The Truth Behind ‘No One Wants to Work Anymore’

Nobody wants to work anymore.

It’s the rallying cry of business owners, recruiters:, and cranky people who aren’t getting the coffee fast enough at Starbucks.

But, it’s not at all new. Gen X may complain that Gen Z doesn’t want to work (and if that’s the case, they should look in the mirror as Gen X raised the current crop of newly minted adults). Paul Fairie, a researcher and instructor at the University of Calgary, posted a fascinating viral  Twitter Thread documenting how the complaints are not new to this generation.

For instance:

That’s what we all know, and we have seen many examples of people complaining about this, like signs in businesses that blast their lack of candidates and capable employees.

To keep reading, click here:  The Truth Behind ‘No One Wants to Work Anymore’

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12 thoughts on “The Truth Behind ‘No One Wants to Work Anymore’

  1. Yeah, no one wants to work anymore. And, while you’re at you, you young whippersnappers need to get off my lawn! 🙂

  2. Employers want educated, experienced workers, but they won’t pay them, they won’t train them, they won’t consider anyone who doesn’t already have a job, and once hired, they treat them like robots or livestock.

    Bosses, IT’S YOU.

  3. What’s the only thing worse than working? Not working!

    Most people want to work, as long as they’re not treated like garbage. Many companies have shown no loyalty or respect towards their front-line, yet are astonished when workers return the favor.

    1. There’s a self feeding cycle. Employees don’t give a damn about companies because companies don’t give a damn about them. And companies don’t give a damn about employees because employees don’t give a damn about them. And so everybody goes through life miserable, drifting from job to job, hating every one of them, and companies suffer from lack of a labor pool to choose from.

      1. When satisfying shareholders over the employees who keep the business alive and only consider employees as an expense that needs to be kept as minimum as possible to avoid cutting the profit for the shareholders no wonder the younger generation of workers is dissatisfied with work. On top of that they grew up in a setting era where they were rewarded for just being present (stars for everyone) and they assume that they will all be working dream jobs with starting salary of 6 figures so there’s no reality. Yes we have jobs with poor management who also have to produce an expected goal pre-set by people in corporate who merely push numbers around. Everyone is their own important self and no one is a team member.

  4. GenX is in their 60s and up. Not too many newly minted adults were raised by GenX. There’s a generation or two in between who did.

    But the fashion of the day is to blame GenX for all the world’s ills. Can’t possibly be anybody else’s fault.

    1. 60’s and up? Most demographers put us as being born between 1965 and 1980, or there about. So the oldest of us are mid-50’s and most are younger. Lots of our kids our absolutely “newly minted adults.”

  5. ” (and if that’s the case, they should look in the mirror as Gen X raised the current crop of newly minted adults)”

    This is my favorite thing about my former classmates whining and moaning about “kids these days” and it’s cousin complaint “we were the last generation to play outside/whatever…” – THESE ARE YOUR KIDS. YOU raised them, and YOU raised them this way, so…

  6. I remember reading a complaint from someone in the 1500s about how trashy young women were dressing nowadays. It is eternal.

    That said, I am eagerly awaiting the day that the current crop of super strident self-righteous twenty year olds become problematic to the generation younger than them. As a gen-exer who was quite strident and self righteous in my younger days, I have come to appreciate that what goes around comes around.

  7. I’m actually in a career that I enjoy – but there have been too many times where as the years pass, I enjoy the some of the companies I’ve been at less & less.

    To say that I want to work may not necessarily be true (some days anyway)… but I do want to have the $$ required to provide myself with the basic necessities and some discretionary $$ to have a little fun with.

    I think in some cases it can be seen as ‘you get what you pay for.’ If you want to pay as little as possible, it’s quite likely that your employees may either not be as skilled as needed, or they’ll quit as soon as something with better pay comes along.

    If a company requires a BA or higher and a minimum of 5 years experience and specialized certifications … they have to be willing to pay what all of that is actually worth.

  8. I’m a boomer and wondered how different things are for kids today. So I plugged some of my college-age wages into an inflation calculator. I was paid the equivalent today of $7.50 an hour to wait tables: pretty much the same as today’s minimum. But that was *tipped* minimum wage in a state that did (and still does) accept that wait staff can be paid half minimum wage and they’ll make it up in tips. At an untipped job on regular minimum wage I got a bit over $15 an hour in today’s dollars. I wouldn’t want to work either if it was only for minimum wage now. By the time I’d bought work clothes and paid for commute, what would be left wouldn’t be worth being bawled out by a mean boss for.

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