Balancing Act

Well into the third year of a global pandemic, we are stressed and stretched in ways that are obvious and that we’re just beginning to understand. Leave it to those hardy, contented Swedes to provide a potential path forward. 

First, some numbers and observations. The workplace is among the pandemic’s visible effects. Office work all but shut down for an extended time and is just starting to return. Almost 48 million people quit their jobs from March 2020 through 2021 during the so-called “Great Resignation,” and more than eight million quit in the first two months of 2022, according to the jobs and career website Zippia. 

The health-care field is among the hardest hit. As of late last year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that starting in Feb. 2020 health care lost almost a half-million workers. The survey research outfit Morning Consult reported that 18 percent of health care workers quit, often citing pandemic burnout, and another 12 percent were laid off. Elsewhere, the accommodation and food service industry lost 892,000 workers, almost 6.9 percent of its total workforce, in 2021. The sectors of leisure and hospitality, retail trade, and professional and business services all lost more than 700,000 workers last year. 

Among reasons cited for quitting, again from Zippia, were low pay and lack of advancement opportunities (both 63 percent), feeling disrespected at work (56 percent), child care issues (48 percent), and lack of schedule flexibility (45 percent). 

Back to the Swedes. A foundational point of Swedish society is a concept called “lagom.” It’s pronounced LAR-gohm. There’s no direct English translation, and it loosely means “just the right amount” or “everything in moderation.” It’s being satisfied with what makes you and your family comfortable, without constantly striving to acquire more. 

Lagom doesn’t preclude hard work, but it preaches balance between the professional and the personal, that you aren’t merely your job, your financial wealth, your possessions. Sixty-hour work weeks and clawing your way to the top of a profession are viewed as neither desirable nor healthy, by individuals or if expected by companies. 

Adopting a similar concept here may be a hard ask, given the American tendency to conflate work and wealth with virtue and achievement, as well as a relentless consumer culture that must be constantly fed. Pandemic upheaval, however, may lead the idea to take root. 

A recent movement among workers called “quiet quitting” has received attention. It’s a misnomer, because it’s not actually quitting, but a kind of employee disengagement. Recognizing that they’re often underpaid and overworked, some workers no longer buy into the grind and instead do only the bare minimum of their job descriptions for the prescribed number of hours. They seek work that’s more fulfilling or accommodating, if not more lucrative, hence the large numbers of people who quit or changed jobs in the wake of the pandemic. Without getting rewarded, either financially or personally, they believe that so-called “hustle culture” has become a myth. 

Sweden is a more social democratic country than the U.S., with robust national health care, strong labor unions, worker protections, and the tax structure to support it. Its citizens don’t seem to mind. In the World Happiness Report of 2021, Sweden ranked seventh (FWIW, five of the top eight happiest countries are Scandinavian). The U.S. was 16th. 

The WHR measures six categories: gross domestic product per capita; social support; healthy life expectancy; freedom to make life choices; generosity of the general population; and perceptions of internal and external corruption levels. In Freedom House’s 2021 report measuring political rights and civil liberties around the world, Sweden, Norway and Finland tied for first with perfect scores of 100. The U.S. scored an 83, just ahead of Trinidad and Tobago, and just behind Croatia, Mongolia and Monaco. 

All that said, I’m not advocating that the U.S. go full Sweden. Meatballs and pickled herring are non-starters for me. IKEA furniture is an instruction manual for self-torture. A surfeit of ABBA in a country where half the population is already obese or pre-diabetic is just asking for trouble. I defer to Zman on the merits of Volvos. Larger point being, as tragic and life-altering as the pandemic was and is, it also provides an opportunity. We should have discussions about health and work and education and income and personal and social responsibility and sustainability. About improving ourselves and our nation. If we treat the pandemic as a one-off and an interruption, and simply try to return to “normal,” then we’ve compounded the tragedy.