The Professional Class is Burning Out

If you work for Corporate America in a managerial or professional capacity, you know all about burnout, because you see it all around you or are experiencing it yourself. Readers describe what they are seeing in the top ranks of S&P 500 corporations, and the stories (anonymous because everyone knows the truth will get them fired/blacklisted) are all about the high personal costs of earning big paychecks by making the numbers–not just revenue but the all-important profits that power the multi-trillion-dollar valuations of U.S. corporations and the stock market that glories in their magnificent and ever-growing profits.

Corporate America depends on this class of workers to reap its stupendous profits: the attorneys, physicians and nurses who churn out the billable work; the CPAs who either cook the books or look the other way when others rig the books to make the company look more profitable than it actually is; the managers who squeeze the line workers to produce more; the software engineers and project managers who are always under deadline and always pressured to use cheaper temps; the Wall Street work-hounds who have to use uppers and other dangerous stimulants to function for 70-80 hours a week, week in and week out; the multitudes addicted to painkillers or other prescription drugs to manage their psychological and physical pain; the working parents whose family life is imploding under the demands of their employers; social workers burdened with ever-larger case loads–the examples are endless.

Even if you don’t work in this class, you see burnout all around you: people burned out by crushingly long commutes, by juggling two jobs, or small-business owners resorting to self-exploitation, i.e. working ridiculous hours for little or no pay, just to keep their enterprise (and dream of self-employment) alive.

What no financial analyst dares confess is the corporate profits they cheer every quarter have come at a cost that many Americans will soon be unable to bear. Millions of highly experienced, essential employees of Corporate America, from physicians and nurses to top managers and technologists are either planning to quit, retire, cut their hours or file a workers compensation claim for stress related to their work.

There is a growing body of medical and business-management literature on occupational burnout: Occupational burnout–Maslach Burnout Inventory

A growing body of evidence suggests that burnout is clinically and nosologically similar to depression. In a study that directly compared depressive symptoms in burned out workers and clinically depressed patients, no diagnostically significant differences were found between the two groups; burned out workers reported as many depressive symptoms as clinically depressed patients.

Working parents aren’t speaking up in the workplace, and they’re leaving their managers in the dark. (PRNewsFoto/Bright Horizons Family Solutions)

Check out the burnout rate in the most profitable sector of the economy, finance and financial services:

Though no one dares connect rising workloads and corporate profits, isn’t it more than coincidence that U.S. corporate profits soared not just when production was offshored and financialization took off, but when workloads increased and “work-life balance” became a buzzword for what was no longer possible?

Many people are lauding corporate efforts to ease stress at the workplace with onsite yoga classes and the like. I call B.S.–what people want is less pressure, more time with their families, and to be treated as human beings rather than interchangeable units of production. Yoga classes and the occasional corporate party don’t provide these essentials.

Guess what happens when corporate profits tumble: all the wealthy people at the top of the pyramid lose a lot of money: the executives counting on huge gains from stock options, hedge funds who’d bet the farm on this corporation’s “outperformance,” and the big institutional owners of the company’s stock.

No wonder the pressure on the managerial class is so unremitting and intense: the whole rickety structure of wealth in the U.S. stock market is poised to collapse once profits crater.

There are a couple of ways out for burnouts fleeing Corporate America, but each has its own trade-offs and costs. One is early retirement, another is early retirement plus a low-paying, low-stress part-time job. Another is self-employment in the cash-only economy (One Part of the Economy Is Booming: The Underground/Cash-Only Sector October 9, 2015) or in other sectors open to self-employment.

Financial independence is the American Dream because it gives us the freedom to say Take This Job And Shove It (2:31, Johnny Paycheck).

Unfortunately, the costs of starting and operating a small business are risingdue to junk fees imposed by local government, higher taxes, soaring healthcare insurance costs, etc.:

Many refugees from Corporate America would love to quit tomorrow but as they explore the alternatives, they find that their income will drop from $90,000 or $100,000 to $30,000 or less outside the fortresses of Corporate America and Government.

That means completely reworking the cost structure of one’s household: paying off all debt, downsizing expenses not by hundreds of dollars but by thousands, and figuring out ways to develop multiple income streams that the household owns and controls.

It can be done, but it requires a revolution in understanding and financial arrangements. Longtime readers know this is what I have written about for ten years in the blog and in books like Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy, which can also be read as a primer for those seeking self-employment.

Regards,

Charles Hugh Smith
for Of Two Minds

P.S. Ever since my first summer job decades ago, I’ve been chasing financial security. Not win-the-lottery, Bill Gates riches (although it would be nice!), but simply a feeling of financial control. I want my financial worries to if not disappear at least be manageable and comprehensible.

And like most of you, the way I’ve moved toward my goal has always hinged not just on having a job but a career.

You don’t have to be a financial blogger to know that “having a job” and “having a career” do not mean the same thing today as they did when I first started swinging a hammer for a paycheck.

Even the basic concept “getting a job” has changed so radically that jobs–getting and keeping them, and the perceived lack of them–is the number one financial topic among friends, family and for that matter, complete strangers.

So I sat down and wrote this book: Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy.

It details everything I’ve verified about employment and the economy, and lays out an action plan to get you employed.

I am proud of this book. It is the culmination of both my practical work experiences and my financial analysis, and it is a useful, practical, and clarifying read.