May The Workforce Be With Us

This piece was commissioned by IFAPray.org (link to come)

The Biden Administration boasts of a robust economy, transitory inflation, and near record-low unemployment.  Likewise, our corporate-owned news outlets tout a booming job market, rising wages, and a promising financial horizon.  

However, despite what the teleprompter operators are told to type, anyone who has recently pushed a shopping cart through a store can attest:  Prices are high, products are scarce, and no one is stocking the shelves.  

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg blustered there are no problems with the Supply Chain.  Instead, he purports any vacuous shelves are due to greedy Americans who have a ravenous addiction to buying tchotchkes.  

Is this the most thoughtful analysis we can get?

Today’s published inflation rate is 6.8%.  But be aware, the Consumer Price Index methodology has been significantly modified since the double-digit inflation days of Jimmy Carter.  In 1980, inflation soared at 13.5%.  If that same calculation was used today, which includes housing prices, the prime-time teleprompters would display we are experiencing inflation rates higher than 1980.

CNBC’s 66-year-old investment Jedi Master, Jim Kramer, recently decreed, “This is the strongest economy, perhaps, I have ever seen.”  Perhaps, The Force has left Jedi Kramer as quickly as the Job Force is leaving America.

Nicholas Eberstadt, a political economist at the American Enterprise Institute, wrote an insightful piece that exposes a very definite and dismaying trend:  The American workforce is shrinking.  

By 1961, labor force participation for prime-age men (age 25-54) was 96.9%.  Today, that number has plummeted to 88%.  This may not seem excessive, but a drop of this magnitude is unprecedented and means that almost one in eight men is sitting out during his best years.

“Would we think it was a crisis if the work rate fell below the Great Depression level?” Mr. Eberstadt asks. “Well, you can check that box. We’re already there.”

This statement alone should seize all of our attention

The numbers for women are only slightly better.  Despite a fifty-year low for both traditional marriage and childbearing, workforce participation among women has dropped to 75%.  Some say the feminist movement convincingly discouraged women from raising children to pursue a more meaningful career.  If that is the case, where did they all go?

“This is no joke”, said Eberstadt.  “Thirty years ago, America’s prime workforce was 10 percentage points above Europe.  Today, Europe is a few points above America.”

Of course, the SARS-CoV-2 lockdowns and mandates introduced a dramatically negative impact on the job market.  But the fact remains; the Great Resignation from the American workforce started long before the pandemic.  Which begs the question:  What’s everybody doing instead of working?  

Watching screens.  

Conservative estimates project non-workforce participants spend over seven hours a day interfacing with — pixels.  Whether social media feeds, video games, streaming services, or general mobile device fixation, yesterday’s leisure has become today’s career.

“This is not what Marx would have called the ‘higher pursuits’ of leisure.”   Mr. Eberstadt says. “There’s something fundamentally degrading about this.”

Exactly how is this mass degradation of the human soul being funded?  Eberstadt places the bulk of the blame at the feet of bloated government programs.  Distributed like an appetite suppressant for hard work, the increasing size and availability of government benefits and disability programs have certainly kept people out of the workforce.  

But are the plethora of government benefits truly beneficial?

Quoting the Apostle Paul, a hard-core Puritan Work Ethic response could end the discussion right now:

If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat 

II Thessalonians, 3:10

But is the primary benefit of work merely survival?

I have worked in the Corporate IT sector my entire adult life.  In my early years, I maintained a sharp distinction between the secular and the sacred.  After all, once Adam sinned in the garden, wasn’t work deemed a curse to us?  Following the Lord’s pronouncement of thorns, thistles, and buckets of sweat, Solomon later wrote:  to find enjoyment from one’s work is a gift from God.  

Meaning, the normal course of a career is designed to be unenjoyable.

Based on my flawed theology, being a Christian in the workplace essentially meant:  Don’t pad your expense reports, refrain from laughing at coarse humor in the break room, and never go out for drinks after work.  

But when the whistle blew, I would race to my nightly church meetings where I could finally engage with the Kingdom of God.

Work was secular and the church was sacred.

Or is it?

Elohim blessed them and said, ‘Be fruitful and multiply.  Fill the earth and subdue it!  

And:

Elohim took the man and placed him in the orchard in Eden to care for it and to maintain it.

~Genesis 1 and 2

The Creation account starts in Genesis 1.  The fall of mankind starts in chapter 3.

If your Bible starts in Genesis 3, work is a cursed punishment.  If your Bible begins in Genesis 1, work is a gift and blessing from God intended to make life on Earth more abundant and prosperous.

Universities have convinced an entire generation that Capitalism is the most oppressive and corrupt system on the planet.  Can you blame so many for not participating in such an evil system?

What these same Universities fail to disclose is:  Capitalism is the only system that is proven to lift the entire globe from abject poverty.  As recently as 1981, 53% of the planet lived on a dollar or less per day.  By 2011, that number was reduced to 17%.

Socialism, Communism, and Totalitarianism can only run and hide from such facts.

Steven Pinker and Bjorn Lomborg have written smart and insightful content on this topic.  So before you jettison the workforce in allegiance to some flimsy social justice tenet, stop to consider this:  Your lack of participation in our first world economy will severely punish our brothers and sisters in the impoverished third world.

But, there is a much deeper, more personal human component few dare to admit:  A lack of meaningful work diminishes and dissolves our sense of identity, purpose, and self-worth.  Human beings are the only living creatures created in the image of God.  Inherent within the attributes of His divine nature is the propensity to create, renovate and transform the environments we find ourselves in.

If you think work is superfluous, consider this:

God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on it He ceased from all the work He had been doing in creation.

~ Genesis 2:3

Some Jewish rabbis translate this verse most profoundly.  For six days, Elohim spoke all of creation into existence, and on the seventh day; He inhaled.

Our ability to breathe deep the power of rest is rarely holy and rewarding unless it is preceded by the diligent labor of creative, benevolent initiatives.

I have a kneeler in my office.  The business I own today was birthed on that kneeler.  Sometimes, before I dial into a meeting or write an email, I will spend time on my knees until I sense an impartation of wisdom for the moment.

Some sessions are a brief drive-thru while others are an extended detailing.  Regardless, I always try to seek the Kingdom to see the sacred in the secular. 

Those who willfully subscribe to workforce resignation may have fleeting moments of pleasure, but the developing torment from a lack of purpose will not only narrow their soul but also rob the Earth of the gift of their contribution.

May we all gratefully embrace the divine calling of work.  May we all realize that whether our contributions are public or private, our contributions are vital and beneficial to many.  And may we cultivate and release our gifts to tend well and cultivate the garden The Lord has placed us in.