Moments of crisis lead to unexpected innovation. The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 led to the invention of the skyscraper in Chicago; the world’s cities would never look the same. World War II gave us radar and the atomic bomb, but also penicillin and the first flu vaccine. And now, Covid-19 is accelerating innovation again: mRNA vaccines, telehealth, online learning. But the pandemic’s most revolutionary contribution might be a fundamental rethinking of how we work.
Derek Thompson makes this argument in a great piece in The Atlantic last week. Economists are calling this moment “The Great Resignation”, and Thompson points out that “quits”—as the Bureau of Labor Statistics calls them—are at an all-time high. In August alone, 7% of hotel and food service employees quit—that’s 1 in 14 workers, just in a single month. According to Business Insider, a whopping 73% of all Americans are thinking about quitting their job.
People are revisiting long-held beliefs about work: “Do I need to work a 9-to-5?” “Does it really make sense to commute an hour every day?” “Do I need to spend this amount of time away from my family?” Workers are rejecting the soullessness and mundanity of America’s Office Space-style work culture.
Instead, workers are choosing to work in the digital economy. As Ben Thompson put it, it’s not work-from-home; it’s work-from-internet. And it turns out, working in the digital economy can be more enjoyable, more flexible, and more lucrative.
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