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The word cropped up in usage in the 1620s, and is of uncertain origin in English.
Now, it’s a word that matters as much to home builder performance in second quarter, third quarter, fourth quarter and all quarters beyond as any. But, we may have to acknowledge, few of us knows what it means, or will mean.
Job.
Online Etymology Dictionary says this about job (n.).
“piece of work; something to be done,” 1620s, from phrase jobbe of worke (1550s) “task, piece of work” (contrasted with continuous labor), a word of uncertain origin. Perhaps a variant of gobbe “mass, lump” (c. 1400; see gob) via sense of “a cart-load.” Specific sense of “work done for pay” first recorded 1650s.
job. (1) A low mean lucrative busy affair. (2) Petty, piddling work; a piece of chance work. [Johnson’s Dictionary]
The U.S. Department of Labor says this, this morning, about jobs.
In the week ending April 18, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 4,427,000, a decrease of 810,000 from the previous week’s revised level. The previous week’s level was revised down by 8,000 from 5,245,000 to 5,237,000. The 4-week moving average was 5,786,500, an increase of 280,000 from the previous week’s revised average. The previous week’s average was revised down by 2,000 from 5,508,500 to 5,506,500.
The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 11.0 percent for the week ending April 11, an increase of 2.8 percentage points from the previous week’s unrevised rate. This marks the highest level of the seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate in the history of the seasonally adjusted series. The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending April 11 was 15,976,000, an increase of 4,064,000 from the previous week’s revised level. This marks the highest level of seasonally adjusted insured unemployment in the history of the seasonally adjusted series. The previous week’s level was revised down by 64,000 from 11,976,000 to 11,912,000. The 4-week moving average was 9,598,250, an increase of 3,548,000 from the previous week’s revised average. The previous week’s average was revised down by 16,000 from 6,066,250 to 6,050,250.
So, we see, and hear, and feel acutely why the word “job” matters so much.
The staggering, decade-obliterating shock to payroll employment has not punished people, places, nor business and society segments equally. The DOL weekly job claims report notes:
The highest insured unemployment rates in the week ending April 4 were in Michigan (17.4), Rhode Island (15.0), Nevada (13.7), Georgia (13.6), Washington (13.2), New Hampshire (12.2), Minnesota (11.9), New York (11.9), Montana (11.7), and Ohio (11.6).
The largest increases in initial claims for the week ending April 11 were in Colorado (+58,246), New York (+50,250), Missouri (+10,668), Florida (+10,534), and North Carolina (+2,733), while the largest decreases were in California (-263,342), Michigan (-166,347), New Jersey (-73,416), Georgia (-70,551), and Ohio (-66,874).
This may be looked at as a positive. Pockets of geography, economic activity, and industry communities that have taken a flesh-wound rather than a direct hit may serve as our last best hope of a rekindling of hope and renewed economic momentum.
Or, an unequal dosing of pain and anxiety may act as a negative in two ways. First, people in markets or sectors that believe they’re buffered or immune to the worst effects of the health or economic crisis may, in fact, be “whistling past the graveyard,” and simply don’t know what they don’t know yet. Second, if such people are shielded from awareness of the full-brunt impacts, they may fail to act in ways that could serve toward an eventual recovery.
The fact that people in some markets appear to be behaving like they’ve been spared–continuing to search for new homes, continuing to clock in with new orders, continuing to settle on their purchases–is, in fact, a bright spot in an economy full of worry and pain.
Smart, experienced, well-placed economists insist that Federal policy, a massive, multi-layered system of emergency unemployment, business rescue, and economic stabilization programs will not only soften the blow, but hasten the healing from it. Investment research analysts, likewise, signal a relatively swift, jaw-dropping collapse for a couple of quarters, followed by an able-bodied weathering of challenges on the part of both households and businesses.
These historically epic policy initiatives and an underlying confidence that many job losses, dislocations, furloughs, and disruptions are coming at a moment that otherwise suggests strong, constructive economic fundamentals give these observers a sense that the unemployment swoon won’t last long.
Economists, however, don’t have a great track record for predictions, as this FiveThirtyEight piece, by Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux notes.
‘Here’s the thing: Economists aren’t especially good at predicting recessions. In this instance, with at least 20 million people out of work in the U.S. and pretty much every country suffering from the pandemic, it seems almost certain that we’re in one. But forecasting the path of a recession isn’t an easy task under the best of circumstances. And we are not living through the best of circumstances right now. “This is not a situation where you can push a button on the computer and out comes a number,” said Jonathan Wright, a professor of economics at Johns Hopkins University. “It’s detective work. And it will mostly be wildly wrong.”’
The crisis leadership dimension here is this. Pre-pandemic crisis jobs strength or weakness, mid-pandemic measures, and post-COVID-19 jobs recovery need to be pulled apart and looked at carefully from the standpoint of truly “uncharted waters.”
Consumer household sentiment has only recently begun to catch up and come-to after the initial shocks of the COVID curve. Here we see, from Pew Research, beginnings of anxiety levels that may reflect a longer-term drag on household consumption behavior.
The dramatic plunge in positive assessments of the national economy as a result of the coronavirus outbreak is steeper than declines in economic ratings seen during the last two recessions. Before they took a sudden negative turn, economic attitudes were historically positive. Just three months ago, the public’s views of the national economy were more positive than they had been at any point over the past 20 years.
This is very different from the Great Recession, which began in December 2007. Even before the recession and subsequent financial crisis, the public’s views of the national economy were not all that positive. They declined more gradually in 2007-2008 and remained very negative for the next several years.
What seems to be widely ignored or missed is the fundamental–future of work–challenge that both preceded the pandemic and now nests itself in the throes of the crisis. A Harvard Business Review piece by consultancy Willis Towers Watson advisors Ravin Jesuthasan, Tracey Malcolm, and Susan Cantrell gets at the leadership risk and opportunity of the moment. They highlight three strategies–1. make work portable across organizations; 2. automate more; and 3. share employees in cross-industry exchanges–as imperatives for future fitness, and what many leaders express as the need of the moment, a “rolling plan:”
“Reimagining jobs around the constraints of today’s challenging business environment may accelerate the future of work and open up new and innovative ways in how, where, and by whom work gets done. Ultimately, this can help us build greater resilience and efficiency in our organizations, and help people live healthier, more sustainable lives.”
Crises past called for leadership to offer a brave, stabilizing, locked-in plan that could endure big stresses and shocks, and come out on the other side “the better for it.” COVID-19, and the macro future-of-work challenges that preceded the outbreak’s trauma, suggest a “rolling” nimble, machine-learning like series of adaptations to conditions that shift on an accelerated basis.
That’s why it matters so urgently that we more thoroughly understand this word of uncertain origins. Job.
