Wages in the Time of COVID

I was laid off from my job in April, and while it was in no way a pleasant experience, it has given me sometime to reflect on the job market as it is now, and as it has been. I am not going to disclose what I was making, or what I am currently making on unemployment, however I am going to throw some numbers around based on averages and input given to me by my friends who were also laid off. I hope that this serves as a wake up call for all the people who are currently looking to employ people. It is really important that we do not allow ourselves to sink into predatory practices like we did after the 2008 collapse.

Let's say you are a newly unemployed candidate and you were making $50k a year at your previous role. With unemployment the way it is currently structured, and depending on the reasons you were laid off, assuming it was for COVID-19, you could now be receiving anywhere from $55k-$76k a year, in unemployment benefits. What does this mean? It means that the practice of combining roles for the same low rate of pay that one role offered is no longer enough.

Now I am an administrative and HR professional with more than 12 years of experience working for a diverse set of teams. I have been the executive assistant to CEOS, an office manager, a Director of HR, and a receptionist. I have served sales teams, and marketing teams, affiliate marketing programs, and been a hiring manager. I have done complex calendaring, travel arrangements, meeting coordination, and trade show organization. I have lectured and done demos, and I have a background heavy in the tech industry. Through my job search I have seen roles that need all of these things offering $18 per hour. This is insane. For the skills I have demonstrated I have been paid upwards of $100k per year. The fact that people wish to have me be an admin to more than one executive, and an office manager, and also a recruiter for less than $50k per year is absolutely ridiculous.

I think that a fundamental realization has to happen with both workers and companies during this time. For workers, especially workers in essential roles, I think the time of the "unskilled labor" myth has to end. There is no such thing. Standing on your feet for 8 to 12 hours a day and smiling while someone is screaming at you is a skill. Being polite while doing your job that threatens your life is a skill. Stocking shelves, answering phone calls, and giving IV lines is a skill. Going to work day after day knowing that you are going to watch people die is a skill. Speaking as an administrative professional, managing calendars of high impact, high visibility executives is a skill. If the executives in question could do it on their own they wouldn't be hiring you.

In one of my previous roles, I made 60% of what my boss, the CEO made. I feel like that is the bare minimum I would be willing to take. At that job, I did a lot of the things that they didn't have time to do. I managed employee schedules in multiple locations, I ordered office supplies, technical supplies, and did troubleshooting on the office equipment. I made coffee, scheduled meetings, conducted interviews. I booked travel, and managed my boss' calendar. I did all the things they didn't want to do so that they could focus on the things they did want to do. In essence I ran their company for them so that they could work with the engineers and developers to make the product more valuable to customers.

I did 60% of the things on their plate, so they paid me 60% of the salary they paid themselves. Seems fair to me. A lot of those types of duties seem trivial to people that don't have to do them, but as soon as that support is taken away they realize how vital having the time that it takes to do them is. A lot of the job postings I am seeing are paying laughably low wages for an incredible amount of time management skills.

Employers need to realize how critical their staff are, and need to pay them accordingly. If you are motivating your staff by being supportive, and helpful, and also monetarily, you will see better productivity, and better longevity of employment. Turn around costs money. It is better, and cheaper to fix an issue with an existing employee than it is to hire someone new and train them from the ground up. It is also important to hire the appropriate amount of people. There is only so much work you can get out of a single person consistently. If you are critically overworking someone they will never perform at the same level.

I understand that losing profit to pay more people, and pay people more, is hard to reconcile, however, you will lose more in the long run if you have high turn around due to overworking your critical staff. A lot of candidates have been working in this toxic work culture of overworked and underpaid for too long, and this pandemic, and the threat of their own mortality has opened their eyes to how poorly they have had it for so long. I grieved the loss of my beloved job for 2 full weeks, but once that grieving process was over, I began to see how much time I had free to do the things that were important to me.

I am no longer willing to work more than 50 hours in a week. I am no longer willing to work jobs that require my presence on the weekends. I am no longer willing to take jobs that don't allow me to work from home sometimes. And most importantly, I now have a much clearer image of what my time is worth. If I am constantly buried in work, working 10-20 hours of overtime just to make a salary that I can live on comfortably, then I am not really living comfortably. I am surviving with the privilege to consume.

No company should want this of their employees. No employee should want a life like that.