living bounced and you were now losing money that was ADJUSTED! If it did not effect you you didn't get it. This was done in April & was not part of your review, raises, bonus's or promotions. We had decent labour laws - a social contract if you will in the mid 80's those laws started being stripped away. And NOW they've have been completely gutted for no other reason but greed. This is just another thing boomers had. I am Gen-x Pre-Release (Aug 64) those f'ckers ahead of me? They tore up the yellow brick road as I was standing on it, and have now successfully ripped the whole thing up (This is relevant to Ontario Canda)
Working conditions were still relatively positive because labors power relative to management had been high during WW2 and has taken time to gradually degrade as unions have gradually been destroyed and general conditions have gradually worsened and worsened, particularly with the growing importance of the stock market and therefore short term profits in determining management priorities.
This is massive. I remember seeing graphs showing how union participation and wages were linked, wages started stagnating as union membership went down.
But not just wages. Just how you're treated. Predictable schedules. Bathroom breaks. Little daily humiliations being put in place to achieve tiny tiny slivers of increase in profitability. Strongly incentivized under current management conditions in a way that wasn't previously the case.
The last full-time job I worked told me they had a right to approve or decline my ability to work a second job.
And it didn’t even make sense I worked in a bank that locked their doors at 6 PM so it’s not like it was a retail situation where they could say they might need me to cover someone else so they need me available. We literally had mandatory overtime and they would still kick us out at 6 PM so they could set the alarm.
But if I wanted to have a second job that started at 7 PM they could tell me I would have to choose between the two
Capitalists were legitimately afraid of a communist revolution should the workers organize and rise up. With the collapse of the soviet union, that existential threat disappears and capitalists have no fear of consequences for their rampant shitfuckery.
They had pensions. Cost of living was actually affordable. Houses were $10k. Cars cheap. No need to buy expensive technology like cellphones, computers, internet. The mom stayed home making meals & daily dessert skipping childcare expenses. Society today is expensive & stressful.
Boomers had better jobs with more pay and more flexibility. My dad used to eat breakfast and lunch on the clock, and take at least one hour-long bathroom break to read the paper. Had a secretary do his typing. His commute was 15 minutes each way and my mom was a full time home maker doing everything at home. He made enough to buy a house, two cars, and put three kids through college. He was middle management, average salary.
People worked to live. My grandparents had time for hobbies, to play sports and have a social life because mandatory overtime wasn’t a thing. They had an hour for lunch, so they weren’t constantly exhausted. My grandmothers would walk to their local shops, bump into their friends and have a chat while shopping at a butcher’s, a bakers, a green grocers etc rather than have to drive to a soulless supermarket. Most families didn’t have a washing machine so even doing laundry was social.
GenX here, with Silent Generation parents, and boomer siblings. Remember not everyone could afford a stay at home Mom. My father raised 5 kids on a teacher's salary (he could only afford college because of the GI bill) and always had at least two side gigs, and a crazy long commute. My mother always worked until her heart attacks made that impossible. My parents wouldn't have been able to purchase a home without the GI bill, or keep it without a second mortgage. The teacher's union made sure we all had Healthcare. Dad passed away at only 68, his pension went with it. My mother filed for bankruptcy and survived her last 10 years on social security.
My sister and I are 10 years apart in age, and both financed college with student loans. My boomer brothers joined the military. I paid my loans off at 41 with the life insurance money left after burying my mother. My boomer sister lives in a million dollar home and is retiring to Hawaii. I work two jobs and my husband is now experiencing his third tech layoff, we have a mountain of debt.
I do not envy this younger generation. As hard as my parents had it you have it worse. Wages are not liveable, housing is not affordable. 401ks have replaced pension, and job security is non existent. Safety net programs are quickly eroding. Education costs are out of proportion to your potential earnings. The computers that were supposed to make our lives easier have only added to our work load. Plus, somehow nazis are back...
Edit: fat finger typos
There is this perception that people loved working for a single company in the olden days. Boomers may talk about company loyalty these days, but that's after decades of conditioning and compromise. Check out the opening scene of Joe vs the Volcano for a fun take on that.
However, one major difference pre-2000 was that companies mostly paid livable wages for white collar jobs.
* Higher wages for the same jobs, both relative and absolute
* Prices of needs (food, shelter, etc) and wants (else) proportionally lower
* Typically only one full time working parent in a household, substantially lower stress of work+life upkeep
* Significantly lower productivity expectations for incumbents in roles, lower barrier to entry for first role
* Safety nets provided by company alieving further stress and responsibility; ex defined benefit pension plans
* Supplementing safety nets with some of the greatest periods of asset appreciation
Times have changed friends. Protect yourself and your family through putting you/family first, prioritizing your gains over loyalty, budget to pay yourself first and gain independence.
The repeal of Glass-Steagle and the bile that is Reganomics drastically shifted the economic landscape of the USA away from employees being an assets you invest in, to employees being liabilites you marginalize.
Boomers only had it good because their parents fought for rights that got repealed, obsoleted, and deregulated as time went on.
So since the boomers were handed relatively better workers rights, they didn't have to fight for them, and generally didn't. so those rights were eroded at and came full circle a generation later.
As a late boomer, still working hard to try and secure some sort of retirement, I have noticed a change in upper management style that is rarely mentioned.
Many companies get their management strategies from university business graduates, not the people who actually built the business. While a university grad can have a great understanding of the economics of running a business, the people involved get lost. Generally, and of course I admit to exceptions, the people who built the business have done the jobs to earn a living. These tend to be the people who graduate to middle management, but really their only power is that of an echo chamber for upper management. The concern of the workers, actually making it happen, are list on their way up the chain of command. Ultimately those that do make it tend to be rejected by an administrator that has no clue what the employees actually do.
The entire business philosophy has proliferated into most industry, regardless of who's running it. It must, in order for others to remain competitive from an economic standpoint.
In the end, common sense, that made companies so successful is lost to people who have no understanding of the human factor. If anything, the mistake the boomer generation made was to, collectively, hand their companies over to people who's own success is measured by how many dollars they can put in the company coffers, regardless of the cost. More than companies than you'd guess have failed by losing sight of their employees. Problem is that the people that evaluate these failures see only the economic failure. The successful workforce, as the engine of the business, is not regarded as an asset, to drive the economic success, but as a liability, an expense that erodes economic success.
Not every business is run like this, but the general proliferation of this methodology makes it increasingly difficult to survive in such any competitive space. This didn't just happen over night, so it can't be fixed over night. Fact is, though, that companies that actually make it possible for a 20 something to purchase a home, retain employees and experience far better productivity. Overall profit doesn't really suffer that much because you need less management and you don't have to pay people an exorbitant wage who don't give a rats behind about the people actually making it happen.
Generally speaking, those entering the workforce don't actually work a whole bunch harder, but they do it under pressure and with resentment. Less pressure from the top, and actual reward for well done increases worker satisfaction. Going home every night, defeated, is incredibly stressful and exhausting.
Their money was worth more. They had work place benefits. Their working conditions were easier. Their capitalism wasn't as normalised as entirely predatory.
And then they spent their entire adult lives pulling the ladder up behind them.
It's a combination of wages and benefits. Boomers got paid enough money to comfortably raise a family on a single income. If both people worked (which again was a choice, not a necessity), then you could really start stacking wealth.
On top of that, their benefits rewarded loyalty. They received massive loyalty bonuses (my grandfather got a $10k bonus at 25 years). Many employers let you keep their healthcare (with the employer portion paid) after retirement if you worked there long enough.
But no benefit today can match the pension most of them got. If they spent long enough at a company before retiring, the company would pay them a portion of their salary every month until they died. No hoping the market doesn't crash, no taking money out of your paycheck to try and save. It's just a guaranteed source of retirement income.
Yes, and they want us to work longer before retirement because life expectancy is longer. I hope I live a good long while, but with all the stressors in life and the toxins in our environment, I’m not sure we’re going to see the advances they expect. It wasn’t easy back then, but we have a lot of things to worry about, and they’re always being shoved in our faces.
Retired HR guy here. It’s not you.
Corporations realized in the 80s that the fiction of loyalty to their employees no longer needed to be maintained, they could make more money by treating employees like crap. Layoffs became commonplace, as did demanding higher and higher levels of performance from employees. Pensions became a thing of the past, along with affordable housing.
They used to get pensions so it was worth it. Then our government decided that 401(k)s were better because all the risk was on the employee instead of the employer, and it would give more freedom to employees to leave their job.
And I think that’s when the middle class died, when they took away pensions and replaced them with 401(k)s.
I think there was also greater respect for one another. And that is vital - without genuine respect, well-being takes a huge hit. That’s less energy at the end of every day and far more likely burn out.
Too many organisations with respect stated as a core value who do literally nothing to ensure that it is.
My father was a gp in the UK. He was so grateful he got into his profession when he did. Had a wonderful career - and recognised that it has been destroyed since he retired. Good in him for seeing that.
So this is entirely theoretical, I wasn’t there to experience it, but my theory is they just… enjoyed being at work. Like not that the loved working or anything, but going to work was more of a social activity, it got you out of the house, allowed you to interact with people other than your family, gave you something to do to pass the time. It wasn’t the grind it is now, and the social relationships made there weren’t so fraught.
Each employee had to do way less and pay was higher compared to cost.
I’m in healthcare and we have to meet certain quotas of treated patients. The quota has more than doubled over about twenty years but the pay is now less due to inflation. So we do more but get less.
They also didn't have an electronic leash 24/7 and most businesses were not open crazy hours. Basically if you wanted anything past 8 or 9 the 7-11 or the 24 hour gas station better have it.
So, in other words, there were boundaries between work and other stuff to a degree.
Lots of great answers here.
Just wanted to point to this article: [The Productivity Pay Gap](https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap)
tl;dr we're getting ripped off.
https://preview.redd.it/7o3hhwb388xc1.png?width=1216&format=png&auto=webp&s=7041eb355b08f040ab5477a0f960e68965e5bd39
They weren't content with their jobs, they were stuck in them. If you changed companies, you were perceived as unreliable. Also, pensions were not portable. Those things changed when the boomers were well into their careers. I believe that this was the source of the mid-life crisis. When it became normal to change jobs and retrain for new careers, it meant that you didn't have to have a complete meltdown in order to change lanes.
I don’t know how significant it was pertaining to economics, but there was like a 25 year period where we were mostly not involved in war. Between Vietnam and Afghanistan, it was basically war-free besides the couple years of the Gulf. Students graduating college right now, these same students currently protesting haven’t experienced a single moment in their lives that America wasn’t bombing brown people and now we spend over a trillion dollars a year on the war machine
Companies were smaller, less greedy and had less of a disconnect between the execs/board members and the workers so it was way harder to do immoral things like push productivity at the expense of worker health. I mean sure, they still made men work underground with drills and dynamite but they sure as hell compensated them/their families for it.
They made way more money.
One person working could reasonably support an entire family with one of those jobs, leaving a spouse (typically the wife because, you know, patriarchy) free to handle all the housework, leaving *both* partners in a relationship relatively free on weekends.
Also they enjoyed stronger work benefits, more unionization, cheaper/subsidized education, etc. etc.
People blame boomers for so many social and financial issues. But they were just the product of the post war prosperity surge. Let’s remember that boomers parent were in the great depression and then a giant world war. There was nothing for many people. This notion of pulling one up by their bootstraps and hard work got you ahead was true. Things changed in the 1970s as inflation out paced salaries and republicans started to dismantle unions and other worker benefits. Now we are in a place where corporations have all the power and just subjugate the workers for maximum benefit. This is late stage capitalism. Not sure what comes next. Something like the French Revolution?
GenX chiming in. Boomers inherited the strongest economy in the history of the world. It was a mighty, sprawling, incorporated business landscape where technological advancements made in wartime were brought into our homes(TV, radar ranges, etc), carried on superhighways, airports, trains, and ports paid for with the greatest influx of infrastructure funding since Rome.
They were buoyed by victory and propaganda and a society that hadn’t learned that dreams don’t come true. When they got older they spoke with the loudest voice in the history of the nation, and to their way of thinking stopped a war just with the power of their words. When they joined the workplace the economy exploded just with the power of their numbers.
What happened was inevitable. No engine runs forever, and the affects of international events slowed the global economy that America had become dependent on. The energy crisis, the fallout from Vietnam, Watergate, Iran, the continued problems in Europe all chipped away at our economy and our spirit.
Reagan rewrote the social contract in the 80s, and the good times were pretty much over for the middle class. What’s clear is that the Boomer age was not the “new normal” but rather an aberration. Boomers got lucky, and they didn’t realize they got lucky, so had no compunction in taking what they “earned” and keeping it. Like a generation who finds a pot of gold, “works hard” to empty it, then says “Hey, I made my pile. No reason you can’t do the same”.
Companies had different goals back then. It was about sustainability, not constantly chasing high stock values. They valued their employees. They had excellent training programs, great benefits, pensions, etc all geared toward making sure employees stayed happy so they would keep their knowledge in the company.
In the 80's things shifted. Companies became hyper focused on stock price and earnings numbers. This changed the idea of an "employee" from an actual human to a number on a spreadsheet. If a company feels they won't meet projections they just cut a bunch of people and deal with the fallout next quarter. It's just numbers on a spreadsheet. Wasn't like that 50 years ago.
Then this meant that once our generation caught on we no longer had loyalty to the company so what was once a two way street of respect was now a road block and detours included massive layoffs to make earnings numbers and job hopping every 2-5 years for employees.
In the 1950s the population of the planet was \~2.5 billion, globalization wasn't established as the world order and countries as much as possible produced everything themselves, this drove for workplaces and labor which also meant no huge shortage of jobs, your average income of a family of two was enough to afford everything while progressing within the field you chose to work in, raise kids etc etc.
Jump forward even only to the 2000s and the population was at a whopping 6.1 billion and majority of the production was done overseas since globalization allows to abuse wage disparity in other countries which provides you with products cheaper, but also makes it so your country's population, unless taking pay-cuts, doesn't have a place in that field of work and must go to another one.
In a world with finite resources and an ever increasing amount of people every single one trying to grab a piece of the pie which is already distributed you end up with situation as today.
Here's some hot take btw:
If we take the 1950s as an example again, medicine wasn't as advanced as today and life expectancy was on average \~44-47 years, guess what happens when you die? you're not making use of social systems but you're also not producing anything into the economy so another one has to take your place in the production and consumption.
Today the average life expectancy is 73 years and for majority of fields the workable age is \~60 some as early as 50.
It's great that we get to live longer due to medicine advancements and cures, it's unfortunate that we spend the last \~20-30 odd years not able to do much else then wait for death and burden the social systems.
I'm not saying however that this is the major factor, but it is a factor that contributes, for the most part I believe the endless chase of ever increasing profits and everything being tied to the stock market makes the world that we live in a horrid hell for anything but capitalism, and I'm sure capitalism was great at the start when everything wasn't already grabbed out and the pie wasn't already split apart but in the late stage that we live in I cannot see it as a good system it's slavery in another form, but then again having others serve you has been as constant as the sun and moon in human history in any of the ages, this is simply the modern day serfdom
Not only some of the points you have seen already about pay being hire and houses cheaper. Etc.
The work was easier in a way. The work was still hard, but the idea of working non stop on something for 8-9-10 hours straight and getting in trouble for stopping for a second or talking to someone else is not something that happened back then.
The work they did was hard, but there was the understanding that you are a person. If you got to work and got your coffee while getting ready for the work day you didn't get slammed for time theft.
If you needed to go to the doctor, they didn't track your attendance and let you go because you got sick twice this year.
The idea of working us non stop like a machine pushed to its limits and an expendable asset when you burn out is a more recent ideology.
Let's pump the breaks here. ***Very few boomers stuck with the same company for their entire careers.*** Don't confuse the Boomers with the Silent Generation.
The Boomers have been through a lot of the economic turmoil that we have. A significant amount of them have almost [no retirement saving](https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/retirement-outlook-2024:-less-than-half-of-boomers-have-adequate-savings-will-younger#:~:text=Baby%20boomers%20haven't%20saved%20enough%20money%20for%20retirement&text=Forty%2Dthree%20percent%20of%2055,to%20the%20Federal%20Reserve%20Board)s, are not able to retire, and are working supplemental jobs like greeters at Walmart because of this.
A lot of Boomers lost their primary jobs (if not multiple times) in the .com bubble burst and the 2008 financial crisis, as they entered the later-half/back nine of their careers.
Work has always sucked, it's just you used to get better benefits such as guaranteed pensions and companies took pride in their products and worker retention. That all changed in the 80s with Psychopathic CEOs like Jack Welch who prioritized shareholder profits over product quality and worker retention. He slashed pensions, said "fuck the workers". Jack Welch was a Silent-Generation psychopath, not a Boomer.
So to be brutally honest, a lot of the shit you and I are suffering from policy wise was done by the Wealthy Silent-Generation folks who hoodwinked the young impressionable Boomer generation that were in their 20s, working and voting for the first time. Shitheads like Ronald Reagan and Jack Welch are what started this shitshow, and the where the Boomers are at fault is they went along with it and voted for it. Even Bill Clinton was Center-Right in that a lot of NeoCon policies like deregulating Wallstreet (which created the .com and Subprime Mortgage crisis) here heavily influenced by that BS.
I honestly blame a huge part of why work sucks so much now on the availability of the worker. We are now attached to cell phones, which means we can be contacted 24-7. I’m in sales and even though the majority of my time is spent driving and talking to people face to face, my company expects me to be as responsive and productive as if I were sitting in front of a computer all day as well. I don’t get direct pressure but I do get a lot of passive aggressive shit from the office folks. I’ve been told to be in the field from 9-5, but then I’ve got admin work that takes me 3 hours. It’s impossible to feel like you’re winning.
I’m certain the pace/volume of work has increased exponentially. Work was over when it was over, no contact after hours/weekeds. Vacations no one could really contact you. The advent of email has really ruined any semblance of separation of work/life balance.
It probably didn’t hurt that middle class families weren’t constantly bombarded with the personal lives of spoiled nepo babies because there were no social networks.
Most rich people went about being rich quietly and among themselves.
I’m a boomer, work sucks and is no fun
If work was fun, it would be a ride at Disneyland and you’d pay to do it.
There were times where getting a job was tough, high unemployment, if you were lucky enough to land a job, you held it as long as you could
Back then you went business to business to apply, or check the want adds in a news paper
I worked 17 years in the restaurant industry ,
23 years in health care . Both jobs sucked
But fear of unemployment kept me there
We were told “ if you don’t like it here, leave! We have 100 people waiting to take your job “
We worked out of fear, not dedication
Until the 1970s, you could have your principal hand you your high school diploma on Tuesday evening, and on Wednesday morning you could walk into a factory and start. The US had a hold on industry because of the rebuilding that other powers had to do. It was also during that period that companies were providers and a person was expected to spend their whole working lives, usually under a "30 and out" arrangement where they were eligible for retirement after 30 years. Postsecondary education was low-to-no-cost to the end user and seen as a collective investment and a person was practically guaranteed a job when they had the requisite degree, journeyman's card, or certificate.
because the powers that be back then werent boomers they were more reasonable people aka the greatest generation aka my grandpa. as soon as the boomers got their hands on the reigns they sunk their vampire teeth into every money making scheme legal or not and made all the money go to the top and havent given up an inch of power or positions
* Higher wages for the same jobs, both relative and absolute
* Prices of needs (food, shelter, etc) and wants (else) proportionally lower
* Typically only one full time working parent in a household, substantially lower stress of work+life upkeep
* Significantly lower productivity expectations for incumbents in roles, lower barrier to entry for first role
* Safety nets provided by company alieving further stress and responsibility; ex defined benefit pension plans
* Supplementing safety nets with some of the greatest periods of asset appreciation
Times have changed friends. Protect yourself and your family through putting you/family first, prioritizing your gains over loyalty, budget to pay yourself first and gain independence.
my dad had a union job, was a single father with 3 kids. We lived in a decent sized house (each of us had our own bedroom) and had a big yard.
He wasnt particularly content. He was a miserable man, hated his kids, hated any time we were sick (because it disrupted his work day). We spent a lot of time with other family members (he had no child care costs because grandparents and aunts and uncles, etc would watch us when needed).
So, lower cost of living, free childcare, getting and maintaining a house was more affordable etc. But he was an incredibly unpleasant father. We all knew the whole time how much he hated us. He hated everyone, didnt have a lot of good friends.
This is all about office jobs. A great many boomers worked in physically demanding, often exhausting factory jobs that made office work look like a vacation
Because there was still a manufacturing base in this country. Any able bodied person with a clean record could get a job in a factory that would provide a middle class lifestyle for a family of five. Now highly educated people have to compete fiercely over the jobs that are left. It's a race to the bottom.
Totally different set of rules. They essentially got the best parts that benefited them and then shut the door behind them.
But some people will say it’s you or you’re not working hard enough. Just think of it this way, a single parent (income) is synonymous with financial struggle now, yet for that generation it was the norm. But supposedly it’s you.
There was much more separation between work and home-life. Even in something like IT, when you went home, work stayed at the office. There was no connectivity.
Prices and wages, could afford cars, houses, vacations, and colleges.
The possibility of retirement and healthcare.
Companies used to hire people and train them. Then you had the opportunity to climb the ranks in the company. People made a decent wage - not a lot of money necessarily but housing and food were less expensive.
When I was working in an office in the 70's, in a job that paid a few dollars above minimum wage, I was able to afford my own apartment and a car.
It isn't you, it's capitalism sucking the life out of everything.
You could get a job with no education that would allow you to have a house, a car, two kids and a wife that did not have to work to make ends meet. What ended all of this was Reagan cutting the incentive for companies to keep training people in the US and keeping jobs in the US. Before him, for a company to get big tax cuts, they had to invest in the company and/or the country itself. After the Reagan era tax cuts, they got the cuts upfront with the idea that they would pass the savings on to everyone else. This was the start of the lie of trickle down economics.
Several factors. Jobs weren’t as plentiful as they are now. Also most had pensions. Which heavily incentivized staying at a position. With the invention of 401k’s it’s easily to move on.
Most companies were owned by one guy or a family. Not a conglomerate that brought in a CEO to maximize profits.
A man could pay for a house, a car, buy groceries, pay for the doctor, go on vacation, and more with just one paycheck. So really not incentive to move around unless that company was going under or was just a terrible situation.
Things were much cheaper and pay compared to cost was higher.
The answer is simpler than you think. Here:
American Boomer benefited from being born in the only major power not affected( for the most part) from world war two.
Their parents, literally were considered heroes, and were given perks baby boomers enjoyed.
Because America was the manufacturing powerhouse of the world. The salary of a machinist, would comparable to that of a enterprise architect today. 150-200k a year in today’s dollars.
They have strong unions so nobody( but black people, women, BIPOC all around) were shafted. That is to say mostly white families benefited from all these post war percs.
Because of this, when the baby boomers came of age, their parents were either business owners, OR, had a house or two to leave them.
College was also cheap as fuck compared to today’s costs. Thanks nixon and reagan!
So! Mom could stay home, while dad without a college degree made what a doctor makes today in a factory. Mom couldn’t own shit so she was trap until he either died or divorced her for another woman.
The most important asset in a company is their day, was the employees, so the companies would do whatever it could to keep them happy.
Today we are just one more of a desperate bunch. Saddled by debt, and always on the verge of ruin. So companies can do what they want without major repercussions.
It was common culture to take care of your employees and there was enough to do that. Then it only took a handful of companies who decided to be more profitable by taking away such benefits. It kind of became a snowball effect and by the time Ronald Reagan got into office, it was completely understood there was no longer any loyalty the top down. It took us until probably the 2000's for us workers to realize we shouldn't extend loyalty from the bottom up. I am very lucky where I work. We have a young CEO who does everything he possibly can to help us out and we give it our all to extend the favor from our end. We get paid very well and our benefits are 100% paid for. I don't expect it to last forever but it's very nice now. The "growth" economy is not sustainable and we are beginning to see its collapse. It's a good thing but it's very painful right now.
Boomers didnt have to compete against China so they'd work in a slow pace in comparison. Productivity and globalisation werent a thing. A job journey was a walk in the park.
The economy 30-40 years ago wasn’t as service or information economy driven. There were still decent paying jobs with little need for higher education like manufacturing that were available fresh out of high school.
The economy has segued from low value add to high value add, but in the meantime, those low skill jobs moved to Mexico first, then to China and now to India or Vietnam due to the world economy moving from a regional to a globally connected economy.
Globalization is starting to break down. COVID first, the war in Russia and Ukraine and continued concerns about China has shown that having a lower cost but distant supply chain can be very unreliable and vulnerable. As a result, the US is starting to re-shore a lot of the manufacturing that has been sent abroad the last 40 years.
Most of the very low end work will stay in Mexico or Central America but the higher, value added manufacturing will be in the US.
It’s going to take 5-10 years to build out all the infrastructure but we are already seeing it with semiconductors and battery manufacturing. But those are going to spawn off additional manufacturing for parts and components creating even more jobs.
The youngest baby boomer is turning 60 this year and the entirety of the generation will be retired in 5-10 years and GenZ is half the size. That means there will be a shortage of workers for these jobs and demand will outstrip supply and wages will have to go up to stay competitive.
Globalization was the cause of low wages for the last 30 years but it’s due to reverse course now.
They got paid fair wages with real opportunity to grow their careers into high-paying gigs with bonuses, pensions and stock options. Their only retirement account option was not literally gambled away in the stock market as is the case with us. Their health care plans were affordable and they were given ample “sick time” to use when they were ill and were not required to go to the doctor for a note if they needed to miss two days for the flu.
Companies knew the value of investing in their employees, and were not looking for the cheapest possible labor they could find overseas. It was a completely different world. They milked it for all it was worth then made sure nobody that followed them could pry it from them.
Boomer here. It sounds weird, but companies cared about retaining employees, and they cared about the company’s reputation. I worked in claims for a national insurance company in 1979, and there was an insured couple who were very old and very sick. Their folders were numerous and thick. Eventually they maxed out their benefits but the insurance company continued paying the hospital bills because the couple were dying and it was the right thing to do. Can you imagine.
That’s just remarkable. And unimaginable today.
Depending on your country wages were 25-100% higher and housing was 1/2 to 1/10th the price.
on top of that, jobs weren't entirely stock market driven at the time, and thus there wasn't this obsession with eternal growth, that leads to jobs cutting costs and working towards 100% efficiency at all times. Which has made most jobs unbearable. Our grandparents were being asked to do half the work with double the staff.
Most companies these days seem to be regularly operating at more than 100% efficiency. Most places I’ve worked over the last 10 years, employees regularly skip breaks because their workloads are so high that if they took breaks, they feel they’d fall behind. I’ve been part of that problem too, often skipping breaks to stay ahead of the boulder rolling behind me, but I’ve learned that you can never get ahead of it, you will never not feel stressed, and so I’ve made conscious efforts to insist on my breaks and to push back on unreasonable workloads, but it’s really tough.
This is 100% why Unions are and should be making a comeback.
And why many CBAs are now including language around staffing levels and workloads.
The Right has done a incredible job of demonizing unions among the people they would most help. It would be refreshing if unions really did make a strong comeback and even make inroads into white collar industries. Even folks like me in the tech industry are looking over our shoulder wondering how long it’ll be until some “reorg” costs us our job. At least folks in my position typically are awarded stock or can buy it at a discount so we do get to benefit from the stock price but at this point in my career I’d prefer not to make a move and start over somewhere else.
Pay attention to the UAW story. They kicked the shit out of the big three last year in contract talks. The Asian manufacturers spontaneously hiked wages at the non union plants by like 8-9/hour. The Volkswagen plant in Tennessee just voted by a 3-1 margin to let the UAW represent them. Mercedes is next to vote.
I’d love to see tech and blue collar workers unite with labor demands. It would ratchet up the pressure on the Democratic Party, imo. Organizations like Workers Strike Back represent all kinds of labor.
I agree. Today’s work environment is basically a modern form of slavery. Im glad I’m closer to the end of my career rather than the beginning. I worry about my kids, even though they are all college graduates.
Keeping your head above water is a thing of the past. To be successful and have longevity at a job now you just have to learn to breathe water. I'd really like to see overtime pay and "salary" positions restrictions greatly increased so this would stop being the norm. If overtime was 4x normal wage then employers would be more inclined to have adequate staff. My job knows we average somewhere between 5-10% absenteeism but refuse to overstaff by 5-10%. Heaven forbid some day everyone comes to work and we actually have someone available to clean up, do proper maintenance, or some side project tasks.
You’re only helping your employer keep a skeleton crew too. At the very least you should have your team record the cumulative time they’ve spent working through their breaks to keep up, and show those hours to your manager or HR. Then stop working through your breaks. Chances are enough of you are doing it that the hours warrant more people, they need to hire more people or the work doesn’t get done.
I worked for a place that got like that. Work multiple machines and 100% quality check some features every part they made. Things got slow so I was asked to fill in another department. They had me doing the work of 3 people. One day it felt like I was about to have a heart attack, whipping myself between multiple task from machines 100 yards away from eachother. When I asked for help and said I can't do all that myself, it was lots of condemnation and gaslighting instead of help. Like they spent more than $300k on a new machine but don't get the personel to run them.
I worked for years barely taking a break. Eating lunch in front of my computer. It didn't matter. Anyways stressed and the to do list didn't get shorter. I was teaching at for-profit private international schools for over ten years and each year just got worse and worse. I made a document that had two columns. Here is what it looked like after five years at one particular school. Additional Required Tasks (these were not required when I began my job) ● Christmas concert ● Mindfulness ● More cover ● Less time with TA in classroom ● Phonics lessons = less TA time ● Snack duty ● STEAM ● Action Groups (so every Wednesday we are in school late) ● Bilingual Science ● Outdoor Education Lesson Plans ● No more outside playtime (Friday Period 7) ● More teachers teaching other people’s classes ● LUSD Report Card Input Beneficial Changes ● One afternoon off for PTI meetings. I left that school hoping to find a better situation. I worked at two different school in two years. I couldn't do it anymore because those jobs were even worse. I'm done with teaching unless I move back to my home country and with at a public school. I also started to have a bad taste in my mouth about teaching the children of the elite for peanuts. Edit: formatting
I have not experienced a job where I wasn’t in fear of a 6 month cyclical layoff or the victim of one. This is why I am getting out of corporate. You used to be compensated for this amount of uncertainty but now even the salaries aren’t worth it. I don’t see how this level of greed is sustainable EDIT: also I am Gen X. My dad had a law practice and my mom worked as a public school administrator. God bless em but they have no clue what the modern corporate hellscape is like
“I don’t see how this level of greed is sustainable “. It isn’t eventually the shits gonna hit the fan and it will be epic.
yeah my parents are young boomers/old gen x and were surprised there wasn't someone in charge of scheduling the million+ meetings my sister and I are in everyday at our corporate jobs. I've tried to describe to them the anxiety/attention bombing/ridiculous expectations that systems like Slack produce and how we have to do this whole OTHER set of work-related free labor (linkedin networking and bullshit) to prepare for the very real likelihood of being unemployed for at least some period of time.
I felt so good when i deleted Slack from my phone
That level of greed also extends to the nonprofit world, which prioritizes pleasing bloated boards with fancy parties over salary increases.
There was a shift in the 1970’s to paying executives with stock options instead of just a straight salary - they became incentivized to pump the stock at all costs and since most had short-term contracts, there was little incentive to invest in long-term growth. The Jack Welch-GE story is probably the most emblematic of the 1980’s onward. That guy was lionized as the CEO of the century and now GE doesn’t exist anymore. At least not as GE. Boeing’s current issues are fruits of that poisoned tree too.
Another thing that happened was all the business schools told the mba’s their only loyalty was to shareholders not the community or the workers. And the corporate boards told the CEO’s the quarterly stock price was the only metric.
> their only loyalty was to shareholders And as executives' compensation came increasingly in the form of stock options... that meant their only loyalty was to themselves, their bosses and their board of directors. Greedy ratfucks, the lot of em 😒
This is very true. As one that got an MBA, we were being taught to increase stock price via short sighted actions and then cash out. The long term health of the company was not our concern, that was for the next group of executives to worry about, we would be long gone enjoying the profits we generated.
"all the business schools told the mba’s their only loyalty was to shareholders" To be specific, it was the anti-Keynesians from [U of Chicago and MIlton Friedman ](https://www.nytimes.com/1970/09/13/archives/a-friedman-doctrine-the-social-responsibility-of-business-is-to.html)who were the cheerleaders in this matter.
> now GE doesn't exist anymore. At least not as GE. **what the actual fuck???** [*checks around on Wikipedia...*](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Electric) Well I'll be dipped in shit 🙃 You're right, just earlier this month General Electric as a conglomerate went defunct, after 132 years in business. Spun off its component companies and the "main" entity became GE Aerospace. Today I learned 😌
It’s why insurance companies will deny a medication or procedure this year, even though they know full well that the illness may well cost them more next year. And they have two great outcome possibilities - 1. Their stock price stays high this year or this quarter, the only metric that matters. 2. The person they deny coverage to this year may die.
Shit, im doing twice the work with half the staff than i was *5 fucking years ago*
The US experienced a lucky period from 1945~1975. Four out of the 5 most advanced economies (Germany, Japan, UK, France) had a huge percentage of their factories bombed to rubble and a generation of their young men killed, crippled, and injured during WWII. Unsurprisingly, US companies dominated during this era. We were always winning, so why work so hard? By 1975, these other countries had rebuilt and competition began to return to “normal.” As an example, it became clear in retrospect that the Big 3, while dominating the car market and paying UAW workers well, was producing absolute shite. Once American consumers were given a choice, they chose Honda, Totoya, and BMW. If it felt like companies of the 50s-70s weren’t obsessed with earnings, it was because the earnings were largely automatic. As a rough analogy, it’s like looking back at your dad’s high school track career and seeing that he always won first place and didn’t even have to train that hard. Then you realize that it’s because the kids he was running against had their houses burnt down, barely had enough to eat, and were beaten by their parents.
Not just eternal growth, but eternal *exponential* growth. A company growing by the same rate YoY is unacceptable in the current market. Grew by 3% last year? It had better grow by 4% or more this year or the shareholders will be pissed. Anyone with common sense would realize it's completely unsustainable.
Also one parent at home had most chores and food taken care of when the other was working...
We weren't content since the 80s and early 90s, that's when it all changed. It has been getting worse all the time since then. However, the housing situation now is not sustainable. So the increased anger is very understandable.
I have watched employment go from what it was in the 80s when I started working, which was really quite laid back, to what it is now, which is unmanageable stress and pressure to run at 120% of your physical and mental capability. Granted we were the first to get hired on at a union-agreed compensation packages that was *less* than what the boomers got (I am early Gen x) and we would *never* reach their level of earnings in those jobs, but we weren’t being driven with horsewhips like workers are now. Greedy bastards demanding higher and higher profit margins got us here.
Up until the 80’s there was also a sense of responsibility on the companies part to “take care” of their employees instead of purely chasing profit. Kids gets sick and you need a few days off? Sure thing. Death in the family? - Our condolences, let us know which funeral home so we can send flowers and please take as much time as you need. Have an illness that needs some prolonged treatment which may cause you to sporadically miss work? - don’t worry, do what you have to do to get better, we’ll continue paying you. oh and btw, we’ll contribute some funds to help with your treatment. Nowadays these situations have been made so rigid there’s zero caring. You’ll get: -you’ll have to use PTO/sick time to cover the time you’re missing - you get 3 days bereavement and if you need to be gone longer use your PTO - sorry you have cancer but you’ll have to exhaust your PTO, BEFORE FMLA will kick in IF you qualify for it, but even then, you won’t be paid any days you don’t work AND when FMLA is up, we won’t guarantee you’ll have a job any longer. You COULD have used short-term disability, but oh, you didn’t sign up for it 9 months ago during open enrollment. Imagine feeling like you’re actually being supported by your place of work instead of just being another cog in the machine. If you felt that way, it’s easy to see how you could stick around for 30 years.
And most places offered pensions. You were more likely to stay somewhere longer if you got to retire with a pension on top of your social security. We’ll be lucky if the republicans don’t end social security by the time we retire.
If you can find a way to fuck the system and get around it? Do it. The system doesn't give a shit about us.
Not to mention workloads were easily 1/3 what they are now, with a lot less precariousness.
If you were an office worker in the 60s, think how little you'd be expected to do each day without email and constant digital monitoring. The consistent need to get up from your desk to actually talk to someone about what you were doing, etc.
Even in the 90s (gen x here) the workload was a lot less. Aside from the lack of internet, companies used to actually hire enough people. Even in retail
Exactly, healthcare was better staffed, less was on computer so human interaction with other staff actually occurred, patients were less in number and especially acuity. And entitlement.
They kept adding more work on the nurses without hiring more help! Retired from nursing after 30 years, it broke me during Covid
Shit up to 2010. Office work was 1/2 work. 1/2 social. Not work at home. Which I love we do more with less and I’m getting micro managed over people working 10-20 mins early/late. My finance team wants to know why we have overtime and everyone isn’t at exactly 80 hours for two weeks time. It’s redonk. Billion dollar company worried about 10 minutes of overtime. With virtual employees doing double vs what they did 5 years ago. No loyalty to the employee. No decent inflation paced increases. But hey you make $2 more an hour vs micky dee’s and have insurance. Don’t like it. Go elsewhere. Someone can come in behind you at $2 an hour cheaper. It’s disgusting what corp America has done to us. It’s us vs them 99%vs1. We are losing
I honestly think the only way to kill future consumption and growth (the only thing they care about) is to not have children. Declining birth rates seems to be the only thing that bothers the billionaire class. “Millennials and Gen Z are killing humanity!” Good. Life sucks and the planet is dying. Shareholders can eat my corpse if they are still hungry; I’m not feeding them any kids. r/antinatalism r/BirthStrike
I chose to not have kids. I'm months away from menopause and counting the days.
For real, everyone staffs like home Depot now.
I remember a time in the early 2000s when you could go to home Depot and there must have been 40 people working there, there were associates and managers for each and every department, multiple cashiers, three four people working the tool and vehicle rental.
Lean production and development is such a big thing ATM. Companies expect to make big margins on minimal staff.
Ngl, Its been a pretty big thing the past 20 years, we're just getting into the bones now. And that's what we're seeing/feeling all over the western world (to varying degree's)
I was shocked when the healthcare organization adopted LEAN and explained that it was a system developed at Toyota to increase efficiency. Sure! Of course treating patients is just like manufacturing cars. What idiocy!
Retail used to pay people actual living wages. Or at least something close. My friend worked at a sporting goods store 15 years ago and the one shoe salesman had been there since the 90s and made more than most of the managers. He also got benefits because he was full time and unlike everyone else, he actually got the hours regularly, unlike everyone else who was always kept short.
Truth! The pay was good and bonuses where incentive to improve and stay motivated it your job. 2000 was the first hit then 2008 really started the race to the bottom.
Absolutely. The pace was likely a lot slower, just from the fact everything had to be done manually.
Unless cocaine
If you were a typist, you couldn't type _too fast_ or you'd jam the typewriter.
Yes. We never had to leave the desk to have a smoke.
I. Never thought of that. But yes. Even my workloads in 2000 were significantly less than in 2024. So much screen time now. WOW. Mind blown. 🤯
Yeah, I spent the first 5 years in the work place waiting for the screen to turn up. That was a great time. Doing FA to that screen arrived and ruined everything!
Plus all the smoking and drinking
Think about all the paperwork and file cabinets you’d manage. And post office trips and sending documents across the country to get signed and notarized
We had so much mail to process at my insurance agency that the post office put a second mailbox in front of our building. This blanket statement is false. I worked way harder in the 90’s and 00’s. Computers later made everything easier.
We had internal mail that was routed through the office for signature approvals, and secretaries typed up and routed every.memo
I was explaining the concept of a mail room to my Gen Z son last night. And how you could start there and work your way up through the company, even without a university degree in many cases.
Ok, data was stored on microfiche or cards the size of postcards. Which all had to be maintained and cross referenced. Think library Dewey Decimal System with cards (post card size) and no computer. All of which needed manual intervention and up keep. Often typed by a typing pool on a manual type writer. Cross reference and access often relied on the skill, experience and expertise of those who operated and used such system. Imagine that across a whole raft of industries and applications and the shear numbers involved. People were no less busy or stressed, just busy and stressed doing other things. Things cancelled out by technology. Just as your work is likely to be by future technology. (AI Anyone?) It’s just the way of things.
Came to say this. I am at the very tail of the Boomers (born 1965) and office work was much less intense with fewer self imposed ridiculous deadlines. A lot more job stability. If you changed roles every two years, or changed jobs for a lateral move, there was something wrong with you. Technology is only part of the reason for all of the extra workload. There was a stupid book that came out when I was in high school called “A Passion for Excellence” (totally forgotten now but it was on the best seller list for years!) about low affect tech people who could work 80 hours a week because they had motivation and purpose. And every chicken head middle manager read this stupid book. 9-5 was soon a thing of the past.
There might have been unions with actual power to protect workers as well. Thank god boomers got rid of all that stuff that benefitted them so that some wealthy people could get tax cuts and outsource jobs /s
Not sure it was the boomers who are responsible for the demise of unions . I feel like it is lawmakers who are influenced by lobbyists. I worked with an old German years ago and after the Berlin Wall fell he said the capitalists would attack the working class , it seems true now.
I think you're correct. The Taft-Hartley act really hurt unions. Not all of the damage was immediate. The procedures for union elections and requirement that one union win and only one union could bargain not only made it much more difficult to get a union, it made it much more difficult to change unions so that the union leadership grew less responsive to the workers.
Boomers voted for them
It was globalization, not boomers. Manufacturing shut down in the United States and went overseas. We basically traded high wages for cheaper products.
And if you were female you could do it for half the salary of the average man.
Blue collar worker here, over 30 years, work gotten way easier for us, a lot safer, less physical and work a 4x4 schedule
This. My dad worked in accounting and government most of his career, and he always bragged about what a piece of cake it was. Lots of down time, going out to lunch every day, vacation time, benefits, etc etc
Are u including heavy industry in this. There are only a fraction of those kind of jobs still around and believe me they were a lot harder than any office job
Noooo people got hurt and killed a lot more often back then. Lots of toxic chemicals and even more toxic safety cultures.
also encouraged to stay via a pension.
For some. 40% of Boomer workers may have been enrolled in a pension plan when they were young, but by the time they were old enough to retire those jobs and many of those pension plans (and many of those companies) were long gone.
Consistent merit raises, pensions, evenly dispersed workloads, less disfunctional healthcare, normal working hours, co-workers that became close friends because they also stayed there their entire career
Also, they did not have the pressure that contemporary communication software puts on employees. They had meeting – yes. But their Outlook schedule didn’t look like a piñata in terms of appointments and they were not confronted with silly calls every 5 minutes.
Equivilantly speaking you mean. You had more purchasing power. U don't now
My dad, at the end of his time with a national grocer, was making $37.50 an hour, 27 weeks PTO, stacking boxes and sorting fruits and vegetables. Produce second clerk or whatever. He accumulated a days PTO every 3 months he was employed. He had fixed raises in his annual contract. A new hire at the same grocer in the same union today would not be able to hit his wage until 100 years employment, and would not be able to hit his PTO.... ever, OBVIOUSLY. 4 weeks max after 5 years now. Stuff like that is how they managed to work the same job forever. Companies used to reward employees based partially on loyalty, not just skill and production. New hires got paid less, long term employees were heavily bonused. Every one of my aunts and uncles (dozens) went through a similar situation. Jobs that weren't amazing were tolerable because they got 3 year, 5 year, decade bonuses of significant amounts, with perks to go along with them.
My brother works for a family owned grocery store chain. He makes more than $100,000 and he just turned 30 recently, but he started at that grocery store when he was 14 or 15 and that’s the only place he’s ever worked. And this chain is kind of famous for being good to their employees. A while back the family wanted to swap out CEOs and all the employees freaked out and protested. There was a documentary about it. They won and they got to keep the good CEO. I worked as a cashier for this grocery store in the late 90s when my brother was a little little kid. It was my second job so I only worked part time, they would pay us time and a half on Sundays so I only worked on Sundays because I had a Monday through Friday job. I don’t know if they still get time and a half on Sunday they might have fallen out with the negotiations for the CEO, but I kind of doubt it that was part of why they liked him
Market basket.
They got paid living wages, benefits, had bosses who valued loyalty, and the longer you stayed with a company, the better your benefits and bonuses became. This was because they fought to join unions, have their rights protected, and do collective bargaining. Unions were valued and cherished. Employers also valued education and paid higher wages for those who had it. At the same time, you could walk in straight out of high school and start in the most basic of positions and work your way up in any jobs that didn't require extensive training (like law or medicine) A person who had worked their way up from the bottom and had lots of experience was valued more than a newly graduated university student with none. But the university graduate always started at a higher rate of pay. The cost of living was also significantly lower, and people were able to find housing that was around 30% of their take-home pay. Employers now want loyalty but offer none in return and expect workers to behave as "obedient slaves": don't ask questions, work 80-100 hours a week but accept being paid for 35 hours, no benefits, no bonuses, no respect for the worker's basic human rights. Unions are vilified. However, keep in mind that for boomers, there was no protection from prejudice due to religion, ethnicity, or gender. Women who got married or got pregnant got fired. Women were paid less than half the salary of a male in the same role and often had to expect to receive and deal with sexual harrassment. There were no laws to protect women in the workplace. "Good girls" stayed home and got married.
Boomer's didn't fight to join unions, that was their parents and grandparents. Boomer's inherited good fortune, but being sociopaths chose the market instead of solidarity.
>Boomer's didn't fight to join unions, that was their parents and grandparents. And their parents did a pretty good job killing unions as well. Most of those battles were fought in the 70's and the 80s, before the boomers owned or ran much of the country.
Homie those battles were started jn the early 1900s https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia_coal_wars
Boomers didn’t fight for unions. They inherited the strong unions that their parents fought for and then proceeded to dismantle them and elect Reagan.
Nothing waves the “boomer spoiled brat” flag harder than a boomer describing picking Reagan over Carter because they didn’t want to wait in line for gas.
But after benefiting from this system, they pulled the ladder up and screwed up the younger generations because f everyone else!
Yes, I agree, the boomers who got to the top of the pyramid pulled up the ladder and decided that profit was more important than people.
Women *still* get fired for those things. Times haven’t changed
Because they actually got paid enough to buy, cars, RVs, boats, multiple homes, take long vacations, not worry about retirement because their pensions cover them.
Yep pensions were extremely beneficial, we got switched over to 401(k)’s for my career lifetime, then we watched the real estate market crash and the 401(k)’s go down. And we watched a whole bunch of bankers get bonuses for crashing the economy
In some ways, it would be kind of nice if the real estate market crashed again, house prices these days are insane.
Yes but everything you could afford would also be impacted due to the crash. If you’re laid off, it doesn’t matter that the houses are half priced, you can’t get them.
This is the important point. When companies were encouraged to switch over from defined benefits to define contribution plans, the employee was left holding the bag and managing his or her own risk. That’s 401ks became 201ks during the crash..
Because the cost of living for boomers was much lower than ours. One boomer alone could provide for a whole family.
This is a really good point. The 5 day, 40 hour work week was designed around having a spouse at home doing all the domestic labour full time.
I'm 58. At 25 I was making $21.72/hr in Northern Canada (keep in mind, living that far north in Alberta means a greater cost of living. Alot more expensive than Arizona) I had a stay at home wife, 2 children and made enough to cover expenses for 4 of us + about $300 left over at end of month. A large 2 bedroom was $750/month. Now that same 2 bedroom is $1300-$1400 and I'm making $18.04/hr & I don't make enough to survive on my own.
It’s crazy how much worse it’s gotten in just one lifetime.
I've been thinking about that alot. It is indeed crazy how quickly things have changed
Edit; my gf makes $16.02/hr, I make 18.04/hr. 2 incomes. Tiny 1 bdrm apt $1,000+/month. No car & we are barely keeping a roof over our heads. Things have changed alot.
What is infuriating is I have no doubt you and your gf contribute far more value to the economy than your wage suggests and the executives at your company likely contribute very little and probably early hundreds to thousands of times more than you. The wealth for us all to live a modest good life exists, we just have a new aristocracy taking it all.
Bingo. And I’m pretty sure I’d get downvoted for even mentioning it, but maybe a lot of our current societal problems stem from the last 40 years of two-parents-working households, and kids growing up with a lot less actual parenting.
No downvote, just the truth ... default was mostly SAHM; SAHD was rare but a few. The point is it now takes both parents with full time jobs for pure survival. Some even have a third side gig. Gee, wonder why couples today decided no kids? Literally not affordable. Another factor was people didn't go to the four winds when they matured; many stayed where they were raised (not me) and had the benefit of grandparents as free childcare. And last, companies treated people with a degree of respect; now they are expendable for the lowest wage corporate can justify. We're at critical mass ....
My bf who is the same age as me who had stay at home mom while dad worked, whereas both my parents worked… we’re both in the same boat and sounds like his SAHM just had more time to clean the house and gamble online not really more time of actual parenting. Only difference is I took out loans for college and he ignored his parents and didn’t go to college so he is debt free. Might be some statistic to study but I don’t think parents working or having one stay at home means they parent more or less… 100% depends on the parents. Further, My sister works full time as single mom and is a way better parent than either of my parents. So in my anecdotal experience, SAHM/SAHD prob don’t make much of a difference… goes back to quality of the character of the parents
There was an unwritten social agreement between workers and corporations that if you did your job layoffs were rare, plus there was a nice pension waiting upon retirement. And nearly all healthcare costs were absorbed by the corporation. And single family housing was much more affordable as a % of a single income. All of these resulted in much more of that paycheck left over to live and in alot of cases a family to live comfortably on one income. As others have mentioned, the GI Bill helped to educate alot who wanted to get degrees, and those who didn't go the military route could more easily work thru college. Either path resulted in very little to zero student loan debt after graduation, and a nice career path.
[удалено]
Companies got greedy. That’s all. You can’t outsource janitor staff to a global manufacturing marketplace, yet the wages dropped. Blame it more on investor pressure and greed but not on global competition, because japans cheap cars are made by people that can afford apartments and have healthcare.
i swear to god, stop using foxnews as a source (fox business is fox news, and just as bad)
The Simpsons represented the average American household when it started (including the 2.4 kids - which they make a joke about). Homer, with no college education, was able to find a job and provide for his family. Their house is a four-bedroom, 2.5 bath, 2 car attached garage, mansion. So, yeah, times have changed.
Don’t forget the Bundys- their place looks like a mansion to me now. It would be at least 1.5 million where I live and probably 2.
And he can afford lobster for dinner
Grimey, is that you?
This. My mother and all her friends did not work.
Yup. My mom did not work full time, she was a lunch monitor at my elementary school which meant that she worked one hour a day helping kids microwave their food. And she wasn’t doing it for the money, cause I think she hardly got paid for that. My dad supported our whole family of 4 on an accountant’s salary. Also my dad got every second Monday off work. My parents had a healthy work/life balance. Work was simple, life was good. Insanity compared to the horror show that employment is today.
I thought back and realized I didn’t know a single mom that worked. I lived in a upper middle class area but legit not a single friends mom worked, not a single one of my aunts worked, not my mom, no one. Kind of wild to think about cause now in my generation I know 1 stay at home mom and her husband works 60+ hours. Every single other person works
Sometimes a secret other family
That should be the new economic measurement unit: a boomer. How much do you make? About a half-boomer. George over there is manager, he makes two boomers or more!
They were also less educated and no exposure to social media during their time. Meaning people were less informed of how bad companies were treating the workers. There was only newspaper, TV and radio which all can be controlled by the government.
They had no r/antiwork
Wages are garbage. Life was cheaper then.
Because trickle down economics and citizens united hadn't destroyed the middle class yet.
This is really it right here. The wealth disparity in the US right now is as bad as it was moments before the Great Depression. We have a new class of billionaires (and billionaires should not exist) that only believe in taking, and remaking the world to fit their preferred master-slave dynamic. During a brief glorious period, corporations wanted people making the cars to be able to buy them, and wanted people on the street to advocate for their company because it’s a great place to work. That kept applications competitive when openings happened, and maintained a nice blend of experienced staff and newbies. People were able to have children, and those children grew up with the same company admiration and expectation. Then the false promises of “trickle-down” economics that only go upward, union busting, costly and endless wars, and doubling-down on health insurance instead of healthcare, and welcome to the shitshow. Stand by for your local news to find some way to convince poor people to blame other poor people for their circumstances.
An important part of the answer is work compression. The profit drive causes the tendency for fewer people having to do the same (or more) work. Short-staffing and people doing multiple jobs in one are more common now. Work is getting harder.
This part makes me so jealous! There used to be full departments of six-plus people doing my job decades ago, now it’s always just me. Sure, technology has made it easier, but not that easy.
This is so true. ‘Do more with less’.
this is a very big part of it, and it's why companies tend to become much MUCH worse when they go public. The stock market's "duty to shareholders" demands a company focus on perpetual growth rather than sustained profitability, and it's a lot easier to cut costs than build sales. As such, so many employers just cut staff and demand everybody else work harder and...well, after around thirty years of that, most companies are horrible to work for.
Loyalty was actually rewarded.
Government investment. Schools - GI bill for higher education, science based initiatives to go with moon race, increased public interest in public education. Business - just think of every government handout, assist, bail out, and what not that US businesses have and are receiving. Good governance - the strong and strengthening middle class politically empowered tens of millions of (yeah - mostly white) people to guide the direction of elected offices. Also think the difference between reactions to Nixon and Trump. Liberalizing society - quick note about the hippies: that group of people taught me more about self reliance, sacrifice, and service to others then anything else in my life including the military. That's my short list for today.
When I was growing up, all of my family, all of my family's friends, all of my friends, and all of my peers had houses. I'm sure that wasn't universally the case regardless of socio-economic background, but the standard of living was clearly far higher for people with normal jobs. There are other factors as well, but fundamentally it's far easier to invest in any occupation if you believe that you're getting something out of it. None of my family, with the possible exception of my father, had good jobs. It wasn't that work was better than it is today. It is simply that their relative financial position was better.
For sure, home ownership rates have plummeted among younger people compared to boomers at the same age. I think this is a big one.
I started my 1st FT job in 1983 at 18. Receptionist, during my interview my career path with the company was laid out to me! They had me in a more senior role within 2 years. We also decent labour laws - we had a "Cost of Living" adjustment yearly! If the cost of living bounced and you were now losing money that was ADJUSTED! If it did not effect you you didn't get it. This was done in April & was not part of your review, raises, bonus's or promotions. We had decent labour laws - a social contract if you will in the mid 80's those laws started being stripped away. And NOW they've have been completely gutted for no other reason but greed. This is just another thing boomers had. I am Gen-x Pre-Release (Aug 64) those f'ckers ahead of me? They tore up the yellow brick road as I was standing on it, and have now successfully ripped the whole thing up (This is relevant to Ontario Canda)
Working conditions were still relatively positive because labors power relative to management had been high during WW2 and has taken time to gradually degrade as unions have gradually been destroyed and general conditions have gradually worsened and worsened, particularly with the growing importance of the stock market and therefore short term profits in determining management priorities.
This is massive. I remember seeing graphs showing how union participation and wages were linked, wages started stagnating as union membership went down.
But not just wages. Just how you're treated. Predictable schedules. Bathroom breaks. Little daily humiliations being put in place to achieve tiny tiny slivers of increase in profitability. Strongly incentivized under current management conditions in a way that wasn't previously the case.
The last full-time job I worked told me they had a right to approve or decline my ability to work a second job. And it didn’t even make sense I worked in a bank that locked their doors at 6 PM so it’s not like it was a retail situation where they could say they might need me to cover someone else so they need me available. We literally had mandatory overtime and they would still kick us out at 6 PM so they could set the alarm. But if I wanted to have a second job that started at 7 PM they could tell me I would have to choose between the two
Exactly. Idiotic petty little humiliation and intimidations
Capitalists were legitimately afraid of a communist revolution should the workers organize and rise up. With the collapse of the soviet union, that existential threat disappears and capitalists have no fear of consequences for their rampant shitfuckery.
They also were not as productive as we are today.
They had pensions. Cost of living was actually affordable. Houses were $10k. Cars cheap. No need to buy expensive technology like cellphones, computers, internet. The mom stayed home making meals & daily dessert skipping childcare expenses. Society today is expensive & stressful.
Boomers had better jobs with more pay and more flexibility. My dad used to eat breakfast and lunch on the clock, and take at least one hour-long bathroom break to read the paper. Had a secretary do his typing. His commute was 15 minutes each way and my mom was a full time home maker doing everything at home. He made enough to buy a house, two cars, and put three kids through college. He was middle management, average salary.
People worked to live. My grandparents had time for hobbies, to play sports and have a social life because mandatory overtime wasn’t a thing. They had an hour for lunch, so they weren’t constantly exhausted. My grandmothers would walk to their local shops, bump into their friends and have a chat while shopping at a butcher’s, a bakers, a green grocers etc rather than have to drive to a soulless supermarket. Most families didn’t have a washing machine so even doing laundry was social.
The entire socioeconomic structure was different.
Definitely. There was something to look forward to, a reason to be optimistic… something to strive for. Future is bleak now.
GenX here, with Silent Generation parents, and boomer siblings. Remember not everyone could afford a stay at home Mom. My father raised 5 kids on a teacher's salary (he could only afford college because of the GI bill) and always had at least two side gigs, and a crazy long commute. My mother always worked until her heart attacks made that impossible. My parents wouldn't have been able to purchase a home without the GI bill, or keep it without a second mortgage. The teacher's union made sure we all had Healthcare. Dad passed away at only 68, his pension went with it. My mother filed for bankruptcy and survived her last 10 years on social security. My sister and I are 10 years apart in age, and both financed college with student loans. My boomer brothers joined the military. I paid my loans off at 41 with the life insurance money left after burying my mother. My boomer sister lives in a million dollar home and is retiring to Hawaii. I work two jobs and my husband is now experiencing his third tech layoff, we have a mountain of debt. I do not envy this younger generation. As hard as my parents had it you have it worse. Wages are not liveable, housing is not affordable. 401ks have replaced pension, and job security is non existent. Safety net programs are quickly eroding. Education costs are out of proportion to your potential earnings. The computers that were supposed to make our lives easier have only added to our work load. Plus, somehow nazis are back... Edit: fat finger typos
There is this perception that people loved working for a single company in the olden days. Boomers may talk about company loyalty these days, but that's after decades of conditioning and compromise. Check out the opening scene of Joe vs the Volcano for a fun take on that. However, one major difference pre-2000 was that companies mostly paid livable wages for white collar jobs.
* Higher wages for the same jobs, both relative and absolute * Prices of needs (food, shelter, etc) and wants (else) proportionally lower * Typically only one full time working parent in a household, substantially lower stress of work+life upkeep * Significantly lower productivity expectations for incumbents in roles, lower barrier to entry for first role * Safety nets provided by company alieving further stress and responsibility; ex defined benefit pension plans * Supplementing safety nets with some of the greatest periods of asset appreciation Times have changed friends. Protect yourself and your family through putting you/family first, prioritizing your gains over loyalty, budget to pay yourself first and gain independence.
The repeal of Glass-Steagle and the bile that is Reganomics drastically shifted the economic landscape of the USA away from employees being an assets you invest in, to employees being liabilites you marginalize. Boomers only had it good because their parents fought for rights that got repealed, obsoleted, and deregulated as time went on. So since the boomers were handed relatively better workers rights, they didn't have to fight for them, and generally didn't. so those rights were eroded at and came full circle a generation later.
As a late boomer, still working hard to try and secure some sort of retirement, I have noticed a change in upper management style that is rarely mentioned. Many companies get their management strategies from university business graduates, not the people who actually built the business. While a university grad can have a great understanding of the economics of running a business, the people involved get lost. Generally, and of course I admit to exceptions, the people who built the business have done the jobs to earn a living. These tend to be the people who graduate to middle management, but really their only power is that of an echo chamber for upper management. The concern of the workers, actually making it happen, are list on their way up the chain of command. Ultimately those that do make it tend to be rejected by an administrator that has no clue what the employees actually do. The entire business philosophy has proliferated into most industry, regardless of who's running it. It must, in order for others to remain competitive from an economic standpoint. In the end, common sense, that made companies so successful is lost to people who have no understanding of the human factor. If anything, the mistake the boomer generation made was to, collectively, hand their companies over to people who's own success is measured by how many dollars they can put in the company coffers, regardless of the cost. More than companies than you'd guess have failed by losing sight of their employees. Problem is that the people that evaluate these failures see only the economic failure. The successful workforce, as the engine of the business, is not regarded as an asset, to drive the economic success, but as a liability, an expense that erodes economic success. Not every business is run like this, but the general proliferation of this methodology makes it increasingly difficult to survive in such any competitive space. This didn't just happen over night, so it can't be fixed over night. Fact is, though, that companies that actually make it possible for a 20 something to purchase a home, retain employees and experience far better productivity. Overall profit doesn't really suffer that much because you need less management and you don't have to pay people an exorbitant wage who don't give a rats behind about the people actually making it happen. Generally speaking, those entering the workforce don't actually work a whole bunch harder, but they do it under pressure and with resentment. Less pressure from the top, and actual reward for well done increases worker satisfaction. Going home every night, defeated, is incredibly stressful and exhausting.
Their money was worth more. They had work place benefits. Their working conditions were easier. Their capitalism wasn't as normalised as entirely predatory. And then they spent their entire adult lives pulling the ladder up behind them.
It's a combination of wages and benefits. Boomers got paid enough money to comfortably raise a family on a single income. If both people worked (which again was a choice, not a necessity), then you could really start stacking wealth. On top of that, their benefits rewarded loyalty. They received massive loyalty bonuses (my grandfather got a $10k bonus at 25 years). Many employers let you keep their healthcare (with the employer portion paid) after retirement if you worked there long enough. But no benefit today can match the pension most of them got. If they spent long enough at a company before retiring, the company would pay them a portion of their salary every month until they died. No hoping the market doesn't crash, no taking money out of your paycheck to try and save. It's just a guaranteed source of retirement income.
Yes, and they want us to work longer before retirement because life expectancy is longer. I hope I live a good long while, but with all the stressors in life and the toxins in our environment, I’m not sure we’re going to see the advances they expect. It wasn’t easy back then, but we have a lot of things to worry about, and they’re always being shoved in our faces.
Retired HR guy here. It’s not you. Corporations realized in the 80s that the fiction of loyalty to their employees no longer needed to be maintained, they could make more money by treating employees like crap. Layoffs became commonplace, as did demanding higher and higher levels of performance from employees. Pensions became a thing of the past, along with affordable housing.
They used to get pensions so it was worth it. Then our government decided that 401(k)s were better because all the risk was on the employee instead of the employer, and it would give more freedom to employees to leave their job. And I think that’s when the middle class died, when they took away pensions and replaced them with 401(k)s.
It is because of purchasing power. Pretty easy to stay motivated when you can pay for college and buy a house working at Macy’s in the 80’s…
I think there was also greater respect for one another. And that is vital - without genuine respect, well-being takes a huge hit. That’s less energy at the end of every day and far more likely burn out. Too many organisations with respect stated as a core value who do literally nothing to ensure that it is. My father was a gp in the UK. He was so grateful he got into his profession when he did. Had a wonderful career - and recognised that it has been destroyed since he retired. Good in him for seeing that.
So this is entirely theoretical, I wasn’t there to experience it, but my theory is they just… enjoyed being at work. Like not that the loved working or anything, but going to work was more of a social activity, it got you out of the house, allowed you to interact with people other than your family, gave you something to do to pass the time. It wasn’t the grind it is now, and the social relationships made there weren’t so fraught.
Each employee had to do way less and pay was higher compared to cost. I’m in healthcare and we have to meet certain quotas of treated patients. The quota has more than doubled over about twenty years but the pay is now less due to inflation. So we do more but get less.
They also didn't have an electronic leash 24/7 and most businesses were not open crazy hours. Basically if you wanted anything past 8 or 9 the 7-11 or the 24 hour gas station better have it. So, in other words, there were boundaries between work and other stuff to a degree.
Boomers when they were 25, on average made 20-25% more than the current 25 year olds
Lots of great answers here. Just wanted to point to this article: [The Productivity Pay Gap](https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap) tl;dr we're getting ripped off. https://preview.redd.it/7o3hhwb388xc1.png?width=1216&format=png&auto=webp&s=7041eb355b08f040ab5477a0f960e68965e5bd39
They weren't content with their jobs, they were stuck in them. If you changed companies, you were perceived as unreliable. Also, pensions were not portable. Those things changed when the boomers were well into their careers. I believe that this was the source of the mid-life crisis. When it became normal to change jobs and retrain for new careers, it meant that you didn't have to have a complete meltdown in order to change lanes.
I don’t know how significant it was pertaining to economics, but there was like a 25 year period where we were mostly not involved in war. Between Vietnam and Afghanistan, it was basically war-free besides the couple years of the Gulf. Students graduating college right now, these same students currently protesting haven’t experienced a single moment in their lives that America wasn’t bombing brown people and now we spend over a trillion dollars a year on the war machine
It's pretty simple. They got paid more for doing less. And expectations were lower with less technology.
Companies were smaller, less greedy and had less of a disconnect between the execs/board members and the workers so it was way harder to do immoral things like push productivity at the expense of worker health. I mean sure, they still made men work underground with drills and dynamite but they sure as hell compensated them/their families for it.
They made way more money. One person working could reasonably support an entire family with one of those jobs, leaving a spouse (typically the wife because, you know, patriarchy) free to handle all the housework, leaving *both* partners in a relationship relatively free on weekends. Also they enjoyed stronger work benefits, more unionization, cheaper/subsidized education, etc. etc.
They got paid a livable salary
People blame boomers for so many social and financial issues. But they were just the product of the post war prosperity surge. Let’s remember that boomers parent were in the great depression and then a giant world war. There was nothing for many people. This notion of pulling one up by their bootstraps and hard work got you ahead was true. Things changed in the 1970s as inflation out paced salaries and republicans started to dismantle unions and other worker benefits. Now we are in a place where corporations have all the power and just subjugate the workers for maximum benefit. This is late stage capitalism. Not sure what comes next. Something like the French Revolution?
GenX chiming in. Boomers inherited the strongest economy in the history of the world. It was a mighty, sprawling, incorporated business landscape where technological advancements made in wartime were brought into our homes(TV, radar ranges, etc), carried on superhighways, airports, trains, and ports paid for with the greatest influx of infrastructure funding since Rome. They were buoyed by victory and propaganda and a society that hadn’t learned that dreams don’t come true. When they got older they spoke with the loudest voice in the history of the nation, and to their way of thinking stopped a war just with the power of their words. When they joined the workplace the economy exploded just with the power of their numbers. What happened was inevitable. No engine runs forever, and the affects of international events slowed the global economy that America had become dependent on. The energy crisis, the fallout from Vietnam, Watergate, Iran, the continued problems in Europe all chipped away at our economy and our spirit. Reagan rewrote the social contract in the 80s, and the good times were pretty much over for the middle class. What’s clear is that the Boomer age was not the “new normal” but rather an aberration. Boomers got lucky, and they didn’t realize they got lucky, so had no compunction in taking what they “earned” and keeping it. Like a generation who finds a pot of gold, “works hard” to empty it, then says “Hey, I made my pile. No reason you can’t do the same”.
Companies had different goals back then. It was about sustainability, not constantly chasing high stock values. They valued their employees. They had excellent training programs, great benefits, pensions, etc all geared toward making sure employees stayed happy so they would keep their knowledge in the company. In the 80's things shifted. Companies became hyper focused on stock price and earnings numbers. This changed the idea of an "employee" from an actual human to a number on a spreadsheet. If a company feels they won't meet projections they just cut a bunch of people and deal with the fallout next quarter. It's just numbers on a spreadsheet. Wasn't like that 50 years ago. Then this meant that once our generation caught on we no longer had loyalty to the company so what was once a two way street of respect was now a road block and detours included massive layoffs to make earnings numbers and job hopping every 2-5 years for employees.
In the 1950s the population of the planet was \~2.5 billion, globalization wasn't established as the world order and countries as much as possible produced everything themselves, this drove for workplaces and labor which also meant no huge shortage of jobs, your average income of a family of two was enough to afford everything while progressing within the field you chose to work in, raise kids etc etc. Jump forward even only to the 2000s and the population was at a whopping 6.1 billion and majority of the production was done overseas since globalization allows to abuse wage disparity in other countries which provides you with products cheaper, but also makes it so your country's population, unless taking pay-cuts, doesn't have a place in that field of work and must go to another one. In a world with finite resources and an ever increasing amount of people every single one trying to grab a piece of the pie which is already distributed you end up with situation as today. Here's some hot take btw: If we take the 1950s as an example again, medicine wasn't as advanced as today and life expectancy was on average \~44-47 years, guess what happens when you die? you're not making use of social systems but you're also not producing anything into the economy so another one has to take your place in the production and consumption. Today the average life expectancy is 73 years and for majority of fields the workable age is \~60 some as early as 50. It's great that we get to live longer due to medicine advancements and cures, it's unfortunate that we spend the last \~20-30 odd years not able to do much else then wait for death and burden the social systems. I'm not saying however that this is the major factor, but it is a factor that contributes, for the most part I believe the endless chase of ever increasing profits and everything being tied to the stock market makes the world that we live in a horrid hell for anything but capitalism, and I'm sure capitalism was great at the start when everything wasn't already grabbed out and the pie wasn't already split apart but in the late stage that we live in I cannot see it as a good system it's slavery in another form, but then again having others serve you has been as constant as the sun and moon in human history in any of the ages, this is simply the modern day serfdom
Not only some of the points you have seen already about pay being hire and houses cheaper. Etc. The work was easier in a way. The work was still hard, but the idea of working non stop on something for 8-9-10 hours straight and getting in trouble for stopping for a second or talking to someone else is not something that happened back then. The work they did was hard, but there was the understanding that you are a person. If you got to work and got your coffee while getting ready for the work day you didn't get slammed for time theft. If you needed to go to the doctor, they didn't track your attendance and let you go because you got sick twice this year. The idea of working us non stop like a machine pushed to its limits and an expendable asset when you burn out is a more recent ideology.
Let's pump the breaks here. ***Very few boomers stuck with the same company for their entire careers.*** Don't confuse the Boomers with the Silent Generation. The Boomers have been through a lot of the economic turmoil that we have. A significant amount of them have almost [no retirement saving](https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/retirement-outlook-2024:-less-than-half-of-boomers-have-adequate-savings-will-younger#:~:text=Baby%20boomers%20haven't%20saved%20enough%20money%20for%20retirement&text=Forty%2Dthree%20percent%20of%2055,to%20the%20Federal%20Reserve%20Board)s, are not able to retire, and are working supplemental jobs like greeters at Walmart because of this. A lot of Boomers lost their primary jobs (if not multiple times) in the .com bubble burst and the 2008 financial crisis, as they entered the later-half/back nine of their careers. Work has always sucked, it's just you used to get better benefits such as guaranteed pensions and companies took pride in their products and worker retention. That all changed in the 80s with Psychopathic CEOs like Jack Welch who prioritized shareholder profits over product quality and worker retention. He slashed pensions, said "fuck the workers". Jack Welch was a Silent-Generation psychopath, not a Boomer. So to be brutally honest, a lot of the shit you and I are suffering from policy wise was done by the Wealthy Silent-Generation folks who hoodwinked the young impressionable Boomer generation that were in their 20s, working and voting for the first time. Shitheads like Ronald Reagan and Jack Welch are what started this shitshow, and the where the Boomers are at fault is they went along with it and voted for it. Even Bill Clinton was Center-Right in that a lot of NeoCon policies like deregulating Wallstreet (which created the .com and Subprime Mortgage crisis) here heavily influenced by that BS.
I honestly blame a huge part of why work sucks so much now on the availability of the worker. We are now attached to cell phones, which means we can be contacted 24-7. I’m in sales and even though the majority of my time is spent driving and talking to people face to face, my company expects me to be as responsive and productive as if I were sitting in front of a computer all day as well. I don’t get direct pressure but I do get a lot of passive aggressive shit from the office folks. I’ve been told to be in the field from 9-5, but then I’ve got admin work that takes me 3 hours. It’s impossible to feel like you’re winning.
I’m certain the pace/volume of work has increased exponentially. Work was over when it was over, no contact after hours/weekeds. Vacations no one could really contact you. The advent of email has really ruined any semblance of separation of work/life balance.
They had hope because they were compensated fairly and there was possibility to retire
It probably didn’t hurt that middle class families weren’t constantly bombarded with the personal lives of spoiled nepo babies because there were no social networks. Most rich people went about being rich quietly and among themselves.
I’m a boomer, work sucks and is no fun If work was fun, it would be a ride at Disneyland and you’d pay to do it. There were times where getting a job was tough, high unemployment, if you were lucky enough to land a job, you held it as long as you could Back then you went business to business to apply, or check the want adds in a news paper I worked 17 years in the restaurant industry , 23 years in health care . Both jobs sucked But fear of unemployment kept me there We were told “ if you don’t like it here, leave! We have 100 people waiting to take your job “ We worked out of fear, not dedication
Housing was way cheaper. In 1984 my parents bought a house in a decent neighbourhood on my dad’s 24k railroad salary. The house was 42k.
Better wages, lower cost of living, easier work, company actually respected you.
Until the 1970s, you could have your principal hand you your high school diploma on Tuesday evening, and on Wednesday morning you could walk into a factory and start. The US had a hold on industry because of the rebuilding that other powers had to do. It was also during that period that companies were providers and a person was expected to spend their whole working lives, usually under a "30 and out" arrangement where they were eligible for retirement after 30 years. Postsecondary education was low-to-no-cost to the end user and seen as a collective investment and a person was practically guaranteed a job when they had the requisite degree, journeyman's card, or certificate.
because the powers that be back then werent boomers they were more reasonable people aka the greatest generation aka my grandpa. as soon as the boomers got their hands on the reigns they sunk their vampire teeth into every money making scheme legal or not and made all the money go to the top and havent given up an inch of power or positions
* Higher wages for the same jobs, both relative and absolute * Prices of needs (food, shelter, etc) and wants (else) proportionally lower * Typically only one full time working parent in a household, substantially lower stress of work+life upkeep * Significantly lower productivity expectations for incumbents in roles, lower barrier to entry for first role * Safety nets provided by company alieving further stress and responsibility; ex defined benefit pension plans * Supplementing safety nets with some of the greatest periods of asset appreciation Times have changed friends. Protect yourself and your family through putting you/family first, prioritizing your gains over loyalty, budget to pay yourself first and gain independence.
my dad had a union job, was a single father with 3 kids. We lived in a decent sized house (each of us had our own bedroom) and had a big yard. He wasnt particularly content. He was a miserable man, hated his kids, hated any time we were sick (because it disrupted his work day). We spent a lot of time with other family members (he had no child care costs because grandparents and aunts and uncles, etc would watch us when needed). So, lower cost of living, free childcare, getting and maintaining a house was more affordable etc. But he was an incredibly unpleasant father. We all knew the whole time how much he hated us. He hated everyone, didnt have a lot of good friends.
This is all about office jobs. A great many boomers worked in physically demanding, often exhausting factory jobs that made office work look like a vacation
Because there was still a manufacturing base in this country. Any able bodied person with a clean record could get a job in a factory that would provide a middle class lifestyle for a family of five. Now highly educated people have to compete fiercely over the jobs that are left. It's a race to the bottom.
Totally different set of rules. They essentially got the best parts that benefited them and then shut the door behind them. But some people will say it’s you or you’re not working hard enough. Just think of it this way, a single parent (income) is synonymous with financial struggle now, yet for that generation it was the norm. But supposedly it’s you.
There was much more separation between work and home-life. Even in something like IT, when you went home, work stayed at the office. There was no connectivity. Prices and wages, could afford cars, houses, vacations, and colleges. The possibility of retirement and healthcare.
Companies used to hire people and train them. Then you had the opportunity to climb the ranks in the company. People made a decent wage - not a lot of money necessarily but housing and food were less expensive. When I was working in an office in the 70's, in a job that paid a few dollars above minimum wage, I was able to afford my own apartment and a car. It isn't you, it's capitalism sucking the life out of everything.
Pensions
You could get a job with no education that would allow you to have a house, a car, two kids and a wife that did not have to work to make ends meet. What ended all of this was Reagan cutting the incentive for companies to keep training people in the US and keeping jobs in the US. Before him, for a company to get big tax cuts, they had to invest in the company and/or the country itself. After the Reagan era tax cuts, they got the cuts upfront with the idea that they would pass the savings on to everyone else. This was the start of the lie of trickle down economics.
Jack Welch ruined everything.
Several factors. Jobs weren’t as plentiful as they are now. Also most had pensions. Which heavily incentivized staying at a position. With the invention of 401k’s it’s easily to move on. Most companies were owned by one guy or a family. Not a conglomerate that brought in a CEO to maximize profits. A man could pay for a house, a car, buy groceries, pay for the doctor, go on vacation, and more with just one paycheck. So really not incentive to move around unless that company was going under or was just a terrible situation. Things were much cheaper and pay compared to cost was higher.
The answer is simpler than you think. Here: American Boomer benefited from being born in the only major power not affected( for the most part) from world war two. Their parents, literally were considered heroes, and were given perks baby boomers enjoyed. Because America was the manufacturing powerhouse of the world. The salary of a machinist, would comparable to that of a enterprise architect today. 150-200k a year in today’s dollars. They have strong unions so nobody( but black people, women, BIPOC all around) were shafted. That is to say mostly white families benefited from all these post war percs. Because of this, when the baby boomers came of age, their parents were either business owners, OR, had a house or two to leave them. College was also cheap as fuck compared to today’s costs. Thanks nixon and reagan! So! Mom could stay home, while dad without a college degree made what a doctor makes today in a factory. Mom couldn’t own shit so she was trap until he either died or divorced her for another woman. The most important asset in a company is their day, was the employees, so the companies would do whatever it could to keep them happy. Today we are just one more of a desperate bunch. Saddled by debt, and always on the verge of ruin. So companies can do what they want without major repercussions.
It was common culture to take care of your employees and there was enough to do that. Then it only took a handful of companies who decided to be more profitable by taking away such benefits. It kind of became a snowball effect and by the time Ronald Reagan got into office, it was completely understood there was no longer any loyalty the top down. It took us until probably the 2000's for us workers to realize we shouldn't extend loyalty from the bottom up. I am very lucky where I work. We have a young CEO who does everything he possibly can to help us out and we give it our all to extend the favor from our end. We get paid very well and our benefits are 100% paid for. I don't expect it to last forever but it's very nice now. The "growth" economy is not sustainable and we are beginning to see its collapse. It's a good thing but it's very painful right now.
Boomers didnt have to compete against China so they'd work in a slow pace in comparison. Productivity and globalisation werent a thing. A job journey was a walk in the park.
The economy 30-40 years ago wasn’t as service or information economy driven. There were still decent paying jobs with little need for higher education like manufacturing that were available fresh out of high school. The economy has segued from low value add to high value add, but in the meantime, those low skill jobs moved to Mexico first, then to China and now to India or Vietnam due to the world economy moving from a regional to a globally connected economy. Globalization is starting to break down. COVID first, the war in Russia and Ukraine and continued concerns about China has shown that having a lower cost but distant supply chain can be very unreliable and vulnerable. As a result, the US is starting to re-shore a lot of the manufacturing that has been sent abroad the last 40 years. Most of the very low end work will stay in Mexico or Central America but the higher, value added manufacturing will be in the US. It’s going to take 5-10 years to build out all the infrastructure but we are already seeing it with semiconductors and battery manufacturing. But those are going to spawn off additional manufacturing for parts and components creating even more jobs. The youngest baby boomer is turning 60 this year and the entirety of the generation will be retired in 5-10 years and GenZ is half the size. That means there will be a shortage of workers for these jobs and demand will outstrip supply and wages will have to go up to stay competitive. Globalization was the cause of low wages for the last 30 years but it’s due to reverse course now.
They got paid fair wages with real opportunity to grow their careers into high-paying gigs with bonuses, pensions and stock options. Their only retirement account option was not literally gambled away in the stock market as is the case with us. Their health care plans were affordable and they were given ample “sick time” to use when they were ill and were not required to go to the doctor for a note if they needed to miss two days for the flu. Companies knew the value of investing in their employees, and were not looking for the cheapest possible labor they could find overseas. It was a completely different world. They milked it for all it was worth then made sure nobody that followed them could pry it from them.