Work has been getting a bad press lately. We’ve had the “great resignation” trend, the “anti-work” movement, “quiet quitting” and a wave of strikes. It all seems to add up to a sense that work is getting worse and people are fed up with it. I was even asked to join a podcast discussion last year called “Is this the end of work as we know it?”But that’s not necessarily what the data says, at least in the UK. When Alan Felstead and Rhys Davies at Cardiff University ran an online quiz in 2018/19 and again in 2022, they gathered about 100,000 responses from people across the country who answered detailed questions about their jobs. The academics found that in 2022, people reported more ability to decide when to start and stop work, more scope to take time off in an emergency, more supportive managers, less work pressure, more say in job-related decisions, better promotion prospects and higher job security. On the down side, they had less discretion over their work tasks.
最近媒體對就業的報導一直不好。我們經歷了「大辭職」趨勢、「反工作」運動、「精神離職」和一波罷工浪潮。這一切似乎都讓人覺得，工作越來越糟，人們也已對它感到厭倦。去年，我甚至被邀請參加一個播客討論，題爲「這是我們所知道的工作之終結嗎？」