Rani Molla writes at Vox about job burnout:
Some 43 percent of US office workers “feel burned out at work,” according to the latest quarterly survey by Slack’s Future Forum. That figure is near its peak level last year, though Slack has only been tracking this data since May of 2021.
First off, Slack is probably the company I'd least trust in the entire country with a survey like this. Second, they've only conducted it for 15 months. It's insane to even think about quoting it seriously.
But burnout is practically conventional wisdom these days. Here's a random collection of recent headlines:
NY Post: Two-thirds of workers say their job is stressful: ‘Absolute chaos’
US News: How Job Stress Might Be Killing You
APA 2022 Trends Report: Burnout and stress are everywhere
Bloomberg: The Middle Managers Are Not Alright
Forbes: New Surveys Show Burnout Is An International Crisis
Google is your friend if you want more. But now take a look at a couple of less sensationalistic sources that have been tracking job stress for a long time. Here is Gallup:
As you can see, the number of people reporting serious job stress—i.e., burnout—has been on a modest downward trend for 20 years, with a smallish uptick in 2021. Burnout is up recently, which is hardly surprising, but it's not up very much—one point since 2017 and three points since 2020.
Next, here's the General Social Survey. Their question is about job satisfaction, not specifically about job stress, but that's a close relative. And it has the advantage of breaking out the numbers by age group:¹
Two age groups are up a couple of points, one age group is down a point, and young workers are up four points. However, the trend has been steadily down for young workers—yes, the ones who have supposedly rebelled against the old-school rat race—followed by a spike of a few points during the pandemic.
Nickel summary: Burnout is up a bit thanks to the pandemic, but not by an awful lot. Even among the Gen Z and Millennial sets, the spike is only a few points and there's no special reason to think it won't drop back to normal in a year or two. After all, the problem obviously has far more to do with outside factors than with workplaces themselves, and those outside factors are (touch wood) not going to hang around forever.²
¹This was reported by GSS with a y-axis of 0-100%. I cut it off instead at 15% so that the data was more easily visible.
²As for workplaces themselves, if the problem with young people has to do with Slack and Zoom and working from home—well, we know what to do about that, don't we?
Burnout is up among doctors and nurses, who have been resigning and leaving hospitals understaffed, especially in emergency rooms and ICUs. Why? Because there has been a major increase in physical attacks by patients and their families on medical staff. What used to be an occasional event is now a routine occurrence, happening at least once per shift. Hospitals have changed their security practices, so that emergency rooms have more armed guards, which increases costs. It is now routine to keep a hypodermic needle with Haldol in ICUs, ready for use as needed. Not only is this physically dangerous, but it is demoralizing for those medical workers who have been sacrificing their own time with extra shifts and their safety to treat others during covid. They are feeling that not only do patients not appreciate their efforts, but they are being attacked for trying to help others. When families are not physically attacking, them, many are resistant, obstructive and interfere with care, threatening lawsuits, using profanity and reviling medical staff over disagreements about covid treatment.
Teachers are also leaving their profession, due to unreasonable demands on their time with insufficient training and resources, and for too little pay. Now they are also concerned about being reviled by parents and even fired over constraints on what they can say and do in the classroom, without sufficient guidance about what they can and cannot do. That uncertainty increasingly appears not worth the stress when they do not receive sufficient pay to justify their anxiety. Some feel that they are being blamed for loss of learning that happened during covid, after doing the best they could under difficult conditions. That just doesn't seem worth the drama and turmoil in some schools, especially in red states.
So, you can look at these overall statistics on jobs all you want, but it isn't going to tell you what is happening in these specific occupations greatly affected by covid. And implying that everything is back to normal for everyone is unkind, to say the least.
My take is he's pushing more against the hyperbolic approach media has on the narratives they want to discuss. So it's less saying everything is great, than noting that we're back to the "normal" perception overall on the few data points we could use.
Of course, some occupations are hammered due to Covid (have a nurse for a partner, so I know all to well). But obviously the overall trend matches historic trends, so things have returned to the norm overall among these data points.
Why are patients attacking doctors? I haven't heard of this.
As for Teachers, much of what you said I agree with. My wife and other family members and several friends are teachers. They are old enough and too far into the profession that they are not leaving. But many young teachers only last a couple years. As for "concerned about being reviled by parents and even fired over constraints on what they can say and do in the classroom', I don't think that's true at all. I live in FL and Parental Rights in education law is a complete non-issue.
According to a friend who is an emergency room doctor, it is because of increased drug and alcohol abuse, resulting in more patients who come in out of control and dangerous. In the ICU, patients are psychotic, sometimes due to covid but other times due to being hospitalized. There is a phenomenon called sundowning that results in disorientations. Combine that with fear and anxiety and patients try to resist treatment, leave, attack nurses who are trying to treat them, remove IVs and must be sedated or restrained, which doesn't help patients deal with fear, anger and confusion. It may be that the patients are taking on the affect of their family members, who are generally hostile in some cases because of covid disinformation. There are fewer serious covid cases now, but still understaffing in ICUs due to so many staff members leaving the field.
The education issue depends on where you work, but it is a factor that teachers are taking into account as they decide whether to leave the profession or not.
It is even an issue at the university level where tenure is being attacked and there is less funding for tenure track positions. If I hadn't retired in 2017 (due to my husband's health), I would be retiring now due to the changes in working conditions. How do you hold discussions on controversial subjects in such a polarized climate where any student can get you in trouble with your dept chair by making a complaint (or posting video online)? It isn't worth it.
I get a sense that there's a lot of post-pandemic malaise. I think it breaks down to a few causes: the pandemic itself, responses to the pandemic, inflations, increasingly hostile and aggressive politics and social media fights turning people off, the fact that some things aren't back to "normal" (here restaurant hours are still decreased from what they were, performing arts orgs still have to deal with Covid cancellations, we still have isolated but visible places where there are staffing shortages.) Pandemic disrupted film and tv production schedules which left us a bit short of entertainment/culture. None of it's big or severe or permanent, but taken together, things are pretty "meh". Covid's still here and we keep getting new boosters, which is fine, but people are sick of thinking about it.
Some of that could get interpreted as employee burnout or dissatisfaction. But mostly, people just seem tired.
The article appears to argue that burnout is up over the last 12-18 months.
Kevin appears to be saying that burnout wasn't all that elevated 12 months ago.
Both things can be true.....
Yeah, this.
And also, the metrics they're using are different. "Feeling burned out at work" is not the same as "completely dissatisfied with job stress." Related? Yes.
You know what other two things can be true? Someone can like their job and still feel burned out. Someone who likes their job is probably not going to answer that they feel completely dissatisfied.
Further, there may be some other factors that would cause or nudge people to answer these questions differently. Labor doesn't have much power in our work culture. Management (which is often rife with incompetence and laziness, particularly lower and middle levels of management) has almost all of the power. Plus, pay hasn't kept up either with the modern economy or with the value that workers add.
Personally, I think the truth is somewhere in between. My perception of work in the good ol' USA is that about 1/3 of people are burned out at any given time, with a further 1/4 or 1/3 riding the see-saw between "I'm burning out" and "finally, I can catch my breath for a day or two."
Add to this the constant anti-worker narratives pushed by executives and the media, and well...
My burnout tends to be project-specific. While I love what I do in general, there are some projects (and project teams) that are really draining. It has gotten worse with more people working remotely - the need for some people to have constant video meetings is rather new.
I'm massively burned out and all of those headlines apply to me. But, my situation is probably unique because it's triple batshit crazy.
I'm not even certain how to count all of the managers I've had over the last 20 months. Was the consultant my manager? Was the Finance director my boss? The IT director? I'm pretty sure I was my own boss for a year of that.
How many people did I manage? I led a team of 9 on a project, had one direct report, was told I was going to manage another 8 (I refused), while doing my regular job. Then management decided I didn't manage any, took my only employee, and this is for real, she's going to compete to be my boss in a few months with another guy who is clueless about what I do. It has been decreed that I don't want to manage. Oh, and along the way they took my office, stuck me in a junior group and pulled a promotion.
That, and I still completed a major project and kept my word. A project that the rest of the people in that group, all working together, could not have done.
Unfortunately, it's a .gov job, with some golden handcuffs. They obviously want me out, don't value what I do, but it's not so easy to get rid of labor in California .gov land. Don't get me wrong, F this place, and I'm out at the first good alternative, even one that doesn't pay as well, but I'm also very stuck. It's not always easy to pack it up and go with only a few years left before retirement even if for mental health reasons, it might be exactly the right thing to do. Wish I was able to not give a F.
Sorry, I took the day off, and just needed a bit of a vent.
Capitalism is inherently very stressful. You're competing with everybody -- including yourself! I think that has so much to do with both why capitalism produces such high efficiency, not to mention lots of stuff, and also why it pisses people off. You never get a break. Government should both provide the framework for capitalism and also make it easier when people need some time off, or have time off forced on them.
I agree. The churn is relentless.
But it's not really just capitalism.
When I talk about .gov, I like to point out that there are 3 problems with .gov: The employees, management and the public.
The world is inherently chaotic, as as capitalism, as are people.
I do think government should provide baselines, however. Is it any less criminal to withhold pay, or take advantage of people, or use certain types of labor than it is to rob a bank? Just because someone is willing to work for next to nothing, that doesn't mean it's an honorable thing, although, there can be scenario's where, in fact, it is.
I don't think there's an easy answer to this problem or an easy place to draw lines. I do know I no longer drink 100% capitalism cool-aid anymore.