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Mass media unemployment statistics are flawed,
counting
jobs by people, full-time or otherwise, and lump
worthwhile, enjoyable or rewarding work together with
pointless, meaningless or nasty work. Many jobs,
careers
and lives outside the realm of paid work include
elements
of all three.
These should be separated.
So, have three categories: work, unemployment and
toil.
The ideal is little toil and unemployment and lots of
work,
though this would not always be good due to dirty jobs
that
someone's got to do or a need to serve one's time while
working one's way up, so there should be some toil just
as
one needs breaks from work. However, analysing "work"
was as toil versus work, and dividing employment
statistics into work (amalgamated work "hours" including
part-time employment to give a more realistic
impression
than simply counting jobs) and toil, including unpaid toil
such as cleaning toilets or being stuck in a traffic jam,
could encourage governments and people in general to
minimise toil and unemployment and maximise
employment rather than just getting rid of
unemployment.
Toil is almost, but not quite, as undesirable as
unemployment, but work is good.
Another possibility might be to count paid and unpaid
work, so for instance it includes housework and childcare
by unpaid people such as parents.
Clearly toil can't be eliminated due to the factors i've
mentioned, but it might change the way we look at these
things.
I would define toil not as hard, exhausting or long
physical
labour, which could be very good, but time spent doing
things which are any combination of pointless,
repetitive,
unpleasant or harmful to oneself or others. The more of
those are involved, the more it counts as toil.
Help in the graphic depiction modes...
Interesting_20unemployment_20figures [normzone, Feb 16 2012]
Job Quality Index
http://www.eurofoun...8/06/EU0806019I.htm "evidence seems to be emerging that many of the new jobs being created are bad jobs" [rcarty, Feb 17 2012, last modified Feb 18 2012]
[link]
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Pointlessness and the other three needn't make what one is
doing
entirely without merit when taken alone. It's more a way of
ranking how bad something is. All three would clearly be worse:
several of those attributes may be redeemed by another.
However, there is also the question of whether everything is
ultimately futile. |
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"The Assorted Shit Workers of America have released their monthly report, which show the 'Shit Work' index up 5% in April as more workers found employment as garbage pickers and toxic sludge handlers..." |
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Futility doesn't in itself stop things from being interesting or fun.
In fact, your very anno is far from futile as it will help my
daughter understand her biology homework. |
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Concerning shit-shovellers, i see them as unsung public health
heroes. |
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Howabout conducting powerpoint presentations gaging potential solutions of engineering problems for financial viability in the transportation manufacturing sector? |
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Depending on my mood, sometimes I like thoughtless work. |
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Too hard to make a sharp division between work and
toil. But it *would* be nice to have, along with
"percent of workforce employed" some metric that
gave more weight to an employed person with high
job-satisfaction than to another with low job-
satisfaction. Like quality-of-life adjusted years. |
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They're like two sides of a happy medium. Unemployment's on
one side and chores are on the other. The middle bit needs to
crowd the other two out. Kurtosis. |
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And mindless work can indeed be good or enjoyable. The
halfbaked component of this is how to evaluate work. |
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