Speaking to Dana Perino on Fox News, Mike Rowe posited that the reason for the massive number of people who have left their jobs and not looked for replacement jobs is a “topography that ultimately encourages people to not work.”
Perino noted that more than 4.4 million people quit their jobs in September but reports said there were over 10 million job openings. She asked, “Why are all these people quitting their jobs but not taking the other jobs?”
“Look, I mean, the honest answer is the 300-page book I can’t get around to finishing, but in general, I think it’s coming down to the ever-evolving definition of what a good job is, the expectations that most people have when it comes to determining what they want to do with the useful part of their life,” Rowe answered. “Money, incentives, disincentives, uncertainty, it’s all swirling around.”
“And look, it’s really tempting to get on the back porch and scream at the kids to get off the lawn vis-a-vis laziness and all of the other work ethic things that I do love to talk about,” he continued. “But we can’t blame people for acting in their own interests. And if we lay out a topography that ultimately encourages people to not work, then I’m afraid that’s the fault in our stars. We’re not going to do it. And so that’s part of the problem. But ultimately I think it’s a real complex thing.”
“Fundamentally, though, you can’t argue with the numbers. 10.4 million open jobs,” he stated. “That has to mean, among other things, that opportunity is not dead if we can simply get around to making a more persuasive case for the opportunities we have. “
Perino asked, “So if parents or grandparents or young people are watching, this program or ‘How America Works’ on Fox Business, what could they learn maybe start to change that perception of what is a good job?”
“I think so much of the debate always — the way we set the table, is here are the employers and here are the employees and here’s the gap and here’s the problem,” Rowe replied. “The shows I work on all attempt to remind the rest of us how much skin we have in the game. So on ‘How America Works,’ for instance, tonight we look at salt production. We meet the men, a guy named Raul Flores, down in Carlsbad, New Mexico, to get a better understanding of how reliant we are on salt and what it takes to get it out of the ground and on to the roads so interstate commerce can exist. It’s a real simple look at that job. It’s also a very clever recruiting mechanism, because when you look at a show like this, you see people who love their jobs; you see them prospering; you see them moving the needle and contributing in a meaningful way to society.”
“So my thing is to try and get to 300 million other people who are daily unimpressed with the fact that the lights come on when we flick the switch or the poop goes away when we flush the toilet. We have to remember we’re all connected,” he concluded.