We usually hear this
phrase in conjunction with immigration policy. Should we allow more
Central Americans into the US to pick our grapes, tend our gardens or
process our meat products? Here in Italy, people arrive crossing the
Mediterranean rather than the Rio Grande, or else they trek in from
Eastern Europe. The pizza makers and tomato pickers are mostly from
Africa. People from Eastern Europe do practically everything, with a
heavy concentration of them looking after the old and the infirm. It
would seem that in both the USA and in Europe there are many jobs
that nobody wants to do, despite unusually high levels of
unemployment. US Speaker of the House John Boehner recently said
that “a rising number of people would rather sit around”. He was
partly right. He should have said that most people would
rather sit around. That's what drives investment Johnny! Most rational
people would prefer to sit around and get money from their
investments rather than being paid to work. The problem is that some
don't have anything to invest. They started life on the wrong foot
or rather, in the wrong womb.
What are these jobs
that nobody wants? Cleaners of houses, streets, offices and
porta-potties, hamburger flippers, coal miners, steel workers,
soldiers and pesticide sprayers come freely to mind. Some unloved
jobs get done by importing or finding people so desperately poor that
they'll do anything. Other unpleasant tasks such as embalming the
dead or pouring molten steel get done by paying the workers
handsomely. We've managed to eliminate many of those nasty jobs.
The steel mills have been exported to cheap labor countries.
Undertakers appear to be secure for the near future but no doubt some
entrepreneur is already devising a scheme to freeze dry bodies for
low cost embalming and cosmetic treatment in Honduras. Once upon a
time coal miners were paid enough to make a decent living despite
the dangers and the hardships of the work. After years of only
partially successful union busting, coal companies have invested
heavily in gaining approvals for the cheaper and more efficient
technique of mountain-top removal to get at the coal. It's a bit
hard on the local environment but with the jobs gone, there's not
much reason to live in those places any more anyway.
Soldiering has an up
and down history of desirability. While defending one's country may
be a noble endeavor, and in remote centuries kings demonstrated their
valor by leading their armies in battle, few of us really want to
spend our lives as paid killers. The draft was used to overcome the
reluctance of the masses to devoting themselves to this line of work
but when too many people objected to killing people they had no
quarrel with, the draft was eliminated in the US and an all volunteer
military was instituted. Salaries were increased to the point where
they represented the best economic opportunity for people from the
poorer outposts of the society. The better money was combined with
promises of free college later and useful training while in service.
Many of these promises turned out to be hoaxes but then, that's been
the nature of all sorts of recruitment throughout history.
As the American
state of permanent war goes well into its second decade, those sorts
of enticements have worn thin. Now, besides the good money and the
deceptive promises, hero status has been bestowed. At every major
sporting event in the US, uniform wearing veterans are called upon to
receive our praise and gratitude, or to sing the national anthem as
fighter planes do awesome flyovers. Not all veterans are happy with
being anointed as heroes but it apparently stimulates the recruitment
needed to keep the military industrial complex's lower echelons fully
staffed.
Ironically, some of
the jobs nobody wants aren't so terrible in and of themselves.
Picking fruit may be strictly for cheap imported labor but last year
a lawyer friend of ours flew in from Santa Monica to help pick his
sister's olives for four days. He loved it. More and more of our
neighbors are having friends visit from Ireland, Holland and even
Bermuda to help with their olive harvest. I'm unconvinced about the
inherent joys of olive picking but intrigued by the Tom Sawyer aspect
of this phenomenon. We have more olive trees outside our door than
I'll ever want to pick myself so if any of you want to share in the
joy of the harvest, you're welcome to come and help. Free wine and
bruschetta for the pickers, though you'll have to find your own
accommodations and travel arrangements.
Gardening is another
of those unwanted jobs that many of us spend a godawful amount of
time and money on without any financial return. We do occasionally
get some help from the most sought after resident of our village, an
extraordinarily hard working fellow from Albania. If he could be
cloned, there would be work for five of him.
What is a job that
people really want to do? What makes people do the job that they do?
Back in history a century or so, and still today in some parts of
the world, people seemed to give less thought to this than they do
now. If their father was a butcher, they'd be butchers. If their
father was a farmer, chances were even better that they'd be farmers
too.
Growing up the the
American suburbs, that pattern was broken for me. I had no idea what
work was or what adults did. Female adults cooked and shopped. Male
adults put on a suit, walked to the train and reappeared, briefcase
in hand, in the evening. Now, thanks to the popular TV show Mad Men,
we've learned that they spent their days smoking, drinking, scheming
how to outfox their colleagues and having illicit sex.
My brother and I
were sent to a testing service in New York to determine what, if
anything, we were fit to do and what we might enjoy doing. His
childhood talent for burying ants in tar using only a magnifying
glass proved to be a precursor of a successful career in weapons
systems, a scientific orientation that the testing service recognized
and encouraged. In my case the testers found a propensity for
argument even stronger than the desire to draw, leading them to urge
a career in law. Alas, my argumentative nature was so strong that
when a neighbor, who was both a lawyer and a judge, advised me that
the quality of my law school performance would be far less important
to my career than the number of local civic and political
organizations I managed to join, rather than acknowledging the
generosity and wisdom of his words, I scuttled the entire project to
follow the advice of a brilliant but naive professor of American art
and architecture who claimed that America needed architects more than
it needed lawyers.
Lawyers, architects,
doctors, dentists, businessmen, professors. They're all thought to
be desirable positions. Why? The obvious answer is money. All the
people emigrating from scenic, unspoiled places to industrial
wastelands do so because they need money to live. That's simple enough but
once you have enough money to live, what makes a job something you
want to do? Money is always in the list of motivators and for some
people it comprises the entire list, but two other major factors,
pleasure and mission, seem to play a part.
The mission of the
doctor is to heal people; the architect wants to create a better
built environment, the lawyer hopes to bring justice to the society;
the journalist wants to reveal the truth; the teacher intends to
impart a richer and more rewarding life to people growing up; the
priest wants to save souls. The mission always sounds good; the
actual tasks involved are often less appealing.
Medicine has been
the best paid major profession* for as long as I can remember,
conferring prestige as well as high income, although those formerly
distinct rewards have tended to become synonymous. Since we all fear
for our lives and for our health, and medicine requires years of
study and preparation, the high level of compensation seems
justified. Yet how many of us would want to do what they do?
Specialization brings greater income but who would want to spend
their days, weeks and years probing one unhealthy rectum after
another, or examining a steady stream of oozing skin rashes?
Surgery
can be as bloody as working in a butcher shop but your bad cuts may
end up as litigation rather than sausage. (*among major professions
I exclude pro sports figures, hedge fund managers, bank CEOs, heads of Mafia families, politicians, and oligarchs, who combine to make up a numerically insignificant
privileged class)
Architecture has
been romanticized to the point where architects don't get paid, since
the pleasure of the work is compensation enough. The public is
unaware that in major architectural offices the people dreaming up
exciting new buildings are vastly outnumbered by those writing
reports, meeting minutes, peer reviews or specifications and by those
preparing door schedules and foundation details.
I can assume that
many young lawyers who want to see justice done spend an inordinate
amount of time writing wills or devising schemes to keep wealthy
clients from paying taxes or employees. Teachers who want to create
a better informed generation may spend most of their time maintaining
order and assuring that no crimes are committed on their watch.
Soldiers who want to defend their country, which hasn't been under
attack since before their parents were born, may find that their
political superiors send them out to invade places they'd never even
heard of. Conceivably, some politicians have have started their
careers thinking they might help their country, only to discover that
raising campaign funding to secure their reelection is a full-time
job in its own right, one which entails soliciting bribes from deep
pocketed contributors in return for making those contributors their
only constituents who matter.
Money and mission
are important but surely the pleasure experienced in doing something
must play an important part of making a job desirable. Pursuing a
career in the arts is an extreme case of people driven by the love of
an activity itself, regardless of the economic sacrifices it entails,
but many lines of work, from being a chef to being a scientist, pilot
or explorer have some of this aspect.
As I recall, boys at
the age of career decisions enjoy playing sports more than almost
anything else. The ultimate dream is to be able to play games into
middle age and get paid vast amounts of money to do so. The only
activity they'd rather engage in is sex, but opportunities are always
inadequate. They may resort to dreams to fulfill their desires but
few would dare dream of making a career out sex work. Chances of
becoming a shortstop for the Yankees or even making it onto an NFL
practice squad may be slim, but the odds of making that much money in
sex are slimmer still.
For years, feminists
have lamented that women's opportunities in professional sports are
limited, and they're right, but nature provides a degree of symmetry.
Women may have a harder time breaking into professional sports than
men but they have opportunities in sex work that men would die for.
Girls are raised differently than boys, or were until recently, but
based on the inherent pleasure involved and despite the lingering
stigma attached, I'd have thought that the oldest profession would
also be the most sought after career option. There are signs that,
just as the best and brightest young men are abandoning the
traditional professions to seek their fortunes as hedge fund
managers, increasing numbers of their female counterparts have taken
to prostitution to work their way out of student debt.
Playing games into
adulthood can pay extremely well but only for a very select few in
this most competitive of worlds. For the vast majority seeking such
careers, the rewards are meager for such gruelling work. That may
also be true for prostitutes but success doesn't get their faces on
Wheaties boxes so neither we nor the IRS can know where their career
opportunities top out.
While many military
people may object at being called heroes, perhaps we could give a
boost to some more needed occupations with this strategy. There are
other occupations outside the military which are also statistically
risky. Besides steel workers and coal miners, there are garbage
collectors, loggers, fishermen, farmers, roofers, police and fire
fighters, heroes all. Let's start calling our electricians,
plumbers, teachers, nurses and septic tank cleaners heroes. For that
matter, if we held up our sporting matches five minutes for a
patriotic musical tribute to our fruit and vegetable pickers, maybe
enough Americans would enter the trade so that the US could end its
border controversies.
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