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Almost half of American workers say they “feel burned out at work” in a recent poll from Slack, the workplace messaging company. An overwhelming majority of companies say they see an increase in worker burnout.
Employers, academics, and journalists are looking for the root causes of this phenomenon. Are jobs harder now? Are workers softer? Are employers less supportive?
JOBLESS CLAIMS DECLINE IN ENCOURAGING SIGN FOR ‘SOFT LANDING’ FOR ECONOMY
Experts told Vox that the burnout boom is rooted in “things like too much work and not enough resources, lack of acknowledgment for a job well done, and incommensurate pay.”
Workforce factors certainly make burnout less or more likely, but what’s lacking here is an explanation of why the workplace would have changed in these ways over recent years. Have employers become more demanding or less solicitous?
Surely in 2020, when workers were locked up at home with roommates, spouse, and children, everything was different. It would not be surprising if post-pandemic, between low unemployment and high uncertainty, employers are stretching workers to do more.
But generally, people are less happy and have been getting less happy for a decade.
the-global-rise-of-unhappiness.pngSo what’s been happening for a decade that would make people more stressed, less happy, and more burnt out? Obviously, social phenomena cannot be pinned to a single cause, but I would put the root cause of worker burnout not primarily on bosses’ expectations from work but on workers’ expectations from work.
And no, it’s not that workers are upset work isn’t cushy and easy. It’s that workers end up seeking more meaning from a job than a job can provide.
I’m not the kind of person who believes a job is strictly transactional.
But, probably subconsciously, millennials and Generation Z have tried to find meaning in work.
Millennials and Gen Z are far less likely to belong to an organized religion. Millennials and Gen Z are far less likely to be married or have children.
Faith and family are where most people in world history have found meaning, purpose, and belonging. So where do millennials and Gen Z find it?
Increasingly, at work.
“For the college-educated elite, work has morphed into a religious identity,” explained Derek Thompson at the Atlantic — “promising transcendence and community, but failing to deliver.”
“Workism is among the most potent of the new religions competing for congregants,” Thompson wrote. Workism is “the belief that work is not only necessary to economic production, but also the centerpiece of one’s identity and life’s purpose; and the belief that any policy to promote human welfare must always encourage more work.”
Why would workism be on the rise? Because people need to find purpose and meaning somewhere, and as people believe they are secularizing by eschewing organized religion, they predictably find meaning in the one part of life they don’t consider optional.
The problem with workism is that it drives you to keep working until you get ultimate meaning from work — which you never will.
So the root of millennial and Gen Z burnout isn’t our economy or their bosses. It’s their bad religion.
