Americans work hard, there is no doubt about that. But how does each state stack up against the others? Wallethub recently did a study to rank the 50 states from hardest working to least hard working. Alaska took the top spot as the overall hardest working state and Michigan came in last. Surprisingly, Louisiana ranked as the 18th overall hardest working state. The study used a lot of different variables and rankings to arrive at the overall rankings. Experts also weighed in to discuss the United States job market and the Trump presidency.
Americans work an average of 1,783 hours per year. The study also found that a surprising amount of Americans did not use all of their vacation days in 2017. Americans voiced a number of concerns as to why they work so hard. Many of them feared they would be laid off or replaced. Others worried about falling behind on their work and not being able to catch up. Wallethub used 10 key indicators to compare the states. These indicators ranged from average workweek hours to annual volunteer hours per resident. Even though Louisiana ranked 18th overall, it still ranked close to 50thin 2 out of the 10 categories. Along with the data from the study, Wallethub also asked a panel of expert’s questions pertaining to work and the job market.
The experts answered questions ranging from how the Trump admiration’s foreign trade policy affects jobs to how 3D printing will change the job market. The general consensus among the 4 experts seemed to be that the Trump administrations’ views on foreign policy would ultimately hurt the United States’ workforce. Experts were mixed on how they felt about wages in the current work environment. Some offering the opinion that people would need to work multiple jobs or more hours to make a decent wage. While others felt that the current wage system and pay rate was fine. Experts did seem to agree on the effect that automatization has on the workplace. The general consensus is that more education is required to keep up with technological advances. Meaning that higher education is required to operate these expensive and complex machines. Experts also agreed that lower level and lower skilled employees will be phased out and replaced by machines. We are currently seeing this in many fields such as the automotive field. The general agreement was that higher educations led to more job security.
The Wallethub study made many interesting points and led to some interesting discoveries. Americans work hard for various reasons and they will continue to work hard for whatever those reasons may be. The future of the American job market is somewhat unknown. The automatization of the workplace is somewhat inevitable, but to what extent? Foreign policy has a big effect on the job market and more education is for the most better.
