That is Work in Progress, a publication about work, know-how, and how one can clear up a few of America’s largest issues. Enroll right here.

The standard profession is about 80,000 hours lengthy, or one-sixth of the common individual’s waking life. One would like to be deliriously glad for all 80,000 hours. However, alas, we’re not. And the economic-news business loves nothing greater than to remind us of it. In reality, for the previous three years, finance media have grow to be so determined to elucidate the state of office distress to their viewers that they’ve usually ignored information, logic, or primary frequent sense.

In 2021, finance journalism couldn’t cease speaking in regards to the “Nice Resignation.” Judging by the ample protection, it appeared that employees in all places have been smashing their laptops and machines in a bacchanal of joblessness. This was all hooey. In actuality, extra Individuals have been simply breaking apart with their outdated employers to get higher-paying jobs. In skilled sports activities, when star athletes signal bigger contracts with totally different groups within the offseason, ESPN doesn’t name it a “nice resignation”; it calls it “free company.” And that’s what the economic system’s Nice Resignation actually was: a welcome free-agent interval for low-income employees searching for greater wages.

A number of months later, in 2022, the false concept that Individuals have been resigning en masse grew into a bigger narrative that—to quote each The New York Instances Journal and the financial evaluation of Kim Kardashian—“nobody desires to work.” Right here, once more, the vibes have been robust and the proof was weak. Each month, lots of of hundreds of individuals have been becoming a member of the workforce, unemployment was nearing multi-decade lows, and one measure of job satisfaction hit an all-time excessive. Positive, work is horrible generally. However of all of the years to soft-launch the speculation that “no one desires to work,” this was among the many strangest occasions to do it.

Undaunted, finance media moved on to a different bogus pattern, as Bloomberg and different information retailers revealed dozens of articles and podcasts monitoring the surge of “quiet quitting” within the labor drive. In idea, quiet quitting marked an epidemic of worker boredom and disengagement. And, to make certain, individuals generally really feel bored and disengaged at work. However once more, to the extent that this was any type of novel or rising pattern, there was little empirical meat on the bone. Personal surveys and federal knowledge confirmed that, in a sizzling labor market, the common employee was roughly as engaged with their work as that they had been 5 years earlier.

The pretend unhappiness pattern continues to be going robust. This yr the narrative is that employees are extra depressing than ever.

The Wall Avenue Journal just lately revealed an immediately viral essay entitled “Why Is Everybody So Sad at Work Proper Now?” The article shot to No. 1 on the Journal web site, the place it remained for a number of days. The essay’s recognition is totally comprehensible: Complaining about your job is the oldest job. Lengthy earlier than fashionable work satires akin to Severance and Workplace Area, the traditional Greek poet Hesiod, in Works and Days, complained that the gods saved a lot for themselves and pressed males into onerous labor, and the Bible asks, “What do individuals achieve from all their labors at which they toil below the solar?”

However the level of this Journal article was that everyone is “so” sad “proper now.” The place’s the proof? The authors cited a brand new office report by Gallup, which allegedly exhibits that the variety of U.S. employees “who say they’re indignant, careworn and disengaged is climbing.”

Now let’s take a more in-depth have a look at that Gallup report. For the previous 23 years, Gallup has requested American employees questions on their jobs: Are you glad? Are you engaged? Is that this time to discover a job? Do you could have alternatives to make use of your abilities? In most of those solutions, it’s very onerous to see that something new or attention-grabbing is going on.

Did your eyes type of sleepily glaze over these numbers? Nicely, that’s the concept. Individuals hold telling Gallup that work is constantly blah, not that they’re increasingly depressing.

The true story, to the extent that these surveys are correct, is that American employees are astonishingly glad and engaged in contrast with the remainder of the wealthy world. The identical worldwide Gallup survey finds that worker engagement in the USA is greater than in Australia, Canada, and each nation in Europe, and greater than six occasions greater than in Japan.

Even the authors of the Journal story acknowledge that one other survey this yr by the Convention Board discovered that worker satisfaction simply set a brand new report excessive—because it has for the previous 12 straight years for the reason that Nice Recession.

May one make the argument that, truly, American employees are happier than they’ve been in a long time? Sure. And don’t simply take my phrase for it. The exact same Wall Avenue Journal revealed precisely that absorb a Could 11 unique entitled “Employees Are Happier Than They’ve Been in Many years.” Better of all, that article claimed that the “the happiest employees” within the nation included “people working in hybrid roles,” whereas the November article (sure, in the identical newspaper!) claimed that the “isolating points of hybrid work” have been liable for making employees particularly sad.

What will we make of the truth that the identical information outlet concluded, inside a seven-month interval, that Individuals have been each “happier than in a long time” and “so sad proper now” in articles that each pointed to the identical survey and office phenomena? If you happen to have been defending the Journal, you may word the slight uptick within the unemployment price since Could, or the decline within the stop price, to indicate that one thing main has modified in Individuals’ expertise of labor previously 200 days.

However pattern journalism isn’t actually about capturing a statistical reality. It’s about indulging reader nervousness by saying not solely Everyone seems to be feeling what you’re feeling, but additionally This second is particular, and also you’re particular too. By validating the fears and stresses of employees and managers, these articles succeed as a type of remedy, which is all of the extra highly effective as a result of it’s found not on a counselor’s sofa however within the enterprise part, the place it carries a patina of statistical authority.

The truths listed below are outdated and acquainted. Work is figure: principally mandatory, usually boring, incessantly annoying, sometimes insulting, and generally rewarding. The media hold inventing a brand new lexicon each few months to elucidate this constant state of affairs, and readers lap it up, as a result of we demand recent language to speak to ourselves the stale drudgery of the 9-to-5. I can reside with it. Faux economic-trend recognizing may not be one of many world’s 1,000 most essential issues. It’s simply improper.