The Washington Post and Ipsos have put out a poll regarding the thoughts,
interests, and concerns of American workers.
They wanted to see where their hearts and minds are at, and
there were some pretty surprising results from the poll.
Stay tuned for what I believe was the most shocking result of this poll.
But first, let's talk about what happens to be the most important for workers.
Now, the pollsters specific asked the survey takers how
important are each of the following aspects of the job?
And then they asked a follow up question which of the following aspects of the job
are most important to you?
So if you take a look at this graph,
you'll notice that the light orange represents extremely important, and
then the darker orange represents most important.
And as you can see, the vast majority of workers believe that
how much they get paid on the job is the most important thing.
That's the number one priority, which makes a lot of sense.
Coming in at number two, though, you have a good boss or manager,
which also makes a lot of sense.
Although I will say, while the majority of people said that it was in fact
extremely or very important, a significantly smaller share believe that
it's the most important issue, especially when you compare it to pay, right?
So just to give you some more information about what they found here.
So notably, things like free gym memberships, lunches and
laundry service were at the bottom of the list.
So when employers have pizza parties and things like that, the employers are like,
whatever.
They're not that impressed by that because, look,
at the end of the day, what's gonna cause lasting happiness at work?
And it's making sure that you're making enough money to live.
And also that you have a good relationship with your boss slash manager,
because who wants to deal with someone they don't get along with
that can make your life pretty miserable.
So before I continue, any thoughts on that so far Cenk?
Yeah, look, I think that having a good boss or
manager coming in a strong number two is interesting, and it makes sense, and
it's something that hasn't been emphasized in these studies that much before.
But I remember when my wife had a manager that was very difficult, right,
totally unreasonable.
It kind of rules your life.
>> Totally.
>> It takes over everything.
You can't stop thinking about it for 8, 10 hours
a day, or sometimes you'd work 12 hours a day.
You got this person breathing down your neck asking you for
no matter what you do, you can't win, right.
It's like a torture chamber.
So I don't blame him.
>> I had this one boss that he didn't necessarily yell at me.
He never yelled at me, actually, but he would just yell all the time.
He was super animated and always I'm just kidding.
[LAUGH] no, Cenk is freaking awesome.
I'm very, very lucky but no, totally.
I had a short stint at a media company prior to working at TYT.
There was some crossover where I worked at TYT in this company at the same time.
And I just remember management being really difficult there like yelling at me
over literally nonsense, right?
Asking me to print out papers.
And since I didn't do it literally right that moment right away because I
was taking a feed from a reporter who was remote,
this editor just lost it on me and was like screaming at me.
I don't know pretty sure it's more important to take the feed from
the reporter, but nonetheless.
>> So I'll tell you real quick, bad boss story that I had.
I'm working at a prosecutor's office.
I get arrested.
It's a false arrest.
It's proven to be a false arrest.
And my boss is still yelling at the top of his lungs at me and
it's literally a false arrest.
Adjudicated as a false arrest, right?
He's like, I don't care.
And I'm like, okay, well then that makes you weirdo and
totally unreasonable, right?
And so no, I can't stand it.
And by the way, I left there early because I was like,
I'm not going to go into work with this idiot and telling me what to do, sorry.
>> So following the priority of having a good boss or manager,
you have benefits, right?
Makes a lot of sense.
Health insurance benefits, retirement benefits, amount of vacation time.
Right in the middle is friendliness of coworkers,
which I would venture to say is also very important.
But in the age of remote work for a lot of white collar workers,
I can understand why it's lower down the list of priorities.
Now let's move on to other issues, including remote work.
How do Americans feel about having to go into the office?
How many Americans are able to do remote work?
Well, they asked the survey takers about that.
If you had a choice, how often would you want to work from home?
And unsurprisingly, the majority of respondents wanna work from home all of
the time or most of the time.
Only a small percentage,
1% say never, 5% say rarely.
So seven in ten workers said that they'd choose to work from home all
of the time at 37% or most of the time at 35%.
About a quarter of these workers would choose to work from home some of the time
at 23%, while just 6% would opt to work remotely, rarely or never.
And look, why?
Why is that?
They actually I thought that was the most interesting part of it because I feel
this, right?
I actually don't mind coming into the office and doing the show from the studio.
I think it looks better.
It sounds better.
There's more chemistry because we can pick up on certain nonverbal cues.
However, the commute kills me.
It takes so much time out of my day and I was, I guess, unsurprised to find
that that's the top reason why workers would rather work from home.
One of the other reasons why is because they feel that they're actually more
productive at home.
And honestly, I feel that as well.
When I'm in the studio, if I'm producing the show from the studio,
I want to chat it up, right?
I want to chat it up like, I see John, I see Bard, I see John,
the stage manager, who's a different John that you haven't seen on camera before.
I want to hang out with my friends, so I get that too.
>> Yeah, and by the way, another factor here was hanging out with friends.
But what was interesting is that half the people don't have any friends at work.
And I was like, that kind of sucks.
>> It sucks but I get it too.
I think that some of what's going on right now culturally right.
And some of the call out culture that's happening is discouraging
people from getting close with their colleagues at work.
I think that's what's happening.
>> That's part of it.
>> Yeah. >> And remember, guys,
I imagine that this is blue collar and white collar combined.
So that's kind of interesting.
Look, my biggest takeaway is I'm shocked at the number of people who
are relatively happy with their shop.
>> Yep, I want to get to that.
So why don't we fast forward to that where I couldn't believe it?
Most workers are actually very happy about this is graphic seven.
About 8 in 10 workers say that they are satisfied with their jobs,
while the same shares say their jobs are enjoyable,
even though about 6 in 10 workers, 62%, report that their jobs are stressful.
And I totally feel that I fall in that category.
Like, the job is super stressful, but I love the job.
>> Yeah, me too. >> I want to complain about the job, and
I want my husband to hear me complain about the job without requesting that
I consider a different job, because I don't want a different job.
I just want to complain about how stressful the job I love happens to be.
>> Okay, fair. >> [LAUGH]
>> And so look,
that was really encouraging.
>> Yeah. >> That's like the first encouraging poll.
>> Ever. >> In decades, right?
I'm heartened to see that American workers
are kind of getting along with each other, and
some of them kind of like their managers and bosses.
And they're pretty satisfied with their jobs, but
that doesn't alleviate the number one problem, which is pay.
And that is what corporations have done, is they've taken more and
more from their employees and transferred it over to corporate profits, right?
So pay would probably come in number one under most circumstances, my guess,
because it's such a giant factor, right.
But in this case in America, my guess is it's coming in much higher than it would
even in other countries, because we have not had our government represent us.
>> We don't have a social safety net, right?
We have to pay for everything out of pocket.
Think about that.
In other countries, Scandinavian countries, I mean,
your health care is provided.
So if you have low pay and a lack of social safety net and
government programs, well, that's a disastrous combination.
And that's what American workers are dealing with right now.
So I could totally understand why higher pay is the top priority.