Loving one’s work

Pandemic, wrote
Vox
, was a kind of large-scale philosophical experiment. It has shaken our lives and forced us to wonder why we travel, why we go to college or the office, why we kiss goodbye. American working life, but not only, has suffered in recent years the greatest collapse since the Great Depression. Now the offices are reopening, although dropout rates are near all-time highs. In March, the latest data on so-called “major resignations” recorded more than 4.5 million dropouts (
Cnn
), while the U.S. economy in March created more than 400 thousand new jobs despite a shortage of workers (
Ft
).

Working for what?

Yet even as discussions on the topic multiply, the questions raised by mass layoffs and the major changes taking place throughout the world of work remain unanswered: what is the point of working? And in what way could we love what we do? How should it fit into our lives? These are more than legitimate doubts now that there is a surprising amount of skepticism about labor, at least in the United States, a place where for centuries people have praised it so much that they have almost completely identified with it.

• Generation Z does not dream of work (
  Vox
  ).

A new culture

Currently, there seems to be neither the civic institutions nor the cultural values to have a leisure society, Vox adds. However, it is perhaps worth asking what future the work will have once the health emergency can truly be said to be over. It still proves difficult to change the culture of work because corporate cultures are not being changed, at least in most advanced countries. To achieve real change, employers will have to come to terms with what people ultimately get out of their professional lives, finding ways to preserve the positive aspects and to envision a society in which people can gain material and moral benefits from their work. Money is the most obvious thing, of course, but the pandemic and dropout rates-despite high wages-have shown how people also seek a more abstract good, such as meaning or purpose, in their employment.

• What makes a job a good job? (
  Nyt
  ).