If they’re essential, shouldn’t they earn more?
I went to the grocery store the other day to stock up. Trying to avoid social contact as much as possible, I went very early on Saturday morning, when normally the store would be empty. I was surprised to find that the store was packed with shoppers, some wearing masks, many with carts that were bulging with supplies. Workers were busily stocking shelves to keep up with demand and every checkout had a line.
As I walked around, I tried to do some math in my head to see if I could determine the probability that someone in the store was carrying COVID-19 at that moment. The state of Ohio estimates that 100,000 people currently have the virus, so the math is pretty straightforward. If 100,000 people have the virus out 11.7 million Ohioans, then roughly 0.85% of folks are infected. That means that if you have 117 people in a space at a given time, it is likely that at least one of those 117 people are carrying coronavirus. Looking around the store, it seemed like there were more than 117 people there, and certainly, over the course of a single clerk’s shift, well over 117 people will come into the store. The likelihood that a typical Kroger employee is going to be exposed to COVID-19 is incredibly high.
This is why this virus is spreading so rapidly and why we need to socially distance ourselves as much as possible. It’s good to see that many jurisdictions are beginning to enforce mandatory social distancing in the form of orders to shelter-in-place. Ohio’s went into effect Monday night, and New York state and the city of San Francisco also have ordered residents to shelter in place. All of these shelter-in-place orders have exceptions for essential jobs.
Many of the essential jobs are indeed essential – they’re healthcare workers, sanitation workers, or drivers – they’re the people who keep our society running. Often, they work in the background with very little acclaim, repairing, delivering, cleaning up, or caring for others. Their work cannot stop, and so we’ve deemed them essential. They have to keep working during this crisis. As we ask them to put their lives at risk so that we can continue functioning, we should take a step back and examine whether it’s worth their while to risk everything for their jobs. If these folks are indeed essential, do we compensate as if they are?
Are ‘essential workers’ paid as if they are essential?
To answer this question, I dug into some of these jobs to see what the pay was like for them. Using the list of jobs and industries from the state of New York‘s essential work guidance (which is pretty similar to other jurisdictions’), I pulled salary data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment Statistics.
The job titles aren’t a perfect one-to-one match, so I had to make some calls on what Governor Cuomo may have meant. I think I got them right, but there is some gray area. Also, some of the data was incomplete, so I used average wages (instead of median, which I would normally prefer in cases like this). This is by no means an exhaustive list of jobs either. All that’s to say, this is not a super-scientific inquiry, rather, it’s a list of jobs that are at least somewhat representative of the jobs that we’re deeming to be essential.
Despite these caveats, I think the data is pretty illustrative:
The blue line on the chart represents the national average salary for all workers, $51,960. While it is good to see that the doctors and nurses who are working to save lives are compensated at above-average rates, many of the jobs make well below the average salary. Two of them, Hotel Clerks and Childcare Workers, make less than half the national average. I want to pause to reflect for a moment that Childcare Workers make less than half the national average despite doing the essential work of caring for our kids.
Again, folks with these jobs are the people we’re asking to continue working during this pandemic. They are putting their lives at risk, and we’re trusting them to take extra precautions for our own sake. They are also keeping things running while the rest of us socially distance ourselves (stay at home!). Many are not compensated very well for their work under normal circumstances, and given the extra risk, they are certainly not being fairly compensated now. It’s difficult to find the data, but it’s probably fair to say that many of these workers will not get paid time off if they get sick. Many may not get health insurance through their employer.
Essential Workers Deserve Better
Regardless of their pay prior to this crisis, it’s seems clear that during the crisis, the way we compensate essential workers should change. It bears repeating (for the third time now), these essential workers are literally risking their lives, and we are trusting them to be extra cautious to protect our own loved ones. That’s why, anyone who is required to show up to a physical workspace (ie: not work from home) during a shelter-in-place order should be eligible for the following:
- Paid sick time if they get sick
- Health insurance
- Hazard pay
Number one, paid sick time, seems self-evident for me during a pandemic. Not allowing for paid sick leave during a pandemic is akin to making someone work in a category 5 hurricane but taking away their pay if they have to stop working because they get hit by rain. They will almost certainly be exposed to someone who is carrying the virus, and they shouldn’t be penalized if they do get sick. This pandemic is not their fault – it’s the result of natural processes that have been exacerbated a systemic failure of our government to take the threat seriously early on. They deserve paid sick leave.
Secondly, they should also be eligible for health coverage for the same reasons they deserve paid sick leave. If they get sick, they shouldn’t be on the hook for paying the bills, much less go into debt because of medical bills. We’re putting them in a risky situation in which they will likely get sick – the least we can do is cover their costs. They didn’t cause this pandemic, and they shouldn’t have to shoulder the burden of ending it.
Lastly, workers in essential jobs should get hazard pay. When the military deploys soldiers to war zones, the pay they receive is 100% tax exempt and a typical soldier receives an additional $225 per month. We already require employers to pay time-and-a-half for overtime. The work these essential workers are doing is inherently high risk. We should pay them more to do it or reduce their overall tax burden in order to compensate for the risks they are taking.
Welcome to a new world!
It really feels like coronavirus has changed everything, indeed many experts are saying so. Some of these changes are inevitable; we are all going to view the post-pandemic world differently. Culture may look different and everyday practices will change.
Not all of these changes are guaranteed though, and in the coming months and years (potentially), it will be important for us to reckon with this new world and shape what we want it to be like. Collectively, we will have to decide how to respond. We will have to reexamine our social contract, and we’ll have to answer some tough questions.
Before the pandemic, it seemed as if we were on a steady march toward increased social stratification and economic inequality. ‘Normal’ meant having a large percentage of the population without health insurance and many more with jobs that did not pay living wage. Only folks in the upper classes got paid time off and paid sick leave.
We need to reexamine how we treat the people we now are calling essential, and everyone really. Should we make an effort to ensure that people have protection and security when something like a pandemic happens, or is it okay to return to the status quo?
I think the answer is clear: it is not fair for us to expect that people either shut down all of their activity or put their lives at risk if we aren’t going to ensure that they are safe and secure. How can we expect anyone to sacrifice for us when things are bad when we (collectively) are unwilling to the same for others when things are good?
When things finally go back to normal, things will need to change. We need to ensure that we shape the post-pandemic world in such a way that everyone has health coverage and a guaranteed income. Among other changes, we also need to ensure that those who work, especially those who do essential work should have paid time off, and not just sick leave, because these essential workers are going to need a vacation once this is all over.
For now though, while this crisis rages on, one of the ways we should start to reshape the world is by changing how we treat our essential employees.
For those interested, I’ll post the code and data on git when I have a chance. You can bother me for it on twitter if you really want to check it out 🙂